Chapter 17
ELARA
Freeze.
Freeze.
Freeze.
The word wasn’t mine.
It wasn’t even a thought. It was a command, pressed into the soft part of my skull like a thumb digging into rot.
And then the first scream wasn’t mine either.
It still tore out of my throat.
It ripped through the corridor with a force that made the torches gutter, made voices choke off mid-syllable, made the mountain itself hesitate like it had just heard a name it wasn’t supposed to remember.
The heat collapsed inward.
The cold surged out.
Everything froze.
Not in a graceful bloom. Not in a sacred rite. Not in anything that resembled mercy.
Firelight snapped into stillness mid-flicker.
The molten river beneath the glass floor seized so violently it cracked like bone, jagged fractures racing outward in lightning-shaped veins.
Soldiers barely had time to move before frost swallowed them whole, climbing greaves and gauntlets, sealing armor to skin, locking bodies into place exactly as they were.
Mouths open. Eyes wide. Hands half-raised. Mid-prayer. Mid-laugh. Mid-command. Their faces looked wrong when the world stopped around them, like masks caught slipping. I staggered forward.
My breath tore out in white clouds, my pulse roaring so loud it sounded like war drums in my ears. For half a heartbeat, I thought I might collapse, thought the cold had finally taken more than I could give.
Then my body kept moving.
I did not tell it to.
I didn’t even want to.
Stop, I tried to think. Stop. Please?—
A laugh crawled through my skull, small and wet and wrong.
No.
The voice was a girl’s voice.
They made you kneel. They made you fight. They made you watch.
My feet slid across the obsidian like the floor belonged to me. Ice raced ahead of my steps, blooming across stone and iron and silk tapestries as if it couldn’t wait to arrive. It didn’t form the way Aeliana’s frostflowers used to. That ice had been delicate. Reverent. Beautiful.
This was not. This was a disease. This was something hungry.
Soldiers snapped into motion, disciplined even in terror. Ashenveil didn’t break formation. They moved like one organism, shields locking together, flame sigils flaring across armor as fire casters surged forward.
Heat built in the air.
A wall.
A threat.
A promise.
I walked straight into it.
Frost tore through it like glass, ripping the spell apart before it could finish forming. The soldiers at the front skidded backward as the floor betrayed them, boots losing traction, bodies colliding hard enough to knock breath from lungs.
One Talon lunged anyway, weapon aimed for my throat.
I didn’t even see him.
My body turned.
Ice snapped up between us and caught the blade mid-swing. Metal shrieked as it contracted, then split apart in his hands. He stared down at the broken hilt like his brain couldn’t catch up to the new rules.
Then the frost climbed his wrists.
Sealed his fingers.
He tried to scream.
The cold swallowed it.
Good, the voice murmured, pleased, like a child petting a cat too hard.
Freeze his mouth. He called you a liar. Freeze it shut.
“No,” I whispered.
It came out thin.
Pathetic.
Like the sound of someone begging a storm to be polite.
My hand lifted again.
Not because I chose to.
Because something inside me wanted it.
The corridor answered.
Frost erupted outward, racing along walls and ceiling, tearing down banners in brittle sheets. Doors sealed themselves under sudden layers of ice, locks snapping, hinges screaming as the cold cinched them tight.
Escape routes collapsed.
Retreat vanished.
I wasn’t trapping myself in here.
I was trapping them.
Horns sounded somewhere above, low and urgent, their vibrations traveling through the mountain and into my bones. Footsteps thundered in response. Orders echoed, edged with disbelief.
Dragonfire roared in the distance.
The sound should have slowed me.
Instead the ice thickened, clinging to my skin like something newly grown there, wrapping my limbs in strength that was not mine.
They tried again.
A formation of Talons dropped into the corridor ahead of me, armor gleaming with ember-gold sigils. Their commander shouted for containment, for coordinated strikes, for discipline.
Containment.
The word hit my ribs like a knife.
The voice inside me went very, very quiet. Then it whispered, almost lovingly.
Containment is what they did to me.
My stomach turned. My throat tightened. My vision narrowed until all I could see was the next body in front of me. I reached them in seconds. The first Talon swung.
His sword never made contact.
Frost surged up his arm and over his shoulder, sealing him to the wall with a sound like wet cloth ripping. His scream cut off mid-note when ice poured into his mouth like it was being fed.
The second tried to flank me. I pivoted, and the floor beneath him iced instantly. Stone shattered under sudden frost. His footing vanished. He went down hard. The cold went over him like a blanket.
Not a comforting one.
A burial.
The third landed a blow. His gauntlet struck my ribs with enough force to stagger me. Heat flared painfully against the cold coating my skin. Pain sparked. So did rage. And the voice inside me laughed.
Yes.
That’s it.
Hurt them back.
The pressure beneath my sternum surged, furious and delighted, and the ice answered with violence.
It burst outward from my body in a radial shockwave that slammed into the Talons and hurled them backward like broken dolls. Armor cracked. Stone split. One of them hit the wall hard enough to leave a spiderweb of fractures behind him before the ice sealed him into the cracks.
I did not stop.
I moved through the corridors like a storm given flesh.
Breath steady.
Eyes dead.
Hands lifted.
And the mountain screamed around me, fire vents flaring hotter, wards pulsing brighter, stone warming beneath my boots in frantic attempts to melt what I was doing.
The ice didn’t melt.
It adapted.
It crawled deeper into the seams and cracks like it had been born there.
Where Ashenveil burned, I froze.
Where it tried to erase, I preserved.
Someone grabbed my arm.
A high-ranking Talon, sigils burning bright along his armor. His grip was firm and practiced. Still trying to think instead of react.
“Stop!” he shouted. “You’ll doom us all!”
I turned slowly.
His hand was still on me.
The voice in my head breathed, almost gentle.
Make him keep holding you.
Ice wrapped his wrist in an instant.
Climbed.
His scream echoed down the corridor as the cold bit into bone and split the metal around it with a sound like glass snapping.
He fell to his knees.
His eyes rolled wild.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
My voice wasn’t mine anymore.
It carried weight.
Command.
Something royal and rotten.
“Who—” he gasped.
I tightened my grip.
Frost bloomed along his collarbone.
Break him.
He would’ve broken you.
“Rhydian,” I said.
The name cracked something open inside me.
Love surged.
Rage followed.
The cold responded to both.
“The Warden Lord—he was taken below! Inner vaults! Please!”
Please.
That word meant nothing to me now.
The voice inside me whispered sweetly:
No one said please for me.
I leaned closer.
“Begging won’t release you,” I said softly.
Terror flooded his face.
I released him.
He struck the frozen wall with a dull, brittle sound, armor fused to stone. His eyes stayed open, watching me pass, watching the way the ice didn’t even hesitate anymore.
Down.
The pull beneath my ribs tightened, not pain.
Direction.
We find him.
The thought slid through me like a truth I didn’t remember agreeing to.
I followed it.
I sank deeper into the mountain’s spine, through narrow passages where the air pressed thick with heat and wards hummed louder beneath the stone. Ashenveil tried to wake. Tried to fight. Tried to remember itself.
Too late.
The lower vaults waited, buried deep enough that even Ashenveil spoke of them like curses.
Then I felt him. Not a sound. Not a sight.
A wrongness.
My chest tightened, the pull beneath my ribs flaring into something insistent that stole my breath.
Rhydian.
I broke into a run.
The corridor opened into a wide chamber reinforced with bands of heat-tempered iron and layered wards pulsing angrily as I crossed the threshold.
Chains hung from the ceiling like ribs.
And there he was, unconscious. Beaten. Bound at the center.
Shackles glowed at his wrists and ankles, heat pressed close enough to leave his skin damp, his breath shallow but controlled. His head was bowed.
But his jaw…
His jaw locked in stubborn defiance, the last thing in the world he still owned.
For a heartbeat, I couldn’t move.
The world narrowed to him.
Then something inside me snapped cleanly in two.
Ice erupted.
It screamed through the chamber like an animal being skinned alive, racing up chains and walls, devouring wards in a shriek of cracking metal and shattering sigils. Heat flared in protest and died.
Iron split.
Stone screamed.
The floor froze solid beneath my feet, frost blooming outward in jagged patterns that climbed the walls and ceiling in seconds.
Rhydian’s head snapped up.
“Elara,” he breathed.
Disbelief.
Relief.
Fear.
All tangled into one word.
I crossed the chamber in three strides and tore the shackles apart with my bare hands. The heat burned, searing my palms, but the cold surged harder, swallowing pain and leaving only numb certainty behind.
He sagged forward.
And I caught him.
Alive.
Warm.
Real.
My vision blurred.
“I’ve got you,” I said.
“Stop,” Rhydian rasped, hands gripping my wrists, tight despite his exhaustion. “Elara, you’re freezing the city.”
I laughed.
It came out wrong.
Too broken.
“I can’t stop.”
And the voice inside me whispered, delighted:
Good.
Boots thundered in the corridor outside the vault.
Heat flared.
Soldiers regrouped.
The mountain trembled under the strain of opposing forces.
Fire and ice.
Law and theft.
I turned, Rhydian still in my grip, and lifted my hand.
The corridor froze solid from end to end, walls sealing inward, air crystallizing into a barrier of jagged frost that swallowed sound and motion alike.
The last thing I heard was a scream cut off mid-syllable.
I pulled Rhydian close and turned away.
Up.
Out.
They don’t get him.
The thought wasn’t mine.
It was hers.
And it was vicious.
We moved through Ashenveil as something it would never forget.
Ice crawled ahead of us, sealing doors, collapsing passages, freezing soldiers where they stood like statues of their own bad decisions. Firelight died behind us one torch at a time, until the city’s glow became a memory smothered under white.
Rhydian’s breath hitched against my shoulder.
“Elara,” he whispered again, like if he said it enough times it would bring me back.
But I wasn’t sure I was still in here.
Not fully.
The voice inside my head sighed, almost dreamy.
Freeze it all.
Make them remember.
And the cold surged again, eager and merciless, like it was finally doing what it was made for.
Frozen death does not release.
It keeps.
It holds.
It remembers.
And now…
So would they.