Chapter 35 Kaelith #2
“I told you to stay away from me,” I said, too low.
“I stopped listening,” she answered.
The Sea of Glass roared beneath us, a sheet of light breaking open, the aurora spilling red and white fire across the horizon. The sky cracked wider—no sound, only brilliance.
And I … held her tighter.
The tower didn’t stop moving. It swayed, a heartbeat behind the Sea of Glass below. Every pulse of light from the sky struck through stone and bone alike. My armor thrummed; the runes along my wrists burned cold.
Katria stood in the middle of it, steady as the pillar behind her, hair torn loose, eyes full of that impossible defiance. I should have sent her inside—should have frozen the doorway shut and left her safe behind it.But I couldn’t.
“Kaelith,” she said over the roar, “what’s happening?”
“The Veil’s collapsing.” I could barely hear my own voice. “The Dreamstone woke too soon, and it’s using you as a conduit.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want this!”
“I know.” The admission came out raw. “But wanting stopped mattering the moment you touched it.”
A fissure of light raced up the tower wall, spilling red down the stones. It stopped a hand’s breadth from her shoulder. I moved before thinking, catching her arm and pulling her close.
“Don’t move,” I said. “It tracks motion.”
She froze, breathing fast. My fingers tightened around her sleeve. I could feel her pulse—rapid, terrified—and mine answering it like an echo. The tower shook again.
Her gaze found mine, searching. “You said I was a sacrifice.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“Then what am I?”
The question hollowed me out. “A choice I can’t unmake.”
She blinked, confusion flickering into something gentler. “Is that what this is? Regret?”
“No.” I tried to release her, failed. “Regret would be easier.”
Another tremor rolled through the ground. The frost underfoot split, revealing light like molten glass. She staggered; I steadied her. Her palms pressed against my chest again, right over my heart, and everything inside me faltered.
“I’m supposed to be the cold one,” I said. “But every time you look at me, the world gets warmer.”
Her breath hitched. “Then stop looking.”
“I can’t.”
It wasn’t a declaration. It was surrender.
The wind tore through the tower mouth, scattering shards of ice. They hissed past us, slicing thin lines into my cloak. She didn’t flinch.
I caught one shard mid-air and crushed it in my fist. It melted instantly, water running down the leather and dripping from my fingertips.
Her eyes followed the motion. “You’re shaking again.”
“I told you—it’s the cold.”
“You liar.”
I almost smiled as I bit my lip. “Yes.”
A pause. The longest I’d ever let exist between us.
“Tell me the truth,” she whispered.
“The truth,” I said, “is that I stopped knowing where you end and my restraint begins.”
The aurora outside flared crimson. The crack beneath us widened with a groan that sounded like the end of an age.
“I told you what happens when I lose control,” I said.
She lifted her chin. “And what happens when you finally stop fighting it?”
“Then the frost burns.”
She took another step forward. “Show me.”
For a moment, everything inside me went still. The roar, the wind, the light—all dimmed to the space between her words and my breath. I could feel the pull of her heat even through the layers of armor. My hand rose again, fingers bare now and trembling.
When my knuckles brushed her cheek, the frostlight flared so bright it turned the world white. The Sea of Glass below shattered in a soundless flash.
She gasped, soft and sharp, and I knew then that nothing could unmake this—that my control had already failed.
I bent my head before reason could intervene. The space between us vanished. Not yet a kiss—just breath shared, the thin edge of a promise breaking.
The tower groaned. The sky split wider. The light turned gold and red at once.
And still, I didn’t move.
The tower leaned into the wind. Every stone seemed to know how close we stood.The frostlight dimmed, leaving only the crimson shimmer of the aurora bleeding through the cracks in the wall. The air smelled of cold metal and her.
She was a step away—one breath—and I could feel her warmth even through the layers of leather and steel. The space between us throbbed like a pulse the world couldn’t decide to keep or kill.
“Katria,” I said, and her name left my mouth like an oath.
She turned, face lit by the fractured sky. “You sound like you’re saying goodbye.”
“Maybe I am.” My throat tightened. “The Veil’s weakening. I can feel it in the bones of the keep.”
She lifted her chin, her gaze full of the same defiance that had me falling for her. Kael was right. “And you think I caused it,” she said.
“I know you didn’t mean to.” The words came low, almost gentle. “But you are the crack it found.”
Her gaze slid to my hands. “Then why are you still standing this close?”
I wanted to answer, but breath came before thought. The wind caught her hair and flung a strand across my glove. It clung there, fine and bright against the black leather. I traced it with my thumb before I realized what I was doing.
She didn’t move. The color in her eyes shifted with the light—gold fading to smoke, to storm.
“Kaelith,” she whispered. “You said frost burns. What does it feel like?”
“Like this,” I said.
I reached out—slowly, deliberately—and let my fingertips brush her sleeve. A spark ran up my arm, a hum through the runes etched into the metal of my vambrace. The air around us shimmered, frost melting into droplets that steamed as they fell.
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t step back. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Not yet.”
The Sea of Glass below groaned. The crack that had split it earlier widened, light spilling through the gap. The glow painted her skin in pale fire. I wanted to believe the light belonged to her.
Her voice came quiet, steady. “If this ends everything, do you still wish you’d kept your distance?”
I looked down at her, the wind stealing whatever mask I had left. “Distance never saved anything.”
She reached up then, the back of her fingers grazing my jaw. The touch was barely there, but it burned more than any flame.
The frostlight surged in answer—bright, uncontrollable—and I heard the tower sigh, the walls stretching as if they, too, wanted to move closer.
Her eyes flicked toward the light, then back to me. “You’re trembling again.”
“So are you.”
She smiled faintly.. “Then we’re both fools.”
The word lodged in my chest. I caught her wrist, gentle but unyielding, and pressed my palm against hers. The heat of her skin broke through every layer between us; I felt the magic in her pulse, quick and frantic, answering mine.
The world tilted. The cracks in the Sea flared brighter, threads of fire lacing upward through the air.
“Kaelith,” she murmured, “the sky—”
“I know.”
I didn’t look away from her. The roar outside dimmed, leaving only the sound of our breath and the slow, traitorous rhythm of two hearts finding the same beat.
Her hand slid higher along my chest until her fingers brushed the line of my throat. My pulse jumped under them.
“Tell me to stop,” she whispered.
I should have.
Instead, I closed the last inch between us—breath to breath, almost touch, the heat of her body pressing through the cold. The frostlight around us fractured, scattering across the walls like glass in sunlight.
Then the first drop of melted ice hit the floor with a hiss. The sound broke something in both of us.
The tower had gone too still. Even the wind waited.
Her face was inches from mine, every breath she drew brushing my skin. Frost melted wherever it touched as the aurora’s color spilled across her shoulders and turned her hair to pale fire.
The last thing I wanted was to move; the last thing I could do was stand still.
My hand rose to her cheek before I gave it permission. The leather of my glove rasped against the fabric of her cloak, then against her skin—warm, impossibly soft. The touch was meant to steady her, but it was my pulse that stumbled.
She looked up, eyes wide enough to hold the entire storm. The world shrank to that gaze: no court, no Veil, no crown—just the quiet ruin of two people standing too close to fate.
“Kaelith,” she breathed, and my name felt new in her mouth, gentler than it had ever sounded.
“Don’t,” I managed. “If you say it again, I won’t—”
“Won’t what?”
The question shattered whatever distance we had left. The frostlight around us pulsed once, twice, each beat matching the erratic rhythm of my heart. I could feel it answering through the walls—the very bones of the keep thrumming with the same fever.
I stepped closer. The cold should have bitten through her; instead, the warmth between us spread, pushing the chill back like a tide. My breath hitched.
“We shouldn’t be this close,” I said, though the warning was a whisper, already dissolving.
“Or what?” she whispered.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
The ground trembled, a deep, rolling note that climbed through my boots, through her spine, until we were both shaking with it. Light bled up through the cracks in the stone. It painted her face, her throat, her lips—
Stop.
But I didn’t. My hand slid from her cheek to the nape of her neck, fingers threading into her hair. The contact was a spark, small at first, then wild. The frost around our feet hissed and broke apart, running in rivulets down the stones.
She made a sound—half breath, half disbelief. The sound of someone on the edge of surrender.
“Kaelith,” she whispered again.
Everything inside me snapped taut. The frostlight exploded outward, threads of brilliance racing across the ceiling. Outside, the Sea of Glass answered with a low roar; the cracks on its surface flared like veins of molten silver.
I should have feared it, but all I could think of was the feel of her heartbeat under my palm.
“I warned you,” I said, voice raw.
“I’m not afraid.”
She reached for me then, her fingers brushing the side of my face. Heat and cold collided—steam rising where her skin met mine. I shut my eyes against it, against her, against the flood of everything I’d kept buried.
The first scream of the Veil tore through the sky.
Light poured in through the tower’s open arch, twisting, alive. It coiled around us like a living flame, brilliant and blinding, and for an instant I couldn’t tell if it came from the heavens or from the space between our bodies.
I could taste the air turning electric; I could hear her heartbeat echo in my bones.
The wind struck the tower, hurling ice and dust around us. I caught her against me instinctively, holding her close as the storm broke. The moment my arms closed around her, the world erupted.
The light didn’t burst—it unraveled.Threads of silver ripped through the air like a thousand harp strings snapping at once.I felt each one in my chest, vibrating against my ribs.
Katria gasped, and the sound dragged me back from the brink of blindness.Her face glowed with reflected fire, strands of hair rising as if the air itself had turned to static.My arms were still around her.If I let go, the storm would take her.
“Hold on,” I breathed.
“To what?” she shouted over the roar.
“To me.”
The frostlight burned white-hot along the seams of my armor, searing my skin.
I pushed my magic outward, trying to cage the chaos, but it only coiled tighter, hungrier.
The tower floor split in two jagged lines beneath our feet; the world smelled of iron and snow and the faint sweetness of her breath.
She pressed her palms against my chest, not in rejection—in instinct, to steady us both. Heat spread through the point of contact. The light bent toward her, not me. It wanted her.
“Katria—”
Her eyes locked on mine. “You can’t stop it.”
“I can try.”
I forced the frost back into my veins, summoning every lesson of discipline, every shard of the crown that had been hammered into me since childhood. Control is safety. Distance is order. But none of those things belonged here.
The magic surged again, answering not to command but to desire. The line between the two vanished. I heard my own heartbeat in the thunder. Hers answered a beat behind. When they aligned, the tower walls bowed inward, glassy frost turning liquid.
“Kaelith!”
Her voice cut through the noise. I turned toward it—toward her—and the motion broke whatever fragile hold I had.
Power rushed out like breath from a wound.
The windows shattered. Shards hung suspended in the air, spinning slowly in the red glow.
In each one, I saw a reflection of her face—eyes wide, light spilling from them.
I moved without thinking, shielding her with my body as the fragments fell. They struck the ground like bells. The sound went on and on until it became silence again—a heavy, ringing silence that filled every corner of me.
She looked up. “Is it over?”
I almost laughed. “No. It’s only beginning.”
Outside, the Sea of Glass screamed as the Veil tore fully open. A column of crimson light speared the horizon. I could feel its pull tugging at her heartbeat, trying to drag her toward it. I held tighter.
The light caught us both—not burning, not freezing, but something in between—and the last thing I saw before it swallowed the world was her hand clutching mine, her lips forming my name through the soundless wind.
Then everything went white.