Chapter 38 - If Ice Could Boil
Callan
There were moments in my life I thought I was ready for.
My own death, slow and inevitable. Pain.
My father’s eventual demise. But my mother’s death was not one of them.
She stumbled forward as Magdala pushed her away, but I couldn’t touch her.
Not without freezing her instantly. And some piece of me held on to hope that she could live through this.
Instead, I helped her to the ground, careful not to touch my skin to hers.
Blood squelched between her fingers as she tried and failed to keep it from pouring down her chest. Her gurgling breaths destroyed any courage I had left as tears blurred my vision.
Not my mother.
The woman who always saw the best in me long after I had given up on myself. She had tried more than once to protect me from my father, only to endure some unknown punishment herself. My hands hovered in the air above her as I begged the gods to take me in her place.
“Please,” I whispered. “I need you.”
Her eyes fluttered, lips moving as she tried to speak. It was the same three words over and over. I knew them already. She’d told me countless times in my thirty-six years of life. “I love you.” And she mouthed them until the light left her eyes.
I pulled her tight against me, furious she didn’t freeze when my skin touched hers. All the times I’d wanted to hug her after my magic had manifested, but I’d been too terrified I’d kill her. And here I could have the entire time?
Like an elfling, I sobbed as I held her to my chest, ignoring the metallic scent of blood, the hail that continued to chip away at my fortress. The screams, the chaos. None of it mattered. I’d lost my mother, and I’d sent my Soul Tied away.
Nothing mattered at all.
I had nothing.
Nothing but the hot boiling rage that crept in around the anguish still searing my flesh.
I kissed her forehead before carefully laying her on the ice, sweeping my hand over her face to close her eyes.
Something broke inside me as I gazed into her lifeless expression, snapping open a secret hollow of hatred deep within my bones.
It had simmered there for years. Every time my father had me beaten.
Every time I’d been called a monster. Every life I took with my own two hands.
I stood, taking a deep breath and drawing the frigid winter air tight around me.
The bludgeoning sounds of hail ceased, leaving the fortress in eerie silence.
I needed every fractured sliver of winter, every scrap of my magic.
My eyes slipped closed as I stood perfectly still, listening.
Two deep breaths. I could feel Magdala’s presence through the cracks and crevices in the ice, like my fortress was whispering in my ear.
I glanced down at my mother’s face one more time.
Even in death, she was the epitome of grace.
The embodiment of everything I wished I could be.
I swallowed my grief and turned to the staircase leading up to my study.
I looked down at my hand, still shaking with anger.
I had shed my armor, but my hand...it was made of the same enchanted ice, though it moved freely like flesh and blood.
My other hand was the same, the translucence disappearing beneath my sleeves.
This was too much magic for me to contain within myself anymore.
And if I couldn’t control it, there would be nothing to stop the winter blight from destroying the entire continent.
It needed somewhere to go, something to do, something to freeze.
But first, I’d finish what I started.
The air solidified around me until fat snowflakes fell from the ceilings, a trail of frozen mist following me as I took the stairs three at a time. I wouldn’t just kill Magdala. She would feel the full manifestation of her betrayal. She would endure every frozen piece of my hatred.
I found her desperately trying to press herself through the warded threshold and failing. I’d removed her permission. I’d removed everyone’s permission but my own and the cat’s, who I hoped was hiding somewhere safe.
“Callan. Please.” She turned, slamming her back against the wall. “I...I shouldn’t have. I...I don’t know what came over me...”
I lifted my hand, pulling the snowflakes from the air and twisting them into a long, thin blade as I stepped closer. All the things I could do with this blade. I could shove it through her heart. I could spear it into her skull. I could slowly press it through the soft flesh of her neck.
“Callan.” Her voice was shrill with terror.
And I loved it.
I craved the fear in her eyes, hungered for the pain she’d endure as I thrust the blade through her shoulder.
Her shrieks settled in my core, hot and delicious as I twisted another blade from the frigid air and stabbed through her other shoulder.
This one I slid in slowly, savoring the way it caught on flesh and bone on the way in.
“Please...please,” she begged, squealing helpless cries that would do her no good.
Because my heart was as frozen as my magic.
She would suffer for what she’d done. She would suffer and die slowly.
I pulled at my magic again, this time creating a blade with a brutal jagged edge, designed to saw through bones and masticate flesh.
I had every intention of using it to remove each of her extremities one by one with agonizing slowness.
“Please,” she shrieked, her eyes wide with terror as she jerked against the two spears of ice nailing her to the wall.
“Callan.” It wasn’t Magdala’s voice this time.
The snowflakes around me froze in place, but not of my doing. Some other magic was at work, and it was powerful and warm like a gentle summer breeze. I turned.
Wrenora stood at the top step, her eyes wide, a bloody sword in her hand.
But how was she here? I’d told Cassmira to take her to the border no matter how she begged, no matter how convincing she was.
“Wren.”
She glanced around at the snowflakes as they twisted in place, the facets of each perfect crystalline structure glittering in the wisplights. She touched one with her index finger, and it melted into nothing.
She shook her head, a tear slipping over her cheek as she squeezed her eyes closed. “You don’t have to do this.”
I stepped closer, reaching for her with my frozen hands.
The sword she’d been carrying clattered to the ground.
So much warmth at her touch. The icy appearance of my flesh melted away, returning to normal as I cradled her face in my hand.
When her eyes met mine, I was mesmerized by the warmth of them, the golden threads weaving through the rich, earthy brown.
She was so much light, and warmth, and humanity.
More beautiful than any creature I’d ever seen.
My anger melted away, like new snow under a spring sun. It was her. It had always been her. My heart had been waiting for her. My magic could be balanced by her. I might not need a suppression gem or to find the rest of the frost elves if I had her. The sun and warmth to my bitter cold.
Whimpering drew my attention back to where I’d crucified Magdala to the wall, blood oozing around the spears of ice as they melted.
Wrenora grabbed my chin and turned me to face her. “This isn’t you.” She tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear, careful to avoid the ice shard crown I still wore.
“What if it is? What if this is all I am?” I asked, my voice anguished.
She squeezed her eyes closed, tears rolling over her cheeks as she shook her head.
“What if my heart is too frozen to ever thaw?”
Her gaze fell to my lips. “I refuse to believe all you’re capable of is death,” she whispered as she pressed her lips to mine, sweet and soft before she bracketed my face with her hands.
“Even Cassmira believes there’s good in you.
” She smiled weakly and stepped back. “You just have to believe there’s good in yourself.
To see what I see—what your mother saw.”
I turned back to Magdala, not wanting to face what I’d done. Magdala’s chest rose and fell with each breath she took, a grimace of pain plastered across her face. She flinched as I stepped closer, a faint whimper escaping as she tried and failed to wriggle free.
“Please, Callan. Forgive me.” Each word shook with fear as I stood over her, glaring down with the last fragments of hatred in my soul. “Please, Callan. Please. Please.”
She had betrayed me, and while I could wholeheartedly appreciate what the uprising was doing, that wasn’t why she’d killed my mother.
She’d done it out of revenge. She’d used the liberation of humans as an excuse to murder an innocent elf who’d done nothing but try to survive her tyrannical husband.
“I can’t,” I said, her eyes snapping up to my face. “You can betray me, kill me, kill my father. But my mother...”
“I didn’t...mean—”
“You slit her throat. How could you not mean to?” I leaned closer as she shrank back from me.
“In all my life, the only person I didn’t mean to kill was my betrothed, and I will see her frozen face for the rest of my life.
Will you see my mother’s? Hear her choking on her own blood?
” I growled between clenched teeth as anger burned through my words.
“Callan—”
“Will you smell her death? See her terrified eyes in your dreams? Will you hear the words she tried to speak over and over again? Because I will. I will have to remember her last moment. Reliving her death until my own.” I tried to swallow my anger, but the rage simmering in my veins burned as it flowed over my icy magic, and I curled my fingers around her neck.
She may have tried to scream, but it happened too fast. One moment she was a living, breathing elf, the next she was frozen solid. She would remain petrified in place until she melted into memory, her mouth gaping in a final plea for forgiveness I would never grant.
A warm hand slipped into mine and I turned, grabbing Wrenora against me and holding her prisoner in my arms. She clung to me, shaking as she sobbed.
For several long minutes we remained this way as I savored the summer scent of her hair, combing my fingers through her curls.
If I could stay like this for the rest of eternity, I would, but I knew Magdala was not the entirety of the uprising.
There would be more people who would come for me, and it would be even harder to explain myself with the state of my fortress.
“We have to leave,” I whispered, but she didn’t move. “I have to take you somewhere safe.”
She pushed back from me, her tear-streaked face scrunched into adorable anger. “I refuse to let you send me away again. I’m going where you’re going and that's—”
I didn’t give her a chance to finish. I yanked her against me, capturing her lips, vaguely aware of the sound of footsteps echoing from the main level below. She pushed against my chest hard and I relented, letting her shove herself from my arms, leaving a cold reminder of where she’d been.
“Callan.”
“I won’t send you away. I don’t...I don’t think I could if I wanted to.”
Her eyes glittered with more unshed tears, and my soul ached that she’d seen this side of me. She’d seen me fight before, but the ugliness of how I’d handled Magdala’s treachery was something altogether different.
More footsteps. Whoever was in my fortress was searching the rooms downstairs, and it would only be a matter of time before they found us. Thankfully I had a place we could go where no one could get to us. I took Wrenora’s hand and pulled her over the threshold.