Frost twins's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The door shut behind us and the room was quiet. Glacienne Frostwhisper set her cup on a low table and looked from one of our faces to the other. Outside, muffled through the wood, we heard the hiss of steam where fire met the frozen creek. She said the fight would not last. She said the fire fairy on the ice had already sent a signal up the ridge, and more of his tribe would come before the hour was out. If they arrived while we were still learning, they would burn the door down and take us on the step. "You want the spell," she said. It was not a question. "Cast without a witness. Cast without burning one of you out." She wanted to know so. She wanted to know now. Glacienne shook her head. She said the spell could not be cast without a witness. But the witness did not have to be a second fairy. The witness could be a thing — small, alive, made of the same cold as the caster. She lifted a shelf's cloth. Three ice bunnies sat under it, clear-bodied, ears sharp, watching us the way the ones on the outer shelf had watched before the fire cracked them. "They hold what a second caster would hold," she said. "They break instead of you." She said we had one try before the door came down. She said we had to decide, together, which of us cast and which of us set the witness. The body stalled. She wanted to cast. I wanted to cast. Neither of us moved. Glass shattered somewhere above the door frame. A red line ran down the inside of the wood where heat pushed through. Glacienne did not look up. She looked at our two faces and waited. She said, quiet, "He cast." I said, quiet, "She casts." We drew the twin snowflake knives and set one in each of our hands. She took the blade. I took the bunny from the shelf and set it on the table between us, ears up. She began the spell. I held the witness. The cold came up out of the floor and into our shared chest, and I felt it try to climb into her head and mine at once — then it caught on the bunny instead, and the small clear body went white from the inside. Her hand shook. Mine did not. The bunny cracked once, straight down the spine, and fell into two clean halves on the wood. She finished the shape of the spell. The red line on the door went black and cold. Glacienne picked up the two halves of the bunny and set them in her palm. "You have it now," she said. "Once. You cannot do it again with this one." Above us, on the roof, we heard the first pair of boots land in the snow.