Ember Ashwing's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The rune stones' cold faded from Ember's hands before she reached the first birch. Heat crawled back into her fingers. She stopped at the forest's edge, breathing hard. Even if she crossed the snow, she knew how this went. She would stand before the pale woman and burn. She always burned. The last person who let Ember close had learned to flinch. The queen would recoil too, and no borrowed cold would fix that. Ember sat on a cold cottage step and pressed her palms to her knees. The fox curled beside her boots. A woman came through the trees carrying a pouch of vials. She had brown hair and a green dress, and freckles across her cheeks. She walked straight at Ember, unafraid of the waves of heat. She was the herbalist who had come looking after Ember burned a bridge to ash. No one else had bothered to explain what Ember was. This one had. "You ran out of cold," the woman said. Not a question. "The stones only hold so long." "I know," Ember said. Willow Greenleaf knelt and set a crystal vial in the snow between them. Pale liquid swirled inside it. Tiny snowflakes turned in the glass. "Frostmoss," she said. "It grows under glaciers. I had three sprigs. This used all of them." She did not reach to hand it over. She waited. Ember stared at the vial. Her stomach tightened. She remembered another hand holding out a cure, long ago, and how it ended. She pulled back without meaning to. Willow watched the flinch. "Someone did this before," she said. "Gave you something. It went wrong." "Everything goes wrong," Ember said. "I burn through it." "I know what you are," Willow said. "I came anyway. I spent a week under ice for this." She nudged the vial closer. "That means something, even if you can't hold it." Ember looked at her. The witch had not stepped back once. The fox had never stepped back. Somewhere past these trees was a woman who kept company too, who had sent Ember toward this cottage and these companions. For the first time Ember counted something she had not lost. She picked up the vial. The glass stayed cool in her grip and did not steam. She pulled the stopper and drank. Cold spread down her throat, into her chest, out to her fingers. The heat sank low, like a banked fire. She touched the snow beside her. It held. "How long?" she asked. "Longer than the stones," Willow said. "Long enough to reach her and speak. But it fades too. Nothing I make is forever." Ember stood. Her hands stayed cool. She could cross the snow now, and she would not melt the ground beneath the queen. But the cold inside her was borrowed, and it was already shrinking. If she wanted the queen to stay, she would have to learn softness before the warmth returned.