Burning Blood

How my windows iced from the inside, even on summer days.

How the drinking fountain at school exploded—the pipes bursting as the water froze while I took a drink.

How I was homeschooled from then on...

How my mother sat me down and told me I was too smart for school, too bright for my age, and the only way I could continue with my studies was there in the lab, with her...at all times.

I sucked in a breath so sharp, my ribs threatened to snap.

I tried to hold it in.

I tried to push away the betrayal, the loss, but...I wasn’t strong enough. Every emotion I’d ever felt or forbidden myself to feel, erupted.

A blizzard shrieked out of my heart.

The air imploded with a thunderous crack, cold cancelling out all the heat in the world. Flames didn’t just die—they vanished with a flash of frost—ice devouring them whole.

The entire valley flooded in a shroud of white so absolute, it erased colour and night—turning the ground as bright as the sun.

And it didn’t stop.

Winter consumed everything.

Snow flurried over the valley.

The river flash-froze.

The ground beneath my feet split with a violent fissure as ice ploughed through soil and stone, entombing everything in flawless merciless white.

I couldn’t stop it.

I tried to stop it.

My bones throbbed. My heart ached.

Ice continued cha

My legs buckled and I knelt on the arctic tundra I’d caused.

But the storm kept building, building.

Snow continued to fall, sticking to blackened branches until they sagged from the weight.

I kept spiralling.

Panicking.

Unable to stop.

Lucien.

Me.

Snowflake Corp.

Fire and frost and everything.

Everything.

EVERYTHING.

I clutched my head as another storm howled free.

“Make it stop,” I gasped, folding forward and pressing my forehead to the thick snowdrift that’d replaced Lucien’s charcoal. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know how to—”

I never got to finish.

Lucien lunged through the blizzard, his bare feet melting everything.

The howling snow couldn’t touch him—kept at bay thanks to his inhuman heat.

Snatching me into his arms, he carried me straight toward the frozen river.

The icy surface shattered as he stepped onto it, allowing him to sink into the water. Hitching me higher into his arms, he waded toward a small divot where the current had made a natural pool—ice instantly melting until steam curled from the surface.

I gasped as he shoved me against a massive boulder blocking the swimming hole from the main current.

And then he braced one arm above me, grabbed my jaw with his smouldering hand, and kissed me.