Chapter 56 The Apple and the Frost
Damien
The healers come quickly when I call them. They hover nervously at the threshold of Bella’s chamber until I give a sharp nod. Then they rush in, checking her pulse, her breathing, her temperature. She sits upright now, wrapped in blankets, pale but alert.
“Rest,” I tell her, keeping my tone soft. “They’ll stay with you for the night.”
She nods once, eyes heavy but stubborn. “Don’t look so worried, dragon king. I’m fine.”
I wish I could believe her, but the bond still hums unevenly, like a heartbeat out of rhythm. When I leave her room, the cold follows me down the hall. I head to the alchemy wing that smells of ash and bitter herbs. Master Lorian, my chief alchemist, is already bent over his table when I arrive, long silver hair tied back, goggles perched crookedly on his brow. The apple sits on a silver dish before him, half-rotted and leaking a faint trail of smoke.
“I assume you’ve started?”
Lorian startles, nearly knocking over a flask. “Your Majesty. I—yes. Though I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“Explain.”
He gestures with his tongs. “It’s magic, without question. But not a single source. The surface residue carries the signature of an elemental, yet the core—” He leans closer, nose wrinkling. “—the core reeks of corruption. Dark magic, the kind that twists what it touches.”
“Could it have killed her?”
“It would have done worse,” he murmurs. “This isn’t poison meant to end life. It’s meant to bind it. Anchor it. Whoever crafted this wanted to drag her magic inward, to make her heart freeze on itself.”
A curse, then. Not meant for death, but containment.
“Can you trace it?”
Lorian hesitates, then holds up a small glass sphere swirling with pale light. “I pulled the lingering energy from the skin. It carries a frequency...an old one. Elemental signatures usually sing at one tone, but this…” He taps the sphere; a low, discordant hum fills the room. “Two notes, overlapping. Ice, and something else, something decayed.”
“Decayed how?”
“Like magic that’s lived too long,” he says. “As if it once belonged to someone human… but doesn’t anymore.”
When I leave him, I take the sphere with me. It sits heavy in my pocket, humming faintly against my thigh. The corridors are empty; the only sound is the wind outside, scraping against the windows like claws. In my study, I light the lanterns and pull the oldest ledgers from the shelves. The royal records stretch back centuries—treaties, wars, laws older than memory. I flip until I find what I’m looking for: Decrees of Magical Containment. The ink is faded from age and time, but still visible enough to read clearly.
Any elemental whose emotions disturb the natural order shall be removed from mortal lands and confined to the Glacial Sanctum until control is achieved.
The Glacial Sanctum. A name I’ve only ever heard in old sailors' tales, about a land buried under endless ice, where the exiled went and never returned. I keep reading, turning the page where a map unfolds showing seven royal crests connected by thin black lines. The Consortium of Crowns. A union of kingdoms formed to police “volatile magic.” My own crest is there, faint but unmistakable and beneath it, a single handwritten note:
The Frostborn are not to be released. The curse remains eternal. Only the heart that froze the world may undo it.
A heart that froze the world. Lorian’s words echo in my head—"magic that’s lived too long."
In the cabinet beside my desk sits a collection of relics too old and too dangerous to destroy. Among them is a sealed obsidian box. My family's mark is carved into the lid. I’ve never opened it.
I'm not even sure if my father ever opened it. It's just always sat here, in this exact place. Something now draws me to open it. Inside lies a single parchment, thin and brittle. The seal reads: Consortium Record – Year 213 of the Frost Decree.
The woman known as the First Frostborn traded her heart for power. It no longer beats, but it commands the cold. She hunts those whose hearts risk thawing, ensuring the curse never breaks.
The ink ends there, but the meaning hits hard. The witch wasn’t random. She wasn’t sent by anyone alive. She is the curse. The curse that also lives inside Bella.
The dragon stirs. Because she is falling for you, he says, tone almost thoughtful. That’s why the witch came.
I frown, dragging a hand over my jaw. “You think the curse reacts to emotion?”
Not just the curse. The witch. His voice deepens, a low rumble in the back of my mind. She can smell warmth. She hunts love before it grows strong enough to melt the ice.
My eyes flick back to the parchment. The heart that froze the world may undo it. The words twist through my thoughts. The kings must’ve believed it meant the original Frostborn—the one who caused the curse in the first place. But what if it never meant her heart? What if it meant any heart like hers? Another Frostborn heart capable of thawing instead of freezing?
I start to pace. “If that’s true, then every time one of them starts to feel… real warmth… she finds them.”
Before they can break it, the dragon growls. Before they can love enough to undo her work.
The pieces start to fall into place, sharp and fast. The night I brought Bella down from the tower—the air had cracked with ice, her power spiralling wild. I touched her, and it stopped. The storm died. In the kitchen, when she nearly shattered the glass in her hand, one touch from me, and the frost retreated. In the library, when her magic almost coated the shelves in ice, I was able to calm it again. Every time she’s lost control, I’ve been able to steady her—heat meeting cold, melting the edges before they broke.
“She’s already changing,” I murmur. “Every time she’s near me, the ice bends.”
Because her heart is thawing, the dragon says. And that means the witch can smell it.
My chest tightens. It fits. The apple. The old magic. The pattern of Frostborn disappearing through history. All of it could be her cleaning up her own mess—killing anyone who threatens to prove the curse can be broken.
I glance toward the door, toward where Bella sleeps beyond the hall. “So she came for Bella because she’s learning how to feel.”
Because she’s learning how to love, he corrects quietly.
That word sits heavy in the air, pressing down like heat before a storm. I drag a hand through my hair, every instinct torn between fight and retreat. If love is what draws the witch, then loving her could destroy her. But if it’s what she needs to break free… I exhale slowly, the dragon silent now, waiting. “Then I’ll have to learn,” I whisper, “how to save her without letting her burn.”