Page 76 of Burning Ice
The crowd roared.
“Here comes the show.” Kylix trailed his fingertips under Mirel’s shirt, skidding over bare skin. Milanov’s speech rolled above them, full of values and order.
When he finished, Daven Caelith walked into the arena.
“Daven Caelith!” they called.
“Long live the dead!”
He emerged tall and lean, with storm-grey eyes that seemed to hold their own weather. Pale blond hair streaked with silver lifted in the currents he commanded, his white uniform threaded with gold that caught each gust.
The captive begged once, raw and too loud now that the stands had gone quiet. Behind him, Kylix chuckled hoarsely in Mirel’s ear, blowing heat across his skin.
The drums began, a slow, relentless rhythm. Outside, both men faced each other across the sand.
Mirel pressed his palm flat to the pane. Frost spread from his hand in thin veins, catching the last outline of the prisoner standing alone.
The frost kept moving after he stopped touching it. It crawled in threads across the glass, thin as veins, tracing the prisoner’s shape until the outline looked alive. Breath fogged the surface from inside the booth, caught between heat and cold, the worldmirrored in pale and gold. Beneath his palm the glass throbbed faintly, as if it had learned to pulse with him.
Below, the crowd hushed. The hush was never silent, it carried the creak of seats, the intake of air, the rustle of ten thousand hearts waiting to be told what to feel. Sound pressed through the glass and into his chest. He could taste it. Metal. Dust. Salt from his own skin.
Kylix’s hand slid along the back of his neck. The touch steadied him even as it broke him open. Heat rolled through the contact, a command disguised as calm. The scent of the opium haze sweetened around them, heavy as fruit gone overripe. Mirel tried to breathe through it and felt the world tilt.
The prisoner lifted his head. Even from this height Mirel saw the tremor in the man’s knees, the dull gleam of sweat under the arena lights. He might have been any street soul pulled from the gutter and dressed in purple for spectacle. For a heartbeat, their eyes met across the sand. The man’s mouth moved in prayer or curse. Frost bloomed brighter where Mirel’s fingers pressed.
“Watch,” Kylix said. His voice was quiet, not kind. “Every Aureate is a mirror. The crowd will see what they are. You will see what you are.”
Mirel’s breath hit the glass again. The frost filmed thicker, trapping the prisoner’s reflection until it looked like ice remembering him. The crowd began to chant. A low tide of sound rolled over them, rhythmic and cruel, each syllable landing like a blow.
When the first flame rose from Daven’s hand, the noise turned holy. Air folded inward, swirling until it carried its own voice. The prisoner screamed. Mirel flinched. The frost cracked beneath his palm, a faint snapping sound that echoed louder in his bones than the crowd below.
He felt Kylix’s mouth at his ear, speaking low. “Feel it. The beauty in the moment before something dies.”
Mirel wanted to turn away but could not. The glass had become a lens and a wall at once. Heat swelled on one side, cold on the other, the two elements fighting for space. Every breath he took came back hotter, thicker, full of the scent of smoke. His vision shimmered until it seemed that fire was burning through the ice itself.
Daven’s figure blurred, surrounded by wind. The captive rose in that invisible grip, limbs flailing, mouth wide in a sound lost to the roar. The frost on the glass trembled like skin under touch. For a moment it looked as if the prisoner’s soul had pressed through to the other side.
Mirel’s knees weakened. His hand slipped but Kylix caught him. “Stay.” The command was quiet, final. Mirel obeyed.
The body dropped. Sand burst upward, golden and red. The glass rattled once. The frost fractured into a hundred tiny mirrors, each holding the same picture of death, each one glittering like prayer.
The frost kept its ghosts. Each tiny mirror still showed the man suspended, eyes wide, mouth caught open. When Mirel blinked, the faces blinked too. It was like staring into a thousand versions of the same ending. The glass had learned memory, the cold refused to forget.
A low vibration moved through the booth floor, the hum of engines below the sand. The sound climbed his legs and lodged behind his ribs. He felt it where heartbeat should have been. The crowd began to cheer again, wild and bright, their delight rolling upward in waves that cracked against the glass.
Kylix’s breath touched the side of his throat. The smell of smoke mixed with fruit and metal. “You see?” he murmured. “This is why we exist. To make them believe there’s meaning in cruelty.”
Mirel tried to answer, but the words stuck. The opium haze pressed closer, turning every inhale into syrup. His reflectionwavered in the frost, mouth parted, eyes too bright. The noise outside folded back into rhythm, the same three syllables rising and falling like tide:
Daven. Daven. Daven.
Heat gathered behind him again, deliberate and patient. Kylix’s chest met his back, steady as the hum beneath their feet. Mirel’s pulse stuttered, caught between wanting to escape and wanting to lean into the warmth. The air itself seemed to breathe with them, thin and hot.
When Kylix’s fingers brushed the inside of his wrist, Mirel shivered. The touch found the vein that still raced, the one that tied him to the living world. For a heartbeat he forgot the crowd, the sand, the noise. All that existed was the heat behind him and the frost in front of him, each one waiting to see which would give first.
Then Kylix reached for the glass and lifted it to Mirel’s mouth. “This might take a while. After all, little Daven has never done this before.” He brushed his free hand over Mirel’s groin.
“Don’t.” Mirel tried to push him away, but Kylix caught his wrist and pressed it over his erection.
