Page 62 of Burning Ice
Vandor exhaled through his nose. “You know Kylix will kill me if he finds out where I took you.”
“I w-won’t tell him.”
“Yeah, that’s what they all say.” Vandor slid into the driver’s seat and nodded toward the passenger side. “Get in. We’ll talk inside.”
The hover car sealed around them, shutting out the noise of the street. A faint hum filled the air as the engine idled. He glanced over. “Fine. Just shortly.”
He pulled a bottle of water from the console and passed it over. “Drink. You sound like sandpaper.”
Mirel unscrewed the cap, took a few sips, and felt his throat loosen. The coolness smoothed the burn enough to let air move again. “Thanks,” he murmured.
Vandor thumbed a quick message on his multislate, then started the engine. The hover car rose from the curb and slid through the night. City light washed across the glass, gold, then dimmer, then gone as they left the center behind. The buildings thinned, streets turning to shadow.
The window caught the city in slices of gold. Kylix’s voice still lived somewhere under his ribs, the low command that made his pulse obey. He pressed his thumb to his throat as if he could quiet it. Helion blurred past, light falling away to black glass and fog. He wondered if anyone else ever looked at the city and felt caged by its shine.
After a few minutes Vandor spoke again. “You don’t have to go back there. You’ve got people now. A home.”
Mirel kept his gaze on the window. “I… I don’t know what that means.”
Vandor didn’t answer right away. His eyes flicked from the road to Mirel’s reflection in the glass, a quiet understanding settling between them.
Tires hummed over the guide rails. “Wh-what do you study?” Mirel found himself asking.
Vandor glanced over, surprised. “Tactical psychology. How people break, how they hold together. Kylix thinks it makes me useful.” He hesitated, eyes flicking back to the road. “Guess it’s why he picked me up in the first place.”
“It d-does.” The words came easier than he expected.
“Didn’t think you’d talk to me.”
“Ne-neither did I.” Mirel’s mouth twitched into almost a smile.
For a moment the quiet between them felt lighter. Mirel watched the lines of Vandor’s calm face in the dashlight. He realized, almost with surprise, that he trusted him, and wondered briefly if the same blood that made Kylix what he was might run quietly in this man too.
As they headed out, the city fell away behind them. Ahead, the road bled into fog, and the first edge of frost began to show on the glass.
The fence rose from the mist, the sound of the wind muffled to a low hum as if the world held its breath. The air carried the taste of metal, sharp on the tongue, and faint movements flickered at the edge of sight like ghost shadows slipping between stones. Frost clung to each spike, glowing dull gold as they passed. The light had changed. Though still afternoon, it had already begun to darken, the sky bruised with snow. Vandor guided the car down behind a ruined workshop and cut the engine. Silence followed, wind over stone, water shifting beneath ice.
Vandor let out a low whistle, eyes narrowing toward the horizon. “Holy shit,” he muttered, voice almost a whisper in the cold. “This place is creepy.”
The gate sagged open as if tired of guarding the dead. Frost-slick grass bowed under their steps. The stones leaned, names erased by seasons. Somewhere a bottle rolled until it found its hollow.
Mirel stared at the endless graves ahead of them. “Not creepy. Home.”
He could still map it in the dark. The split column that hid a tin of matches, the drain grate that never froze, the angel missing a hand that pointed, always, to a dry ledge under the eaves. He had taught his feet where not to step, which stones rang, which cracked. He had learned the crows’ hours. Dawn meant bread crates left out too long behind the parish door. Night meant rats. He had never feared rats. He feared men whose steps made others smaller.
They moved deeper between stones. Sound thinned to breath and frost-crack. Mirel’s steps found the old path by instinct, boots sinking into thawed mud. The air trembled, a faint static crawling across his skin as if the dead still whispered beneath the frost. Vandor’s lamp painted half his face in bronze, the other half in shadow.
Vandor walked beside him. “You really lived here?”
Mirel nodded. “Here it was quiet.”
Vandor’s breath came out white. “Quiet’s worth more than comfort sometimes.”
They reached the place where the wall had collapsed, where once a tarp made a roof. The tarp was gone, the wall flattened by boots. Still, his body remembered the corner that had sheltered him. His spine curved into it without thought.
Vandor stopped close, watching him. “It’s worse than I pictured.”
Mirel’s fingers trembled as he crouched. “It was mine.”
