Frost Winterborne's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The sealed pass drove Frost and Ember down the slope to a hunting lodge below the ridge. Its logs were thick, its stone chimney cold. Frost forced the door and they stumbled inside, out of the wind. Snow melted from their coats onto the floor. They were trapped here until spring, alone with each other. Frost knelt at the old stone fireplace. He stacked wood and struck a spark. But his cursed hands chilled the kindling, and the flame died in the frost. He tried again. The same. Cold crept up his arms. "Let me," Ember said. She pressed her palm flat against the wood. Fire caught at once and climbed the logs. Heat filled the room. She looked back at him, and her eyes held the thing she had told him on the ridge. Her confession. He had read it. He had said nothing since. The silence stretched. Frost felt it push her away. She turned toward the fire, arms crossed, shoulders tight. "You saved my life up there," she said. "You kept my words in your coat. But you won't say one of your own." Frost opened his mouth. The old cold rose in his chest, the curse that sealed his heart. Words of love froze before he could speak them. He had proven this to himself a hundred mornings. Warmth reached his skin, never his heart. He crossed the room instead. He would not lose her to his own silence. He pulled a wide fur rug from a chest, two soft halves woven together, and laid it near the hearth. Then he took her hand. Heat flooded his fingers. He drew her down onto the rug. She let him. He wrapped one fold of fur around her shoulders and the other around his own, so the two halves closed them together. "I can't say it the way you did," he told her. "The curse takes the words. But it can't take this." He pressed his palm to her cheek. Her warmth poured through his skin. He held her there, close, and did not let go. She leaned into him. Her breath was hot against his neck. They moved to the fur-piled bed as the fire burned low. He kept her hand in his all through the night, palm to palm, and the heat stayed. She traced the frost patterns on his wrist. He watched them melt under her touch and form again. Near dawn he felt it. Not on his skin this time. Deeper. A small warmth behind his ribs, faint, but there. The curse still held his heart. Yet for one breath the ice had thinned. Frost stared at the low coals. He could not speak love. But something in him had shifted. If closeness alone thinned the ice, then the curse was not as fixed as his mother made it. He would find the crack in it. He held Ember tighter and let himself feel the heat that stayed.