“What?” Her eyebrows flew up. “But...where are you going?”

“Look after her.” I pushed her gently toward Dillon. “Protect her with your life. If you don’t, I’ll take yours. And there won’t be enough left of you to fill an urn once I’m through.”

Before either of them could argue, I left.

* * * * *

I stalked into my father’s office with Whisper, heading straight to the shelf where he stored every map of Brimstone’s geothermal sites and reactors.

Old and new, working and decommissioned, I spread the maps across the desk and pinned them under my palms. The Gaoligong Ranges stared back with neat contour lines and elevations, hiding what truly lurked within.

Volcanic power.

The same power that dwelled in me.

The edge of the parchment curled with smoke as every droplet of my burning blood fixated on the east.

To the mountains that swallowed souls.

To where Lao Li heard the wind screaming...

Chapter Sixty

“AGAIN.”

“Ugh, you can’t be serious.” I groaned and flopped onto the ground beneath the gnarled tree growing in the centre of Lucien’s courtyard. My eyes strayed to the closed gates. The gates Dillon had locked—keeping us trapped and hidden behind the stone wall.

Dusk had fallen.

Dillon had physically hauled me back ten times already—stopping me from racing through Ashfall Cliff to find Lucien.

Wherever he was, he was burning.

I felt him.

That bond around my heart sizzled and tugged.

He needed me just like I needed him, but...Dillon had taken Lucien’s command to protect me far too literally.

“You can’t keep distracting me like this, you know.” I calculated my odds of bolting to the gates before Dillon could get up from where he’d sprawled on a rattan lounger.

“If you don’t want me lurking around and getting in your way, then prove to me that you can protect yourself.” Wolfing down the tray of fried wontons, meat bao buns, and custard tarts that Auntie Mei had delivered, he pointed at the dead piece of grass where I’d been ‘training’.

The grass was dead because I’d killed it by accident.

“Again.”

“I hate you.”

“Don’t care,” he mumbled around a mouthful. “Do it.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

Licking his fingers, he leaned forward and watched me haul my very heavy, very exhausted, very grumpy body off the ground.

“Does it look like I’m afraid of a little cold?” He snorted. “I grew up in the Westfjords. Your little parlour tricks barely qualify as weather. Winter tries to kill you before breakfast there.”

My gaze went to the gates again.

“He’s fine.” Dillon rolled his eyes. “His room might look like an overdone steak, but nothing else has caught fire, which means he’s controlling himself. Just like I want you to do. So go on. Do it.”

I glowered at him, a cold misty ribbon playing around my wrists. “I told you. I don’t know how. The ice responds to Lucien. I can’t wield it. I—”

A small dagger soared straight toward my face—

A blast of hoarfrost detonated from my chest in a violent shockwave, turning everything into frozen glass. The dagger never landed—it hung suspended in midair, trapped inside a casing of ice, inches from my nose.

“There. Finally. That’s what fear can do.” Dillon leapt to his feet, smacking at his frozen trousers, brushing frost off his eyebrows and eyelashes. “It’s emotionally triggered like you said. Good. Again.”

“Are you trying to kill me?” My breath fogged with white plumes even as the courtyard thawed as quickly as I’d frozen it. “Throwing knives at me now?”

“It was a gamble, I agree. See? I ran the risk of being murdered by that psycho you call a boyfriend just to prove you can wield it.”

“He doesn’t like that word. Makes him feel like he’s ten.”

“Certainly acts like it sometimes,” he muttered under his breath.

“I heard that. And if he does, you’re in trouble.”

“His little pyro tendencies don’t scare me. Just like your impression of a fridge doesn’t.” His grin fell as his gaze landed on my balled hands. “Eh, you’re glowing.”

Swallowing hard, I spread my fingers and glowered at the white-blue etchings that looked like snowflakes stamped my skin. “It’s a hazard.”

“Alrighty...well.” He clapped his hands. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t judge and no one is here to see you. Again.”

My gaze flicked to the gates as the bond tugged hard.

Lucien.

What was taking him so long? What was he doing?

“I need to go to him,” I argued. “He’s burning up.”

“Then learn how to use the gifts you’ve been given so you can help him.”

“How are you so rational about all of this? Don’t you find everything crazy?”

“Fuck yes, I do.” He chuckled. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve seen in my life, and I’ve worked at Snowflake Corp for years.”

“Not even going to try to assure me I’m not a freak, huh?”

“It would be a waste of breath.” He shrugged. “You’re the daughter of two of the most renowned scientists of this generation. It’s almost a given that you would turn out...odd.”

Slipping his hand into one of his many vest pockets, he pulled out a small glass vial holding large silver pills. “You’re like these Cryolyt pills. Something that never existed before yet is now mainstream in warfare. They’ve helped countless injured soldiers, just like you’ll—”

“Wait.” Cutting across the courtyard, I snatched the vial out of his fingers. I gasped as the same silver pills that Lucien had used while escaping Cinderkeep rattled behind the glass.

“I was right,” I murmured. “I had seen them before.”

“Your mother was the one who came up with the final recipe for those, I think.” Dillon snatched the pills back, shoving them into his pocket. “All I’m saying is, if they were willing to create and manipulate things in a jar, why would they stop at creating and manipulating you in her womb? You were their greatest experiment.”

A blanket of ice covered the ground with a giant spiral, killing yet more of the shrubbery.

“What emotion was that?” Dillon frowned. “Pain? Betrayal? You should be writing your reactions down, so you know what each feeling does.”

“So you agree that you think my parents were the ones who did this to me...who did this to Lucien?”

The temperature suddenly plummeted again.

Dillon’s breath crystallised as snow began to fall. Not from the sky, but from me. Tiny flakes spiralled from my chest—blanketing the entire courtyard.

It didn’t hurt. I didn’t have a migraine or nausea like before but...I was in pain.

“That’s grief.” Dillon hugged himself, shivering from the cold. “Write it down. It’s soft but lethal.”

Shaking away the agony in my heart for what my parents had done, the snow lightened, turned to powder, then vanished.

“Your parents loved you,” Dillon said softly, stepping into me and rubbing away the single tear that rolled down my cheek. “Maybe they loved you too much and wanted you to be more than what everyone else is.”

“If my parents loved me.” I sniffed back my sadness. “They would never have experimented on me.” My heart pinched with guilt. “What if I’m the reason Lucien has been suffering his entire life? What if—”

“Are you honestly saying you feel responsible?” He cupped my shoulders and held me firm. “That you feel guilty for something you didn’t even know about?”

“Yes.” My temper flared, bringing another scattering of frost. “I do feel guilty. He’s spent his entire life in misery. And if it was my family who did this to him—”

“Then I suppose you were meant to find each other, seeing as it’s looking more and more likely that you’re keeping each other alive.” He cocked his head. “Or are you denying that fact?”

“No, I just—”

“What if they’d tampered with you and not him? Do you think you would’ve survived when your necklace came off? Because I’m telling you right now, you wouldn’t have. You were almost dead when I found you that day.”