Chapter 35 Kaelith
Chapter thirty-five
Kaelith
The tower was older than any map dared mark, carved into the cliff’s edge where the Sea of Glass began its endless hush. No sentry guarded it; no sound carried from Skadar Hold behind us. The silence was too large for words.
I hadn’t meant to bring her here. Every instinct told me distance was safer, cleaner—but the world had already begun to splinter, and I wanted one hour where the noise couldn’t reach.
Katria followed without speaking. The wind pressed her cloak against her frame, pale hair bright against the night, like a shard of sunlight the realm hadn’t yet managed to kill. I kept a pace ahead, pretending I didn’t feel her eyes trace the frostlight pulsing weakly along my gauntlet.
At the tower’s crest, the air thinned. Below, the sea lay flat and perfect—an expanse of mirrored ice catching the fractured aurora above. Lines of red and white streaked the horizon, trembling like a heartbeat under glass.
She drew a breath. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s dying,” I said.
Her gaze flicked toward me, but I didn’t meet it. I watched the horizon instead—the place where light met ice, and both began to break. “When the Veil weakens, even beauty decays slower than truth.”
She moved closer until her reflection joined mine in the ice window. “And what truth is that?”
“That all things warm end here.”
A pause. Then softly: “I think you’re wrong.”
The words struck harder than they should have. I turned my head at last. She stood with her hands resting on the stone rim, eyes catching the aurora’s crimson threads. No fear, only quiet defiance.
Something in my chest drew tight. I forced a breath through it. “You came here as a sacrifice,” I started.
“And now?” she whispered when I didn’t continue.
I hesitated. The wind carried her scent—wild herbs and ash, the memory of her touch against my armor. I wanted to step back, but my body didn’t listen.
“Now,” I said, voice rougher than I meant, “the gods themselves would bleed before I let them take you again.”
The air between us changed. Her breath caught; mine refused to leave. The frostlight along the wall flared once, as though the tower had exhaled with us.
She looked away first, down to the Sea of Glass, where faint cracks shimmered under the surface. “The sky looks like it’s on fire.”
“It is,” I murmured. “The Veil’s bleeding.”
Another silence settled—fragile, shimmering, the kind of stillness that makes a man aware of every inch of himself. Her hair stirred against her cheek, and I almost reached to brush it away before memory stopped me: the heat of her lips, the sound she made when my control faltered.
I stepped back, flexing my gloved hand to hide its tremor.
She didn’t move. “You don’t have to protect me from everything, Kaelith.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
Because I can’t stop caring. Because the moment I stop, the frost will.
I didn’t say it. I only looked back to the sea and tried to steady my breathing. The aurora’s light danced in the ice below, and for a heartbeat it looked like fire trapped beneath the world.
“Do you ever miss it?” she asked quietly.
“Miss what?” I breathed, the words coming out too tender. I cleared my throat.
“Feeling warm.”
The question broke something small and unguarded inside me. I turned to her fully then, unable to keep the distance any longer.
Her eyes lifted to meet mine, wide, searching, steady. The aurora light caught in them—gold turned to embers.
My throat worked before my voice did. “Every day.”
Her lips parted, a breath too sharp, too human. The kind of breath that could undo kingdoms. The kind that made me want to let it.
Outside, the Sea of Glass groaned—a long, low crack running through the ice like a warning.
I told myself it was only the wind that trembled, not my hands.
The wind rose, scattering fine snow across the stone. It hissed along the railing like breath through teeth.Katria didn’t flinch; she only leaned forward a little, hair sweeping against the fur lining of her cloak. Light from the aurora threaded through it—gold, then red, then white again.
I wanted to tell her to step back. I wanted not to care if she fell.
Instead, I said, “You shouldn’t be out here this long. The cold seeps into bone before you realize it.”
She glanced sideways, half a smile ghosting her mouth. “And yet you stay.”
“I’m fae. We’re built for it.”
Her gaze traveled over me once—gauntlets, pauldrons, the dull glow that still crawled along my wrist. “You say that as if it’s a blessing.”
“It was meant to be.” My words came slower than I intended. “Until I realized blessings can frostbite too.”
For a while, neither of us said any more. The sky pulsed crimson again, thin fractures webbing across the Sea of Glass below. I could feel them—each crack a faint vibration in my chest, in the runes along my armor. The world was breaking with the same rhythm as my restraint.
She turned to face me fully, the wind tugging her cloak open just enough that I caught the shimmer of pale fabric beneath. I looked away too late.
“Kaelith.” My name from her lips still felt dangerous. “Do you ever get tired of pretending you don’t feel anything?”
The question landed where armor couldn’t reach. “Feeling,” I said, “is what kills men like me.”
“Then you’re dying already.”
I laughed once, too quietly. The sound startled us both. “You should fear me more.”
“I don’t.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
“Maybe.” She stepped closer, until her breath mingled with mine in the cold. “But you don’t sound like you believe that.”
The air between us thinned. I could see the pulse at her throat, the small hitch of her chest when she breathed in. My gloved hand lifted of its own accord before stopping an inch from her shoulder. The leather creaked faintly; frostlight flickered along my knuckles.
“Kaelith,” she whispered, “you’re shaking.”
I swallowed. “You should go inside.”
Her eyes searched mine. “You mean we should.”
The words struck with a warmth I hadn’t earned. I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t move. The control I’d built my life on narrowed to a single breath that refused to leave my lungs.
A low rumble rolled through the cliffs—distant thunder, though there were no storms in Winter. The Sea of Glass flared brighter, a wide vein of white racing toward the shore.
Her fingers brushed mine—bare skin against cold leather. The contact was nothing, a mistake of distance, yet it seared straight through me.
I drew a sharp breath, and the frostlight along the wall leapt in answer.
She didn’t pull away. “You don’t have to be alone in this.”
“I do,” I said, and the lie scraped raw in my throat.
She tilted her head, studying me. “Then why are you trembling?”
Because you make the world move. Because I don’t know how to stop.
The words stayed inside me, unspoken and burning.
Below, the Sea of Glass groaned again. The sound echoed through the tower like a heartbeat cracking open.
I told myself to move first—to turn away before the silence became something neither of us could name.I didn’t.
The frostlight across the railing throbbed, dimming, brightening again. Every flare matched the pulse I could feel in my own wrist. The tower breathed with me.
Katria’s eyes caught the reflection of the sea below—glints of red fire and white fracture curling inside them. She looked like the first sunrise Winter had ever seen. I hated that I thought it. I hated that I couldn’t stop.
“Kaelith,” she said softly, “what are you afraid will happen if you stop fighting everything?”
“That I’ll destroy it.”
“What?”
“All of it. You. Me. This.” I gestured at the light trembling across the ice. “You don’t understand what happens when a Frostbound loses control.”
“Then show me,” she said.
The words stole what little air the tower had left. Her tone wasn’t challenge—it was something quieter, almost mercy.
I closed the distance before I thought better of it. My hand rose again, bare now, glove forgotten somewhere between us. I stopped just shy of her cheek. Heat coiled at the edge of my palm, the kind that could crack stone.
Her breath brushed my wrist. “I don’t believe you’d hurt me.”
“You should.”
“I don’t.”
The sky outside trembled. A long fissure of light stretched across the aurora, bleeding down toward the horizon. The Sea of Glass moaned in answer. I should have stepped back. I should have frozen every emotion where it stood.
Instead, I let the warmth reach her skin. It was faint, only a whisper, but she closed her eyes as if the touch burned sweet.
The frostlight leapt in a single bright arc along the wall. Cracks radiated outward, glowing. The sound was not thunder but something more intimate—the sound of a realm unmaking itself, quiet and inevitable.
I drew my hand away like a man waking from a dream. The air between us steamed; her breath came quick and visible.
“I told you,” I managed, voice unsteady. “I destroy what I touch.”
She opened her eyes. “Maybe you just thaw it.”
That small, impossible smile nearly undid me. For a moment the ache in my chest wasn’t cold at all—it was unbearable heat.
Then the tower shuddered. Ice split across the floor, sending lines of light crawling up the walls. The Sea of Glass below erupted in a long, echoing crack that went on and on, the sound of a continent breaking apart.
Katria turned toward the noise, but I couldn’t look away from her. The world was ending, and all I could see was the shape of her in the red light.
A rush of wind slammed through the tower, and instinct moved before reason. I caught her by the waist, pulling her against me as the first shards of ice rained down from the ceiling. She gasped—half shock, half something else—and for a single heartbeat she didn’t resist.
Her palms pressed flat to my chest. Through the layers of armor, I could feel the echo of her pulse against mine, impossibly fast, impossibly alive.
I breathed her in. The air smelled of snow and storm and the faintest trace of warmth that didn’t belong to Winter at all.