by D. N. Hoxa
“You need to give it time, so please don’t move your head,” Palmer said, and since I couldn’t find words to speak yet, I closed my eyes to tell him to let me be. Maybe my body was no longer burning but my mind was.
And my chest.
There was something in my chest still.
I hadn’t realized it was there because it was like a shadow of a feeling. Something like a transparent blanket over the pain that had nearly driven me insane.
Only now, it was growing stronger. Bigger. Whiter.
My eyes popped open and my jaw did, too. I needed to tell Palmer. This wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. It felt…cold.
“Palmer,” I whispered, my voice a scratchy mess.
“What’s that, Miss Vaughn?”
He was close to me again.
“Something…something’s…” but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t make myself say it because with every passing second, the shadow consumed through my feelings, my organs, all my bones and my skin, and it was dangerously close to my mind.
“I can’t hear you, Miss Vaughn,” Palmer said.
I let go of my held breath when the shadow made it to my throat. White foam came out from my lips, as if it was minus degrees in the room, when I was covered in sweat.
Controlling it was out of the question. I didn’t know how to even try. The cold wrapped around my brain and froze me completely. My eyelids were stuck. I couldn’t blink.
A scream reached my ears, but it wasn’t mine. The cold slipped through the pores of my skin and came out. White smoke coming from my chest. Was I burning?
The second scream shook me to my core. I was dying to turn my head and look at what those people were screaming for, and why they weren’t helping me, but I couldn’t. I was frozen, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move a single finger.
The shadow that had now completely turned to ice covered me from head to toe, inside and out. Snow on my lashes. How the hell was this even possible?
Footsteps. People were running. The sound of the doors opening—then closing.
My God, had everybody left? Had they left me alone in there? What the fuck was I supposed to do?
Move, someone said in my head, a voice of a stranger I’d never heard before.
They made it sound so easy. Couldn’t they see I was frozen?
Gritting my teeth, half afraid they’d break because they were covered in ice, too, I squeezed my eyes until they finally closed.
When they did, as if by magic, my whole body was able to move again.
The first thing I wanted to do was call out for help, but my voice was buried somewhere deep below that ice cold shadow that had wrapped all around me. I couldn’t figure out why nobody was coming to help me yet. Palmer had been right there, hadn’t he?
Maybe they didn’t know what I was feeling, and if I couldn’t tell them, I could show them.
Sitting up was the only way to do that. I didn’t stop to think if my body could pull it off. I just pushed forward with all my strength, forgetting that there were thick cuffs all around my arms and waist.
But the thick cuffs didn’t stop me. I didn’t even feel them against my skin, but I did see them. I saw them breaking and falling to the floor, because they, too, had been frozen.
My heart refused to pick up the beating as I blinked to chase the blur away.
Only after the fifth time, I realized the view in front of me wasn’t blurry. It was real.
My whole body covered in a thin layer of ice was real—except on my arms.
There, the thickest white and grey ice began around my elbows, and it only got thicker as it went down to my hands. It didn’t stop on my skin, though. It poured on the bed, and the tubes connected to the needles inside of me, the thick cylinder above my head, and through it on the whole ceiling of the room. The tubes that were connected to the large machine with the buttons and the levers had taken the ice all the way to it. The thick layer that covered it glittered, but I couldn’t stop to analyze, because there was so much more to see. So much more ice.
The floor was frozen. The double doors, too. The walls—and the glass box where my audience had been sitting. I couldn’t see anything from the pointy shards that covered it inch by inch, and I had no idea if those people were still in there.
Had I done this?
Better yet, had I died and this was my hell? Terrin said a salamander’s strength was fire, not ice. So how could I have covered a whole room in ice so thick, it looked impossible to break?
Run, the voice in my head said, that new one of a stranger. But to run, I’d have to stand up. To stand up, I’d have to break the thick layer of ice above my hands that wouldn’t even let me see my fingers.
No, running was not an option. My body let go of me and my eyes closed, as if they refused to see anything anymore. It occurred to me that, though I was covered in ice, I didn’t feel cold. I thought of Luke, his warm smile and his laughter, and I willed unconsciousness to take me. They say freezing to death is very peaceful, and that you feel nothing when the end is near.
In the last seconds that I was awake, I could ask for nothing more.
Chapter Ten
The smell of something burning woke me up. My bottom lip was shaking. No, my whole body was shaking.
My throat hurt and I couldn’t feel my toes.
“Nova!” someone called. “Nova, wake up!”
It was Luke.
Every cell in my body jumped at the sound of his voice. I moved up with all my strength, but I got pulled back by my hands.
My nightmare was staring at me right in the face.
Ice covered my whole body. Ice covered the whole room.
White noise in my head. It hadn’t been a dream. It was all real.
“Nova, over here!”
My eyes moved to the glass box across from the bed I was sitting on, but it was Terrin I saw on top of it. I looked around him, and then around the room, but the two people with masks on and with heavy looking devices that spit fire through their long tubes weren’t Luke either.
Where had he gone? I was so sure I’d heard him. Had I?
“I need you to get up and come to me, Nova,” Terrin called, waving his hands for me to hurry.
I wanted to do it, so badly. I was freezing. My skin had turned completely blue, but I couldn’t move. The ice around my hands was too thick. I couldn’t break it. I was stuck.
“Just hang in there,” Terrin called, and without hesitation, he jumped from the top of the glass box and to the ground. His feet slipped and he fell backward with a loud noise. I begged for him to get up faster and come get me out of there.
But when he was on his feet again, he didn’t come to me. He ran to the double doors and tried to open them. When that didn’t work, he whistled at one of the flame throwers to help him.
Tears streamed down my eyes but my throat was a mess and I didn’t dare call out for him to come get me already. Instead, I just watched the guy throw flames at the doors while I slowly froze to death. A minute later, the double doors opened, just a bit. Gloved hands grabbed the doors from the other side. The ice on the ground screeched and broke while whoever they were pushed the doors open almost all the way.
That’s when Terrin decided to come to me, but I could no longer even look at him. I was looking at all the people coming in through the doors, looking around the room with eyes wide and mouths open, completely stunned.
One of the seven was Ross, and another, the shirtless man with fire on his arms.
A visible shiver went down his back as he stopped in the middle of the room and looked around at the disaster that potentially was my fault—somehow. Terrin was now beside me, his hands on my cheeks as he said something I couldn’t understand. But looking away from the shirtless man was impossible. Ross was by his side and he said something in his ear. The man nodded, then turned to look right at me.
Heat began in the pit of my stomach and spread up to my chest and throat like a bucket of warm water.
Breathing became a little bit easier as I analyzed his eyes but couldn’t decide whether they were really orange or not.
When he looked away from me, a sigh escaped my lips, as if his eyes had held me captive.
“Just breathe,” Terrin said. “This will all be over in a second.” He put a leather jacket around my shoulders that did nothing to stop my body from shaking. I didn’t trust myself to speak yet, so instead, I just looked at the shirtless man in the middle of the room.
Ross and the others who’d come to look at the ice were hurrying out the doors again, and so were the two flame throwers. Terrin sat up on the bed right behind me and offered me his shoulder to lean on. Since my body would no longer hold me, I let go and fell against him.
What’s going on? I wanted to ask, but my throat burned at just the thought of speaking, so I clamped my mouth shut.
The shirtless man sat down on the ice covered ground, cross legged. Closing his eyes, he put both his hands on it, and let go of a long breath. I turned to look at Terrin, hoping he’d notice the question in my eyes, but he only grinned and nodded forward to tell me to look.
I did.
The next second, bright orange flames began to dance on the shirtless man’s arms again.
My breath caught in my throat as I blinked fast a few times to make sure that the view in front of me didn’t change. It was so dream-worthy how the flames grew bigger and they climbed higher on his skin, until they almost reached the man’s shoulders. I was so focused on him, even my body had forgotten the cold and the shaking.
Steam began to come up from his hands.
No, it was coming from the ice on the ground, which had already turned to water around his hands.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Terrin kept whispering behind me, but it sounded more like he was saying it to himself than to me.
Then, without warning, the ground beneath us shook. Six perfectly straight lines of fire exploded from all around the shirtless man. One of the lines was right under my bed. My heart picked up the beating as I watched the fire burn low, not one flame burning outside the straight lines. Soon, steam began to fill the room, and it was coming from everywhere. Water dripping. The sound of ice breaking.
I held my eyes on the man’s face, his skin glistering with sweat and his eyes moving rapidly from one side to the other under his lids.
The ice was melting fast. I could only tell because the water had already reached to the man’s hips—and fingers! I could move my fingers.
Holding my breath, I pulled my arms toward myself with all my strength. The ice around my hands was melting, water dripping to the floor, but I still couldn’t free myself. Terrin saw what I was trying to do, and he grabbed my left arm.
“Together, on three,” he said, and I nodded.
This time, when we both pulled back, the ice finally broke and my hand was free. I could have laughed from joy had my throat not hurt so badly. My right hand was harder to free, the ice above it still too thick, but at the third try, it broke. I was finally free.
“Nash!” Terrin called.
The fire stopped and the shirtless man opened his eyes. Slowly, he turned toward us.
“I need to get her out first, before you finish,” Terrin said.
For the second time, the man’s eyes met mine and I felt the heat crawling up on my cheeks again. It served in giving my body a few seconds to stand still, so I could put my feet on the ground, and try to stand up.
If Terrin hadn’t been there to catch me, I would have hit the ground hard, face first. He put my arm around his shoulders, and with his hand on my waist, he supported almost all my weight.
“Thanks, Nash,” Terrin said when we finally made it down the three stairs without breaking our necks. Down there, the ice was completely gone and the water reached above my ankles.
“No problem,” Nash said with a nod, and he closed his eyes again.
Disappointed that he hadn’t looked at me—from this close up, I could’ve definitely seen the color of his eyes with clarity—I let Terrin guide me to the doors. I didn’t get the obsession I’d developed about the guy’s eyes, anyway, so I tried not to think of him while we walked out in the corridor. The water had slipped from the door but strangely, it was moving in a perfect stream to the other side like a snake, and then going under one of the two doors across from us.
I didn’t have words to ask a proper question about that, so I didn’t bother.
Ross was outside waiting with a small crowd of people. Palmer was there, too, and so were the conductors. They all looked terrified, maybe even more than I was. Ross came forward and threw a thick blanket around my shoulders on top of the leather jacket Terrin had put there already.
“Let’s get you heated up,” he mumbled and nodded at Terrin and turned around. The crowd, most of which were fresh faces I’d never seen before, parted to make way for him—and us.
While Terrin dragged me forward, I lowered my head and focused on my breathing, ashamed of meeting anyone’s eyes. It looked like Ross was taking us back to his office, and soon, I was going to find out if I really was responsible for that ice disaster.
***
Palmer followed us. He looked like he’d lost something, and he kept looking from one corner to the other in hopes to find it. So far, no luck.
They sat me down on Ross’s leather chair, then threw some clothes on the desk, and turned their backs to me to give me the illusion of privacy. Any other time, I would’ve demanded they left the office altogether, but my body was shaking so badly and my clothes were making it so much worse, that I didn’t care if they even turned around and watched me strip down. With shaking hands, I barely made it to take off my jeans, which stuck to my skin like they’d been fucking glued. My shirt was the worst, and they hadn’t brought me any underwear, but the thick cotton sweatpants and hoodie would do just fine. They were in a nice light green, too. The socks fit perfectly, but the sneakers were two sizes too big. I still wasn’t complaining.
It took me a very long time to get dressed, put the hood on, and then the thick blanket over my shoulders. I was still shaking, but without the wet clothes, I was feeling a thousand times better. I cleared my throat and it hurt like hell, but the men got the message and they turned around. I wanted to tell them I needed a doctor, someone who could do something to stop the pneumonia I was surely going to get, but first, I needed some water.
“Are you feeling okay?” Terrin asked me, and I pointed at the bottle of whiskey that decorated a small table at the corner of Ross’s office. Water, I mouthed.
“You want a drink?” Terrin asked, a dumbfounded smile on his face, and I eagerly nodded. Without hesitation, Ross went to the whiskey, poured some in the glass and brought it to me.
I shook my head because I was too tired to roll my eyes. “You want the whole bottle?” the man asked, confused as hell. It actually made me smile.
And since the whiskey was right there in front of me, why not give it a try? It was going to warm me better than any blanket and wet my dry throat just fine. I didn’t think twice. I took the glass from Ross’s hand and drank a mouthful.
I was right, the whiskey did burn my throat and my insides, but when it fell on my empty stomach, I had the urge to throw it up right away. Squeezing my eyes shut, I held my breath and waited for it to settle. I didn’t need to puke in front of everyone now.
“Can you tell us what the hell happened?” Ross said, and I thought he was talking to me, but when I looked up, I saw him staring at Palmer angrily.
“No fucking clue!” the man said, his hands shaking. “I’ve done this procedure twice before and nothing ever went wrong. We have machines, remember? Machines don’t make mistakes.”
Oh. It looked like they had no idea if I was to blame for the disaster, either.
“What about the stuff you put in there? All the chemicals and the spells. Someone could have messed something up!” Ross hissed.
Palmer looked at me for a second, then down at his feet. �
�If somebody had messed something like that up, she’d be dead.”
Sighing loudly, Terrin scratched his head. “So, what you’re saying is Nova did all of that herself?”
My heart was already in my throat, and without thinking, I drank some more whiskey. This time, it didn’t want to come right back up my throat, which was also feeling a lot better now.
“How could she have done anything, when she failed Scientia? Nobody fails Scientia,” Ross said, and I flinched. Not a nice feeling knowing that I’d failed a fail-proof test.
“And it was ice, not fire. If the procedure had worked and she’d burned the whole place down, it would have made sense,” Terrin said while I thought the same thing.
God, sitting there while three men towered over me and spoke about things I couldn’t even imagine just a day before made me feel so small. So weak. The burning pain that had started it all was almost there again while I drank more whiskey. Even thinking of Luke didn’t help at this point.
“Is…did someone die?” The question had been burning a hole through my brain and I couldn’t go any further without knowing that first.
“No. Everybody made it out in time,” Terrin said. Thank God. The relief made me feel a tiny bit stronger.
“So, what the hell happened?” I asked, unable to keep my thoughts to myself for much longer from fear my head would explode. My throat hurt, but not as badly as I feared, and I had the whiskey to thank for it.
The men shrugged. “I guess I could look into the machinery after the ice melts. I could double check the ingredients,” said Palmer. “But I already did that, just so you know. Before it began, I triple-checked everything.”
“So, it was me,” I whispered as the guilt went through the thick blanket and settled on my shoulders, causing a cold shiver to wash down my back.
“Even if you were a trained mage full of active magic, you still wouldn’t have been able to freeze an entire room like that,” Ross said reluctantly. “I also can’t think of another reason.”
Just as he finished speaking, the screen of his computer lit up. Dragging the chair I was sitting on away from his desk, he went in front of it.