Page 118 of Burning Ice
“He’s not as young as I thought,” Mirel said.
Daven halted. “He’s one of us.”
Kylix raised a hand. “Don’t.”
Daven was already moving. He knelt and closed his fingers on the wrist.
The surge cracked through the speakers. Amid the hiss came a broken whisper.Ryneth.The sound felt remembered by current more than spoken. The room answered like a struck bell. Static leapt bright as a blade, arcing from the captive to Daven and back. The air lifted the way it does before a storm when every hair stands and smiles with fear.
“Ryneth,” Mirel echoed softly. “Is that your name?”
A faint nod. Eyes fluttered. Exhaustion said the rest.
“I need water,” Kylix said.
An officer handed him a bottle, but Mirel took it. He cupped a hand behind Ryneth’s nape and lifted him. “Drink. It will make you stronger.” At first Ryneth obeyed weakly. Then he drank hard, each swallow rough and audible, strength flickering back through him.
Ryneth’s eyes snapped open. Storm gray, lit from within. His mouth worked, then found a ragged thread. “The storm.”
“You’re safe,” Mirel said.
Ryneth blinked, as if tasting the word. “They said it wouldn’t stop. The storm inside. It follows.”
“What storm?” Kylix asked, voice sharpening.
Ryneth’s gaze dragged across the ceiling and traced the cable veins. “You have to…” The lights trembled. “Look out.”
A sound began in the walls, not a generator’s hum, but a whine waking angry.
Helianth cut in over comms. “Heat spike on your level. That’s a failsafe.”
“Vandor, get the doctor up,” Kylix said. “Daven, take him.”
Daven gathered Ryneth. When skin met skin a smaller spark crawled along their wrists. Not violent. Recognition. It lingered, tracing blue lines up Daven’s arm like a live filament, answering something quiet in him. Ryneth shuddered once and went limp, breath shallow, eyes sliding closed. For a heartbeat the world held still. Only the low electric hum moved along the walls. Everyone breathed once and held it.
“Go,” Kylix ordered. “Helianth, evacuate route three. We’ll follow.”
They turned for the door. The whine sharpened into a shriek. The floor vibrated. Heat slid under the lab like an animal.
“Kylix,” Mirel said, already warning.
“Move.” Kylix thrust Mirel ahead and pivoted to the console. He ripped a cable from the wall to bleed the circuit. Red washed the room.Overloadblinked in three languages.
Vandor dragged Serrin toward the corridor. Helianth’s silhouette flashed in the doorway as he cut a wedge with two guards. “Line two, back. Back. We’re pulling out.”
Mirel did not move. He felt the heat gather in his teeth. He had frozen scenes for Kylix before, holding the story in ice until the fire-eater arrived. This time the story was coming for the man himself.
“Kylix.”
The name left him like a vow. He stepped toward the rising light and lifted both hands.
The blast hit. Fire tore through glass and cable in a white roar that ate the edges of the world. Mirel’s frost exploded to meet it and bloomed into a cathedral of ice. Heat hammered cold. Shards flew and hung, arrested mid-flight by a second skin of rime. For an instant they stood inside two elements trying to murder each other and finding, instead, a shape that held.
Kylix turned through the blaze, eyes ember-bright, face cut in light. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you,” Mirel said, and pushed harder.
The ice thickened. The shockwave bucked against it. Beyond, Helianth kept shouting. Vandor’s baritone answered. Boots pounded. Daven’s breath rasped as he carried Ryneth. The lab screamed. The floor tore.
