Page 51 of Burning Ice
His voice sounded clean. It startled him. He lowered his hand and only then felt the sting where the frost had kissed his palm.
The frost obeyed.
The silence after was clean. Too clean.
He heard only what survived it. Water in the vents, the soft brush of fabric, his own pulse ticking behind his teeth. The man inside the frost made no sound, yet Mirel still heard him somewhere in the stillness, a faint echo between heartbeats.
He had meant to stop earlier. When the boots cracked. When the crowd gasped. When Kylix said his name like praise. But the rhythm had carried him until it ended by itself. His hands shook, palms raw where the cold had bitten.
Mist lifted off the marble. Each breath turned it silver. He tried to speak, but the words caught like splinters. His throat felt lined with glass.
Kylix stood at the edge of his sight, quiet, watching. Mirel didn’t look. He feared the pride he would find there.
The frozen body had become a mirror. His own face hovered faintly in the ice, too pale, too calm. For a moment he thought it blinked, a trick of light, then steadied again.
Something inside him wanted to kneel. Something else wanted to run. He stayed where he was, caught between the two, the cold rising from the floor in slow, living breath.
Light flashed once and turned the marble silver. When it faded, the prisoner hung held in a shell of glass, breath and blood fixed in place like seeds in ice. The chain went slack and sang a last, uncertain note.
Kept was a different word. Smaller. Closer. It sat warm in his throat and would not go down.
The room forgot how to breathe for a count of two. Then glass sang, thin and high, and someone exhaled like a laugh.
Mirel didn’t understand why it hit him then, between the stillness of the frozen man and the sound of laughter returning, but the truth pressed sharp and undeniable. He had been chosen. Not discovered, not saved. Chosen. Kylix had seen what he was and decided to keep it.
Keep him.
The thought moved through him like poison disguised as praise. He wanted to be proud. He wanted to run. The crowd’s approval blurred around him, every smile a reflection of what he’d just done. The frost on the marble looked beautiful, and that frightened him most.
Kylix’s voice reached him through the haze, low and certain, claiming him before anyone else could.
And that was when Mirel realized he was no longer free, not even inside his own skin.
For a heartbeat no one moved.
Then the chamber remembered itself. Laughter broke softly. A voice praised. The clink of crystal returned in small, guilty chorus. The puffers hissed and tasted like sugar. A servant steadied a tray with one finger and passed a fresh cigarette to Helianth, who took it without looking away from Mirel. Aviel’s smile sharpened as if he’d made the ice himself.
Kylix moved. The heat of him reached Mirel first, then the sound of his boots. Kylix was the man who’d claimed him in front of the Imperial. The Imperial, who said he'd hold a press conference to make it news.
"You were perfect." Pride roughened each syllable. "You feel it now, don’t you? The power. The hunger."
No, Mirel wanted to say, but that would be a lie.
He felt exhausted. He leaned into Kylix’s hand, steady in the small of his back. If he let go, Mirel would fall.
"That was one hell of a show." Milanov rose. The folds of his white cloak whispered. He studied the ice sculpture the way a reader studies the last line of a good book, savoring it twice.
"Remarkable. Instinct before instruction. The blood remembers. The Dariux teaches the body what the mind refuses to learn." His eyes slid to Mirel, and something like tenderness crossed his face and vanished. "Tell me something, Mirel, forhow long have you lived on the graveyard before Kylix found you? Hmm?"
Mirel tried to answer. His voice broke halfway. His knees went soft as the world tilted.
Kylix caught him. Arms closed around him and pulled him against heat that made the frost smoke. "Easy, I've got you."
It should have helped. It didn’t. Each inhale dragged air that was too sweet, too hot. His skin didn’t fit. His heart kicked like something caged and pleased to be.
He wanted to apologize. He wanted to hide. He wanted to crawl into Kylix’s heat and stay. The wanting frightened him more than the ice.
"You are quiet, Mirel," said the Imperial. "Perhaps too quiet."
