Page 139 of Burning Ice
Theo nodded. A chain link clicked against his cuff.
No one asked why Aviel cared enough to be careful. No one asked why he had bothered to be gentle. The snow filled the space where those questions should have lived.
Kylix leaned back, the bottle in his hand, and reached into his pocket. The lighter rasped. He lit two red-cinder cigarettes and passed one to Mirel without a word.
Flame flared, then calmed. Smoke curled in the amber light. Mirel took the first drag, exhaled slow, and handed it back. Neither spoke. The quiet between them was its own language, the softest promise in a night full of warnings.
Yure frowned at his multi-slate. “That’s odd.”
“What?” Moargan asked, pouring a drink.
“I’m getting interference on the security grid.”
Helianth lifted his glass. “You and your grids… have a drink.”
Yure kept scrolling. Numbers crawled the slate. The others kept talking, voices warm and careless against the muted weather.
Thunder gathered somewhere beyond the ridge.
In the palace spire, cables hummed. Frost crept into the power veins, curling along data lines, turning glass to mirror. Monitors flickered between two living signatures. One burning red, one glacial blue. Beneath them, a third spark, lightning white, stuttered once, faint and waiting. Yure’s sensors caught it. He leaned close, watching a pulse steady as breath.
Across the city, the bond hummed through walls and waterlines. Lamps burned cleaner. Air felt newly held.
The convoy wound through whitened avenues, headlights slicing the flurry. In the backseat, Celia pressed her hand to the glass, watching the palace fade. Beside her, the still form of Norma Zephyranth lay beneath a medical shroud, attendants murmuring coordinates into their comms.
“She’ll rest easier there,” Moargan said quietly. “They both will.”
Back at the Green Mansion’s private medical wing, the air smelled of antiseptic and cold metal. Ryneth lay pale but conscious, a soft beeping counting his pulse. He was downstairs, heavily guarded. The others were not with him.
When the group finally left, the snow had thickened to sleet. Helicopters shadowed the convoy overhead, their searchlights cutting mist. The city’s surface glowed faintly beneath them, frost chasing firelight across the glass veins of Helion. Mirel watched through the window as drops slid down the pane, each one catching a thread of static. Kylix’s reflection met his in the dark glass.
In the upper rooms of the Green Mansion, Kylix and Mirel sat awake in the hush between breaths. The city stretched below them, silvered with frost and smoke. Kylix’s arm lay along Mirel’s shoulders. Their hum was quiet, alive.
The air changed first, an almost inaudible shift in pitch. Frost on the glass quivered, light fracturing through the panes. A low whine crawled through the comm units on the wall, static rising like a storm about to speak.
The table console flared to life. White noise flooded the room.
MESSAGE: UNAUTHORIZED SOURCE.
Kylix frowned, reaching to cut the feed. Mirel shook his head, listening.
Through the snow of interference, a voice stuttered, half-coded, half-human. “You thought you’d shut me down.”
The console crackled, text stuttering across the glass. Letters swam, re-formed, dissolved.
UNAUTHORIZED SOURCE. ROUTE: NORTH RIDGE SPINE.
The voice arrived as if spoken through torn wire. Light in the room tilted. Gold, then white. The fire fell to coals. A glass clicked on wood without a hand to move it. Mirel tasted metal.
Then the city exhaled all at once and the blast came.
Every light in the city flared too bright. Outside, the sky tore open. The shock hit a heartbeat later. The mansion shuddered, windows bowing before sealing again under pressure. A flash of white split the skyline, outlining the ridges in skeletal light. Snow turned to glass for one breath, then fell back to powder.
Light hit bone, then went out.
The air stayed white for a breath that felt too long to belong to time.
Heat shimmered in the ruin, color drained to silver.
