Glaciana Frostcall's Arc

Chapter 2 of 10

The door shut behind Kristian Frostborne, and Glaciana Frostcall stood alone with him in her hall. He wore a thin crown of ice and a coat patterned in frost. He had walked through her song without a stumble. He said he was as cold as she was. She did not know if that was true, or a line rehearsed to get inside her walls. She had lost seven suitors to her voice. She would not lose her judgment to a clever tongue. "Prove it," she said. Kristian's mouth moved, not quite a smile. "How." "Come with me." She led him out a side arch, past pillars shaped like standing waves. The cold in the hall thickened as they walked. A mortal would have shivered by the third turn. Kristian's breath did not fog. That was one mark in his favor. It was not enough. She took him to the courtyard where her dragon slept curled against the outer wall. Its scales were pale glass. Frost hung from its horns in beads. It opened one eye at her step and did not lift its head. "Touch it," Glaciana said. Kristian looked at the dragon. "Where." "The mouth. Between the teeth." Any mortal she had ever known would have refused. The dragon's breath alone had killed a suitor's horse two winters back. Kristian walked to the great head and set his bare hand flat against the dragon's lower jaw. The dragon exhaled. White vapor rolled over his wrist and up his sleeve. He did not pull back. When he lifted his hand, the skin was unmarked. No red. No blister. No tremor. Glaciana's chest did something she had not felt in a year. It loosened. She stepped closer. She meant to speak plainly. The song rose in her throat instead, low, one held note, escaping before she could catch it. It rang off the courtyard ice and came back doubled. Kristian did not flinch. He turned his face toward the sound the way a man turns toward a fire he means to warm at. "You keep waiting for me to run," he said. "Yes." "I won't." She believed him. That was the thing that frightened her. She had wanted a mortal brave enough to stand in her song. He was not a mortal. His hand had taken dragon-breath without a mark. His breath made no cloud. Whatever he was, he was not the answer she had asked for. "You're not a man," she said. "No," Kristian said. "I never said I was." He watched her, waiting. The dragon closed its eye again. The song still hummed in the walls between them. Glaciana had her proof. He was honest, and he would stay. Her arc had shifted under her feet. She had opened the door to a suitor who could not be burned by her, and now she had to decide if a cold thing could thaw her at all.