Chapter Nine #2
Frozen pressure locks me in place, my feet lifting an inch from the floor as ice cages me against stone without a single touch.
Frost races across my arms and throat in jagged veins, climbing fast enough that panic finally breaks free, the cold gnawing into nerves with a promise it doesn’t bother to hide.
This isn’t restraint meant to frighten.
It’s power, reminding me exactly how fragile I am if he chooses to stop holding back.
I stay still, unbroken, and that refusal unsettles him more than any scream ever could. I stare him down even as the cold eats into me, even as my lungs protest each shallow breath, even as fear tries to claw its way past the stubborn defiance I’ve wrapped around myself like armor.
“Do it!” The words scrape out of me, rough and steady despite the trembling starting in my limbs. “Kill me. I’m dead either way, aren’t I? At least this way, I go out knowing I didn’t let you see… me… break!”
His eyes widen fractionally. It’s not shock, it is something deeper—recognition, maybe. Like I’ve said something that cuts through the rage and hits whatever’s left of the man beneath the monster.
The ice fractures. Cracks running through glassy structures hold me prisoner until they shatter completely, and I slump against the wall, gasping.
My skin burns where the frost touched, angry red marks already blooming into patterns that will probably scar, but I’m breathing and conscious, and that’s more than I expected sixty seconds ago.
He backs away like I’ve burned him instead of the reverse.
One step, then another, putting distance between us while something dangerous crosses his expression.
Not rage this time. Something worse. Something that looks uncomfortably close to hunger mixed with confusion mixed with the desperate need to understand what the fuck just happened between us.
“Raze,” he says, taking another step back, like he doesn’t trust what he’s saying. “My name is Raze.”
The admission lands softer than expected, almost tentative, like he’s offering something fragile instead of basic information.
Swallowing heavily, I relax my tense and sore shoulders and take a small step toward him.
“Roxy.” I match his tone despite the trembling in my hands, despite the burn of frost marks on my skin.
“Since we’re apparently doing introductions after a month of you treating me like property instead of a person. ”
He moves before I can track the motion, closing the distance between us in two long strides that bring him close enough that I feel the cold radiating off him, his chest rising and falling with breaths that appear harder than they should be for someone who seems more myth than man.
His hand lifts, hesitates in the space between us, then touches my shoulder where frost burned through fabric to skin beneath.
No ice forms.
No heat either.
Just his hand on my shoulder, skin-to-skin contact that sends electricity arcing through my nervous system in ways that have nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with proximity, with the sudden awareness that he’s close.
Close enough that I could reach up and touch the scar running from his scalp to his eyebrow, close enough that the space between us has become dangerous for entirely different reasons.
There is chemistry—raw and undeniable.
Absolutely fucking terrifying in its intensity.
His pupils dilate further as he stares at me, dragon and man warring behind eyes that can’t seem to decide if they want to freeze me solid or pull me closer. His breathing roughens, matching mine, and I watch his gaze drop to my mouth for a fraction of a second before snapping back up.
“This is…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but I hear what he’s not saying in the way his hand tightens slightly on my shoulder. Impossible… complicated… risky.
All words that should make me step back, put distance between us, remember that he’s my captor, I’m his prisoner, and nothing about this situation allows for whatever is crackling in the air between us.
But I don’t step back.
I lift my chin, holding his gaze, and something in my chest tightens at the recognition that he’s fighting this just as hard as I am.
That whatever is happening isn’t one-sided, isn’t just me being attracted to my own personal monster.
It’s mutual, terrifying, and neither of us knows what to do with it.
“You should go.” My voice comes out rougher than intended, scraped raw from cold or from the effort of not reaching up to touch his face. “Before one of us tries to kill the other. I don’t have ice magic, but I do have a mean right hook.”
He stares at me for another long moment, hand still on my shoulder, body close enough that I can count his heartbeats in the pulse visible at his throat. Then he pulls away abruptly, backing toward the door as though I’ve suddenly become more dangerous than anything he’s faced in centuries.
“The flame.” The words emerge strangled, desperate. “When you touched it… when you’re near me… it burns brighter.”
“I know.”
“I don’t understand why.”
“Neither do I.”
The admission hangs between us, honest, raw, and utterly insufficient to explain what just happened, what’s still happening, and what will probably keep happening until someone decides where this goes.
He reaches the door, hand on the handle, and pauses without looking back. “Ivy will be up to treat those frost burns. Do not refuse her help. Do you understand me?”
I roll my eyes, letting out a snort. “Anyone ever tell you you’re super bossy?”
“Do. You. Understand. Me?”
A small smirk crosses my lips, knowing I get under that slightly scaly skin of his. “Yes, sir!” I mock, giving him a two-fingered salute.
A low growl reverbs from his chest, sounding more monster than man, then he’s gone, door slamming shut with enough force to rattle the frame, lock engaging with sounds that remind me I’m still trapped here despite the chemistry that just exploded between us like a bomb nobody saw coming.
Huffing, I sink onto the bed, my legs giving out as adrenaline crashes and everything that just happened hits me in one overwhelming wave.
My shoulders ache where I hit the wall. My skin burns where frost touched it, and beneath all of it, my body still hums with the memory of his hand on my shoulder, the heat in his eyes, the way the space between us felt charged with something neither of us wanted to name.
Deadly
This man is absolutely deadly.
And I’m apparently reckless enough to want him anyway.
A gentle knock comes ten minutes later, soft, almost apologetic. I don’t bother getting up to answer it. The lock disengages from the outside, and Ivy slips in, her bark-textured hands already glowing with that green light that promises healing without question.
She doesn’t say anything at first. Just crosses to where I’m sitting, sets down a small basket of supplies, and begins examining the frost burns with clinical efficiency that suggests she’s done this before, has treated injuries inflicted by the president’s ice on beings who pushed him too far.
“You’re so brave,” she says finally, her voice carrying that deep resonance of ancient forests as she spreads cooling salve over the worst of the burns. “Foolish, but brave. Most people don’t survive confronting Raze when he’s that angry.”
“Most people probably have better survival instincts than I do.”
A faint smile curves her lips, barely there, but present.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps you understand something the rest of us are still figuring out.” She works in silence for another moment before adding, “The flame hasn’t burned that bright in decades.
Not since before the curse took full hold.
Whatever you are to him, it’s changing things.
Shifting patterns that have been locked in place for longer than most civilizations have existed. ”
I want to ask what that means, to demand answers about flames, curses, and why touching him felt like touching lightning, but exhaustion steals my voice before I can form the questions.
Ivy finishes treating the burns, wraps my arms in soft bandages that smell faintly of herbs and earth, then she rises to leave.
She pauses at the door, glancing back with eyes that see too much. “He hasn’t told any outsiders his name in over a century,” she says quietly. “Whatever’s happening between you… it matters. More than either of you are ready to accept.”
Then she’s gone, leaving me alone with bandaged arms, aching shoulders, and the terrifying knowledge that I possibly made everything exponentially more complicated by refusing to break when any sane person would have.
The flame in the dome, a few rooms away from me, surges so bright that I swear I can feel it from here, gold and crimson pulsing through stone and distance like a heartbeat matching my own.
And in the silence of my gilded cage, I finally understand what the witch’s curse really means.
True contentment.
The flame only reignites when Raze finds it.
Which apparently requires a stubborn photographer who refuses to bow, refuses to break, and refuses to pretend that the chemistry between them doesn’t exist.
This is going to end in disaster.
I can feel it right down to my bones.
But as I lay back on the bed and close my eyes against the complications gathering like storm clouds, I catch myself wondering, what would have happened if I’d reached up and touched his face instead of telling him to leave.
Would the ice have melted?
Or would we both have burned?