Page 20 of Burning Ice
Kylix’s pupils darkened.
“Lick,” he said. “Show me you understand.”
Mirel’s gaze lowered to his mouth. He licked his lips. Slowly he leaned forward.
Their lips met. Kylix growled into the contact, teeth grazing soft skin. Mirel flinched but could not move. The sound he made cut through Kylix’s control. He took one slow swipe of his tongue, tasting fruit and something deeper. Fire moved through his chest.
He pulled back. “What are you?”
Mirel stared, flushed. “…Wrong.”
“No, little ghost. Not wrong.” Kylix’s voice came low. “Mine.”
The word echoed between them. Kylix hated the sound of it, the truth of it. He didn’t know why he’d chased him to the graveyard, why the need had begun before sight.
Now Mirel sat in his Waltr, chained and trembling, yet hunger lived under his skin. Kylix could feel it, the same pull that had drawn Cyprian.
He would guard him himself. Let no one near.
Mirel sagged against the wall, eyes half closed. Too thin. Too tired. Tomorrow he would feed him.
Kylix lifted him easily and set him on the bed. The chain locked to the side. He watched until Mirel’s eyes closed.
He weighed nothing. All bone and frost and quiet defiance. Hunger had a beauty of its own when it refused to beg.
His rest came uneven, body twitching once. A sound caught in his throat.
“What haunts you even in sleep?”
No answer came. Only breath, shallow and cold. Leaving the same white pull in the air, something Kylix could feel but not name.
“Why so peaceful, little one?” Kylix’s fingers traced jaw, throat, collarbone. Mirel sighed.
“I could have destroyed you. You give me no truths, and you kiss me instead.”
The heat eased but did not fade. It lingered like a name spoken too soft. Kylix sat on the bed’s edge, watching breath mist faintly between them. The frost that once threatened the glass now circled the chain, a thin white halo that pulsed with his heartbeat. He brushed it once and felt the pulse answer through metal. For the first time that night, he wasn’t sure which one of them was caged.
The chain gave a faint ring. A breath of frost crept from Mirel’s wrist, thin as a vein, cold against his palm. A warning, not a wound.
He almost smiled. Even half-asleep, his little ghost still resisted.
The sound of the lock settling filled the room again. Beyond the glass, night pressed in heavy and still. He stood a moment longer, waiting for the pulse under the metal to fade. It did not. The rhythm stayed, quiet and steady, marking him as much as the chain marked its captive.
He checked the locks, the heat, the lights. Then turned back once more.
“You’ll dream of me tonight. I will know.”
He paused at the seam of the door, the chain’s tremor still in the air. “And when I return, you’ll beg for what I deny.”
The glass held their reflections side by side, shapes blurred by frost. One stood. One slept.
For a moment they breathed together, the same mist hanging between them.
Kylix lifted a hand but did not touch. A print appeared anyway, faint and white, as if the Waltr remembered him before he left.
The words hung there, the last thing he left behind.
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