Annie Philaxis's Arc

Chapter 166 of 6

The throne still had no queen, but its patience gave Annie one clear task. If the frost stalked children beyond the seam, she needed a place lower down where humans and Sinklings could meet safely. Her sister Zev knew the road below. So Annie went to find her at the old roadside inn, its dark timbers frosted white, its windows warm with lamplight. Zev met her on the porch, mud on her hands from the frozen ground. Zev was Annie's twin, her lost blood, an earth witch who read old magic through soil. They did not embrace. They rarely did. "A bus went off the road," Zev said. "Into the snowbank past the bend. Full of people. They're still inside." Annie followed the glowing slime trail an insect had left along the road, its colors bubbling faint in the dark. It led straight to the buried bus. The engine ticked. Inside, a dozen strangers pressed against fogged glass, too cold to dig themselves free. They saw Annie's white face and shrank back. They knew the stories of the ice queen. "They think I've come to freeze them," Annie said. "Then don't," Zev said. Annie knelt and pressed her bare hand to the snowbank. She did not steal warmth. She gave it. The snow softened. The door groaned open. But the cold in the bus had already reached the bone, and the strangers were too stiff to move on their own. That was when the Sinklings came. The four Sprouts and Lumina Frostcrawler had trailed Zev down the road. Lumina was a frost snail, her shell glowing neon in the dark, green vines curling from her body. She crawled into the bus without fear. The strangers stared at the leaf-fingered children climbing in after her. "Warm the ground," Annie told the Sprouts. "Root them like you root yourselves." The children pressed their leaf hands to the floor. Warmth rose. Lumina's vines reached out on their own and wrapped a shivering woman's wrists, steadying her. Annie held a spark of light in her palm to guide them, its glow crisp and bright. One by one, the strangers stepped out into the softened snow. They gripped children's hands. They let plant-fingers pull them upright. Nobody flinched now. Inside the inn, Zev poured hot water. The rescued strangers sat with Sinklings at their feet, and no one screamed. A child leaned against Verdant's shoulder. Annie watched, and something loosened in her chest. Marigold arrived at the door as the last stranger warmed. She looked at the room, humans and Sprouts together, unafraid. "This is what I wanted," she said quietly. Annie took her wife's hand. The inn was full and no one had frozen. The Sinklings had learned to work close beside humans, and humans had learned to let them. But the throne above still waited empty, and its cold would not hold off forever.