Page 50 of Burning Ice
"Come on, then. Do something with that frost. Or has your puppet master never taught you how to do that?"
Mirel could feel the others watching. The scrape of a chair, a laugh caught in the throat, a glass tipped and caught again. The opium haze grew warm and velvet-thick, blurring disgust into fascination, dread into desire.
"Do something!" the prisoner barked, a pitch too high to be brave. "You won’t. You can’t."
The world narrowed to pulse and heat in his gut. A second rhythm rose under his. It asked for shape. He gave it one.
He didn’t think. He mirrored.
The frost leapt. It took the boots first, crawling through the seams and biting the skin beneath. Leather creaked, shrinkingtight until his knees buckled. Ice veined across the leather, tightening until his stance failed.
"What the fuck?"
"What did you think, you motherfucker? That my chosen one doesn't know how to use his gift?"
Vaguely Mirel heard Kylix, felt it inside his chest, but he was too focused to smile.
The prisoner was panicking now. His defiance slipping. He'd fallen down, and one of the guards pulled him back onto his feet, but he couldn't keep his stance, ice forming a thick layer over his calves, alive as it crawled up to his thighs.
"Look at him," Moargan said. "Look."
Mirel kept his eyes on the mouth. Words tried to form and snapped off at the teeth. Each fragment fell bright as glass and died on the marble.
He didn't know who he meant, and he didn't care. His eyes had frosted, his vision tunneled to the prisoner’s lips. Each syllable the man tried to form snapped into frost and fell like glitter. He raised his hand without deciding to. The ice obeyed, knitting up the chain, webbing the wrists, lacing shoulder to shoulder, drawing the chest still.
“Mercy?” Kylix barked. “He’s giving you beauty.”
The plea passed through him and vanished. The other word didn’t.
Beautycaught behind his ribs and held. He felt sick with it.
Mirel heard rhythm. He heard the thin chime of ice as hairline fissures formed and healed in a heartbeat. He heard Kylix’s breath and it set his own. He heard the vent-music and the light moving across the frost and the small, brave noise the prisoner made when a tendril of cold touched the side of his throat.
Heat moved low and heavy. He could have walked away. He did not. The cold made a path and his body chose it.
His body answered as if to a lover.
Heat flooded Mirel, sudden and low, a heavy pulse that rushed down and back again until it filled his limbs. His cock was hard. The shame of it burned bright. The shame made the cold brighter.
"Enough," the prisoner said. "Enough, please."
Mirel stepped closer. The frost curled up the line of the jaw, a careful hand that learned as it touched. He studied the way breath smoked and clung to the thin glaze, the way it turned a red mouth pale. He felt sick with beauty.
Stop. He pushed the thought out like a palm against a door. It didn’t meet a door. It met water.
"Good, little ghost, good." The sound of his name in that voice cut the water cleanly.
The praise went through him like a flare. His insides twisted, eager to please. Fear thinned to silk. His ache deepened until breath and pulse were one thing. Want, made of heat and winter.
The prisoner’s last scaffolding of anger collapsed. "Please," he said again, and it wasn’t a word, only a shape.
Mirel leaned in until he could see the bloodshot threads in the man’s eyes, bright red against all that blue. "Do you believe me now?" he asked, and the voice sounded like winter turning, like a season snapping its fingers.
The man nodded, trapped. Frost chimed.
Mirel set his palm before the prisoner’s mouth. A membrane of ice drew itself there, thin as a second breath. The man took air and the membrane throbbed, transparent and trembling. He was strong enough to break it. He didn’t.
"It’s done," Mirel said.
