---
Chapter 17— The Ice Between Us
Remus's POV
The walls were too white.
White, and silent, and suffocating — the kind of silence that presses into your skull until you hear the buzz of your own blood.
They locked me in here after the ice outburst.
Not literally locked — Qasratul Jinnan would never admit they "contained" a student — but the shimmering pale wards on the walls told the truth. No one enters. No one leaves.
I sat on the floor, back against the cold stone, breathing fog into my hands.
The ice wanted out.
It crawled beneath my skin like frost trying to break through glass.
I clenched my fingers until my nails bit the heel of my palm.
Not now. Not again.
I forced the memories down, but they clawed their way up anyway.
Varyn's voice — sharp as shattered icicles.
"Worthless boy."
"Cursed thing."
"Get out of my sight."
The palace hall, marble so cold it cut my feet.
The guards' laughter.
The slaps — not for pain, but to keep me "awake" while they lectured me on how a disease should behave.
I pressed my hands harder into my face, dragging air through my teeth.
Stop thinking. Stop remembering.
Just breathe.
But breathing made the ice worse. It coiled in my throat, begging to be released.
Rami would've punched me in the chest and said, "Stop being weird and breathe normally, idiot."
Rosalith would've played her stupid violin until I calmed down.
But neither of them were here.
Only me.
Me, and the white walls, and the soft hum of the runes that kept the room sealed.
Except—
The hum shifted.
Barely. But I felt it. A vibration in the air. The same way snow feels right before it breaks off a roof.
Someone touched the ward.
I straightened, breath sharp.
They wouldn't dare send an instructor. They were too afraid of triggering another ice surge.
So who—
A faint clink.
Metal. Small. A lockpick? No — too smooth. Something thinner, more precise.
Then—
A soft click.
The ward didn't break.
It bent.
And the door eased open, just a crack.
A shadow slipped through the gap.
Silent. Controlled. Not hesitant — practiced.
Zamira.
Of course it was her.
I'd seen her around the academy — always quiet, always at Rosalith's side, eyes too calm for someone her age.
Rami joked she had "murder silence," the kind of walk that made people look over their shoulders without knowing why.
And Rosalith — gods — if anyone so much as looked at Zamira wrong, she'd bare her teeth like a wolf protecting a cub.
So yes.
Dangerous.
But I didn't understand why.
Until she stepped inside the forbidden room.
Her eyes landed on me instantly, dark and steady — not shocked, not confused, just… reading me.
"You're freezing the floor," she said softly.
I looked down.
Ice had crept from my fingertips across the stone, blooming in slow, deliberate lines.
I yanked my hands back. "I didn't—"
"I know."
She shut the door behind her with a quiet, confident motion, like breaking into a warded room was something she'd done a hundred times.
I stared. "You shouldn't be here."
"No one should be," she replied, stepping closer. "Which is exactly why I came."
My heartbeat stuttered.
"Zamira, I'm not—"
Safe.
Stable.
Good for anyone to be near.
But before I could finish, she crouched in front of me.
Close enough that I could see the faint shadows under her eyes — exhaustion buried under resolve. Close enough i realized her hair isn't black its brown like Rami's its the shadows that make it like that,
Close enough that the cold radiating from my skin should've made her flinch.
She didn't flinch.
"You look like you're drowning." Her voice was quiet, steady. "And you weren't breathing for twenty seconds before I came in."
I blinked. "You counted?"
"I always count."
Strange answer. But something about it felt… honest.
I inhaled sharply, letting my head fall back against the wall. "You shouldn't get near me when I'm like this."
"Why? You'll ice me to death?" Her tone wasn't mocking — just curious.
"It's happened before," I muttered.
She didn't move back.
Instead, she examined the ice on the floor, fingertips hovering above it without touching. "This isn't uncontrolled. It's patterned."
My breath hitched.
Because she was right.
The ice was blooming in symmetrical lines.
The same lines I used to make when I was a child.
The lines Varyn broke my fingers for drawing.
"How do you know that?" I asked.
She looked up. "Because I see things. And I listen."
Something flickered in her eyes — pain? No.
Memory.
But then, just as fast, the expression hardened.
"You saw something today," she said.
My breath froze. "What?"
"A reflection. In the courtyard window. Your ice wasn't reacting to the temperature. It was reacting to fear."
My lungs tightened.
She saw that?
"How did you—?"
"Because I know what fear looks like."
A quiet, deadly statement.
I swallowed. "Zamira—"
"I'm not here to expose you," she cut in. "I'm here because something in this academy is wrong. And people like us…" Her gaze flicked to the ice. "…don't get warnings for free."
Us.
She said us.
But I didn't know what that meant — not fully — until she shifted closer, and a faint flicker of pain crossed her face.
Barely visible.
If I hadn't been watching her so closely, I would've missed it.
"Are you dizzy?" I asked before I could stop myself.
Her lashes lowered for half a second.
Then she said, too quickly, "Just tired."
A lie.
But not one I understood.
Not yet.
"What do you want from me?" I asked quietly.
"To understand what scared you." Her voice softened. "And to tell you something scared me too."
Silence.
Heavy.
Frigid.
Alive.
I exhaled, and frost curled out of my mouth.
Zamira didn't back away.
"I saw something," I admitted finally. "A memory. Not mine."
Her eyes sharpened. "Whose?"
"I don't know. But someone… someone died." The words felt jagged in my throat. "Trying to reach Kvartor."
Zamira inhaled sharply.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
"You too," she whispered.
The ice beneath me brightened, fracturing like a spiderweb.
Zamira lifted a hand — not to touch, just to show she wasn't afraid. "Remus," she said softly, "you're not losing control."
"I am."
"You aren't," she insisted. "You're responding."
"To what?"
"To whatever is coming."
My chest tightened.
The room suddenly felt smaller.
Not because of the wards — but because she wasn't wrong.
She stood, moving toward the wall where runes shimmered faintly.
Her fingers hovered over them. "These wards aren't just containment. They're listening."
My blood ran cold.
"Listening to what?"
"Us." Her voice was barely a breath. "To anyone who knows too much."
I rose slowly, the ice cracking under my boots.
"Zamira," I said, stepping closer than I should've, "you need to get out of here."
"No." She turned to me sharply. "You need to stop pushing everyone away."
The ice surged.
Walls, floor, breath — everything glazed with cold.
And Zamira—
Zamira stepped forward.
Into the ice.
Into me.
She stood so close the frost climbed the hem of her cloak.
And still, she didn't shiver.
"Why aren't you afraid?" I whispered.
Her eyes softened.
"Because I've lived through worse."
The words hit me like a blade.
Ice cracked.
My breath shook.
The room shuddered.
She reached out — slowly — and touched the ice creeping up the wall.
It didn't bite her.
It didn't spread.
It simply… settled.
Like it recognized her.
She looked at me with that steady, unbreakable gaze.
"You're not dangerous, Remus," she said quietly.
"Just hurting."
My throat tightened.
Something inside me — something frozen for years — splintered.
And for the first time in months, the ice stopped expanding.
It just… waited.
Like it was holding its breath too.
---
---
The room was quiet again.
Not the dead, suffocating silence from before — this silence felt… suspended.
A waiting hush.
Zamira stood still as the ice settled under her boots, her eyes steady on mine.
"Hurting isn't weakness," she whispered.
I huffed out a bitter breath, fog curling between us. "You say that like you know what it means."
"I do."
The way she said it — soft, calm, but holding a weight I couldn't name — made my chest tighten.
But she didn't push me.
She just stood there.
Waiting.
No one had ever waited for me before.
I swallowed hard. My voice scraped like broken frost. "You asked what I was afraid of."
Zamira nodded once.
I looked down at my hands, flexing them slowly. The old fractures ached — not physically, but in memory.
"I wasn't born with my power active," I said quietly. "I didn't manifest it until I was twelve."
Her eyes sharpened — listening, absorbing, not pitying.
"And in my family," I forced out, "if you don't manifest by five… they assume you won't manifest at all."
Zamira's breath caught — nearly silent — but she didn't interrupt.
"So they designed trials," I said.
The word felt poisonous on my tongue.
"Trials?" she murmured.
"To…" My throat tightened. "…to 'awaken' me."
The ice on the floor hummed, vibrating under my boots. Zamira's eyes flicked to it, then to me.
I shook my head. "I'm not telling you what they were."
"I'm not asking," she replied softly.
That—
That almost undid me.
Everyone else who found out about my past always wanted details.
Even Rami and Rosalith, in their own ways, pushed for answers.
Not harmful — just curious.
But Zamira?
She didn't want the story.
She just wanted the truth of the pain, not the spectacle.
I swallowed hard. "There were three trials every year. From when I was five. Until I turned twelve."
Zamira inhaled slowly — barely controlled.
"Three… every year?" she whispered.
I nodded.
"What happened when you were twelve?" she asked gently.
My gaze drifted to the frost on the walls. "I finally broke."
Zamira blinked. "Broke?"
"The power came." I exhaled sharply. "Exploded, really. It froze half a wing of the palace. Injured two guards. And my father—"
I stopped.
The ice recoiled — like it wanted to lash out, but hesitated.
Zamira stepped closer, slow and steady. "Remus… you don't have to say anything else."
But I wasn't finished.
"My father called it a curse. He said I'd polluted the bloodline." My jaw clenched. "The trials were to see if the curse could be… destroyed."
Zamira looked like someone had shoved a blade between her ribs — but she hid it well.
I closed my eyes — and for a moment, I wasn't in Qasratul Jinnan.
I was in the frost-lit corridors of home. Then I remembered her , she who
called him a curse to his face
dipped her rings in cold magic to hit him
told him he should have never been born
watched his trials without blinking
told the servants not to feed him
and when he manifested, she never saw him again
Zamira's question hung in the cold air.
"What happened to your sister?"
My jaw tightened. The ice beneath my boots cracked softly, mirroring the fracture in my voice.
"My sister…"
The word felt wrong in my mouth.
Like it didn't belong to her.
"She wasn't like you think," I forced out. "She wasn't kind."
Zamira blinked, surprised — but not confused. Somehow she understood the difference.
"She was older than me, and she—"
I exhaled slowly, letting frost spill from my lips.
"She hated me."
Zamira didn't speak. She just waited — patient as winter.
"She used to tell the servants not to look at me," I murmured. "Said I'd infect them. Said my eyes were wrong. That I was born knowing how to rot a room."
Zamira's expression didn't change — but something in her eyes darkened, like she recognized that kind of cruelty.
"She wanted to be like our father," I continued. "She practiced his tone. His threats. His way of making you feel like you were already dead, and he was just waiting for your body to realize it."
Ice spread at my feet, brittle and sharp.
Zamira watched it — not afraid.
"She supervised my trials sometimes," I whispered. "Not because she cared. Because she wanted to see what would finally break me."
Zamira's breath hitched — barely.
"I don't miss her," I said, the words heavy and cracked. "I don't even know if she's alive. But if she is…"
My voice thinned to a whisper.
"…she's exactly where she belongs. Far from me."
Zamira's eyes softened, not with pity — but understanding.
Not everyone's monsters were strangers.
Some lived in the same house.
She nodded once. "Thank you for telling me."
She lowered herself to the floor beside me, sitting close enough that the cold should've hurt her.
It didn't.
"Remus," she said gently, "none of that was your fault."
I let out a humorless laugh. "Doesn't matter. Everyone else still treats me like a bomb about to go off."
"Not me."
I looked at her.
Really looked.
And something inside me — something buried under years of ice and cruelty — shifted.
"You came into a sealed room," I said quietly. "Knowing I could snap."
She tilted her head. "I don't think you'd hurt me."
"You don't know that."
"Yes," she murmured. "I do."
Her certainty hit harder than any blow.
The ice under us finally began to melt, frost dripping like tears.
She watched the process, then whispered:
"I think the only person you've ever been a danger to…"
She paused.
"…is yourself."
My breath stilled.
Then—
A sharp crack snapped through the room.
Not from me.
Not from Zamira.
From the ward.
Zamira's head snapped up.
The runes on the wall flickered — then brightened, glowing a harsh, warning blue.
Someone knew.
Someone was listening.
A soft, unnatural ripple pulsed through the air, like a whisper under the floorboards.
Zamira's face went still.
Her shoulders tensed.
"They're coming," she whispered.
Ice shot down my spine.
"Who?"
She didn't look at me when she answered.
"The ones the academy sends when a student talks too much."
My blood ran cold.
"What do we do?"
She rose in one fluid motion and offered her hand to me.
"We survive," she said simply.
I took her hand.
The ice didn't bite her.
And for the first time in years—
I wasn't afraid of my own power.
-