Glaciana Frostcall's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

Kristian did not leave that night. Glaciana gave him a room in the far wing and shut her own door with both hands. She stood against it until her palms ached. He was cold. He was honest. He would stay. None of that answered the question she needed answered: whether anything in her could warm toward him, or whether she was ice all the way through. She went to the dragon before dawn. It lay in the courtyard where she had left it, breath fogging the wall in a slow rhythm. She sat against its foreleg and pressed her cheek to a scale. The scale was colder than her skin. That was the test she wanted. If she felt the cold, some part of her was still warm enough to notice. She felt nothing. She pressed harder. Still nothing. The scale and her face were the same temperature. Her throat closed. She made herself think of Kristian. His bare hand under the dragon's breath. His face turning toward her song the way a man turns toward a fire. She waited for the loosening in her chest she had felt in the hall the day before. She waited a long time. It came, small, a half-beat under her ribs. Not warmth. But movement. Something in her had shifted a fraction toward him and stayed there. A voice spoke from the arch behind her. "You're wasting the hour, cousin." She stood before she turned. Vladislas Nocturne leaned in the archway, black coat, red at the collar, gold at the cuffs. He was not her cousin. He called every cold thing cousin. He had come to her castle twice before, uninvited, and left each time with a piece of information he had not been offered. She had never liked how quietly he moved on ice. "You weren't asked," she said. "I heard you had a guest." Vladislas smiled without showing teeth. "A cold one. I came to see if he was one of mine." "He isn't." "No." His red eyes moved past her to the dragon and back. "He's something else. Which is a problem for you, Glaciana. A woman shopping for a mortal doesn't get to keep what walks in wearing frost." "I'm not shopping." "You were." He pushed off the arch. "I'll come back when you've decided what he is to you. Take your time. I have centuries." He was gone before she drew breath to answer. Glaciana stayed where she stood. The half-beat under her ribs was still there. She had her answer, the small one. Her heart could move. It had moved, once, this morning, toward Kristian. That was enough to let him closer. It was not enough to trust what Vladislas had just planted: that keeping Kristian would cost her something she had not yet counted. She went inside to find Kristian and open the next door herself.