Glaciana Frostcall's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

The sky stayed empty. Glaciana let herself believe it for one breath, then turned back to the problem she still had. The wyrm and its rider were gone, but Kristian's question was not. He needed to know if his feelings were his own or hers. Inside the castle, he could not know. Her song lived in every wall. She walked the hall and listened to it. The crystal spires hummed under her step. The frost crystal plants along the arches gave off the same low ring. Every stone had drunk her voice for years. Even her silence sounded like her here. Kristian could stand across the room and still be inside her song's reach. "I cannot test you in this house," she said. "The walls remember me. If you feel anything for me here, we will not know whose feeling it is." "Then we are back where we started." "No." She pointed past the outer arch, to the ice shelf and the water beyond. "There is one place my song does not carry. The shelf blocks it. Past the shelf, the sea takes the sound down." "You said I could not cross the wall." "You cannot walk out. She may come back. But you do not have to walk." She led him down to the low door that opened onto the water stair. The sea lay flat and grey against the ice. She knelt at the edge and set her palm on the water. She did not sing. She only called, the way she called her own. A shape rose under the surface. The sea dolphin broke through, back sheened with crystal, eye bright and steady. It waited. "It will carry you out past the shelf," Glaciana said. "Far enough that no note of mine can reach you. Stay there until you know. Then come back and tell me." Kristian looked at the dolphin, then at her. "If my feeling dies past the shelf, I will not lie to you when I return." "I know. That is why I am sending you." He stepped down onto the dolphin's back. It slid away without a sound. She watched him shrink against the grey until the shelf hid him. She did not sing after him. She sat on the stair and waited. The cold of the step went through her gown and she did not move. The light shifted twice before the dolphin came back. Kristian slid off onto the stair. His face was wet and set. "Well?" she said. "It did not die." He knelt in front of her. "Out there, past your voice, I still wanted to come back. I chose it with my own mouth, in my own quiet. It is mine." She closed her hand around his. The ache in her chest moved, and this time she let it. For the first time she believed him without needing to.