Page 61 of Burning Ice
A thin flicker went through the feed and was gone.
For an instant he thought he smelled smoke under the din of circuitry. The holo feed dimmed, leaving only Kylix and the faint gleam of his team’s consoles. His multi-slate buzzed with a message.
Vandor: Sir, Mirel requested a ride. I’m accompanying him into the city. He said he wanted to see the streets before dark. We’re keeping to the main lanes, but something feels off. I’ll update again soon.
His hand tightened around the slate. The bond answered first, heat stuttering, then the faintest chill running through hisveins. It wasn’t fear. It was distance. Mirel was too far, and the silence between them suddenly had weight.
He almost believed the day would end quietly. The text sat stark and cold on the screen. The air in the room shifted, heat collapsing inward.
Kylix stared at the message until the light flickered against his pupils, gold dissolving to white. Frost bloomed along the desk’s edge despite the warmth of his palm, a thin white rind that remembered every mistake. He should have locked the slate to Mirel’s wrist when he’d had the chance. Now he had only Vandor’s updates and the city between them.
The air still smelled faintly of smoke. The light on the wall pulsed once, then steadied, as if waiting for a signal.
He put the slate down and did not realize his hand was still closed.
17
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mirel. You did well for a first day.”
Professor Kiba stacked her holo-pads with careful precision, the blue light catching on the silver rings at her fingers. She adjusted her glasses, their lenses flickering with the classroom’s projection feed.
“Imperial Kylix is a remarkable man,” she added with a small smile. “You should be proud.”
Mirel nodded, too tightly. His throat felt scraped raw, hoarse from effort. He had used his voice more in one day than he usually did in a week.
Professor Kiba paused, considering him. “Your speaking will come easier with time,” she said. “Speech is a matter of trust. The more you trust others, and yourself, the more it will return.”
He didn’t answer. He only nodded again, watching as she gathered her things and left. The door shut behind her with a soft hiss.
He sat very still. The room’s buzz sharpened until it felt like a blade, seventeen counts between the projector’s faint ticks, the same wrong rhythm Yure had shown on the kitchen screen.Seventeen. Light.Seventeen. Dark. The number paced inside his head like a thing with teeth. He swallowed and it scraped. Hisname lived in other mouths now. Mate. Claimed. He felt it like a brand and could not tell if the heat belonged to pride or fear.
He rubbed his palms together until they burned. The heat held for a breath. Then it fled. The cold returned cleaner, smarter, as if the room had learned him. The distance between desk and door looked long as a street. He didn’t move. Stillness had been safety once. Stillness made you invisible. That was not true here. Here even his silence drew light.
The room felt too large once she was gone. The light hummed against empty seats. He sat still for a moment, aware of every sound, the pulse in his throat, the hum of the projector, the scrape of his breath. So much had happened in such a short time. Meeting his mother, his brother, being claimed by Kylix, being seen by everyone on Helion.
Mirel reached for his bag but his hand hesitated. A shiver ran through him, and for a second he thought the air itself had turned colder. He blinked it away, rubbing his palms together until they warmed. He needed air. Space. Somewhere quiet.
The air thinned. He couldn’t breathe past it. Frost crept over the walls, slow at first, then fast, crawling toward the window. It gathered like breath on glass, forming a shape he refused to wait for. The frost had once given him answers when he first arrived on Helion, showing him how Cyprian was his brother and how his mother stayed in the Hospital for the Living Dead. Mirel shivered at the name. Like so many things on Helion, the name carried dread.
The ice had shown him truths he never wanted. Now it came only as reflection, emotion spilling from him until the room turned cold, the shapes half-formed and ghostlike, the kind that vanished if you looked too long.
Frost thickened near the projector lens, catching light like a mirror desperate to show him something. For an instant he saw the shapes of hands, or faces, pressed from the other side ofthe glass. He reached out, fingertips grazing the cold. The image shattered to mist, and the thrum of the room rushed back, loud and ordinary.
Mirel stood, slung the bag over his shoulder, and stepped into the corridor. Conversations stilled as he passed. A few students looked up from their holos.
“Congratulations. On the claiming.” One of them even smiled awkwardly.
Mirel’s stomach twisted. He nodded, unable to answer, and walked faster toward the exit.
Outside, the city wind bit sharper than the classroom air. Vandor waited at the curb beside the hover car, steam curling from his breath.
“Rough first day?” he asked.
Mirel gripped the strap of his bag tighter. The air felt too thin. His heart thudded once, then again, hard enough that he could feel it in his throat. The urge built before he could stop it, unsteady and raw, born of exhaustion more than courage. “I… I need to go to the g-graveyard.”
Vandor froze mid-motion. “The graveyard?”
Mirel nodded, eyes fixed on the pavement. Just saying the word made his chest tighten. He wanted to see Geron, to feel the quiet again, to hide where no one could reach him. The world outside felt too loud, too bright. “Just… for a moment,” he said, voice breaking on the last word.
