Queen Glaciana Frostborne Alpineglow's Arc

Chapter 15 of 33

The seam narrowed as they went deeper. Frosty led, her wings shedding faint light. Kira walked point, ears swiveling at every drip. At last the tunnel opened into a wide chamber. A wall of ice stood before them, thick as a castle gate. Behind it, blue and slow, a pulse of light beat like a heart. The Snowheart. Glaciana stopped and looked at the wall. Her legs already ached. She remembered the day she collapsed fighting the cold, how her power drained out of her and left nothing. "That ice is a hand's length of solid frost," Glaciana said. "I broke on far less. I don't know if I can do this." Victor stood beside her. Her husband said little on the climb, as he always did. He watched the wall, then the light behind it, then her face. His jaw tightened. "You can," he said. Two words, flat, the way he gave orders. "I collapsed once," she said. "If I fall here, we lose everything." He did not argue. He looked at her the way he looked at his family when the cold came for them. Then he moved without warning. He took her face in both gloved hands and kissed her, hard, sudden, past all his careful silence. Glaciana felt something pass between them. Heat poured into her chest and spread down her arms. Her fingers burned with it. It was not her own strength returning. It was his, given whole. She pulled back, eyes wide. "Victor. What did you do?" "I don't know," he said. His voice shook, which it never did. "I felt it and I acted. Use it." Kira spun toward them, tail lashing. "Now, Glaciana. It's fading." Glaciana raised both hands. The power he had given her roared under her skin, more than she had ever held. She aimed it not at the whole mountain but at one point, the center of the wall, the way Kira had taught her. She pushed. Frost cracked. A line split the ice from top to bottom. Then the whole wall shattered inward and fell in bright shards across the floor. The blue light spilled over all of them. Glaciana stood, still upright, breathing hard but not fallen. The Snowheart floated in the open air, a crystal the size of two fists, beating slow. She turned to Victor. He had gone pale and gripped the wall to stay standing. Whatever he gave her had cost him. "You're hurt!" she said worried for her dear husband. "I'm fine." He was not. Frosty drifted close to the crystal, her wings trembling. "There it is," the fairy whispered. "Only you can break it now, Queen." Glaciana looked at the beating crystal, then at her husband slumped against the stone. The wall was gone. Nothing stood between her and the Snowheart. But breaking it would take everything, and the man who fueled her could barely stand and she held him under her arm.