Chapter 173: A Name Written in Frost

Chapter 173: Chapter 173: A Name Written in Frost

Theon woke to the soft gray light of early morning and the sound of someone breathing beside him. For a moment he lay still and took stock of himself. The dizziness was gone. A dull ache lingered behind his eyes, like the memory of a headache, but his arms and legs felt like his own again. He turned his head. Lyra had fallen asleep in the chair at his bedside with her cheek resting on the edge of the mattress and one small hand still wrapped around his sleeve. She had stayed there all night. Theon looked at the dark circles under her eyes and felt a quiet wave of guilt. He had told her he was fine so many times that she had stopped believing him, and she had been right.

Theon smiled and took care not to move too much.

"You are awake," said a low voice from the window.

Cryvathar stood with his back to the glass and his arms folded, the pale dawn tracing the outline of his tall figure. Seraphina sat on the bench near the door with her hands folded in her lap. Between them, half hidden inside a thick blanket, a girl sat with her knees pulled up to her chin. Her hair was the color of old snow. A thin skin of frost crept across the floorboards around her bare feet and crackled whenever she shifted.

Theon knew her at once. He had last seen her as a dragon, vast and furious, and the memory of that fight had not yet faded. Now she watched him with wary blue eyes, the way a wounded animal watches a hand it does not trust. Theon wished he knew how to tell her that he never intended to raise it against her again.

"Good morning," Theon said carefully, easing himself up against the pillow. "Did something happen?"

"Nothing has happened yet," Cryvathar said. "That is the trouble."

He crossed the room and sat at the foot of the bed. The old frame creaked under a weight that seemed far too light for him. "For several days now, Seraphina and I have felt something wrong in the world. It is a pressure at the edge of the senses, like a storm that has not broken. At first I told myself it was nothing. Last night I felt it again, and this time I knew its taste."

Seraphina lifted her gaze, and her voice was soft but steady. "We know that feeling, Theon. We fought the being behind it a very long time ago."

"It is our oldest enemy," Cryvathar said. "We believed a great calamity had been buried for good. It seems the world has other plans."

Seraphina glanced at him, and a look passed between them that held centuries of shared battles.

A chill crawled down Theon’s arms that had nothing to do with the frost on the floor. "A calamity," he repeated. "Are you sure?"

"I am sure enough to leave. Seraphina and I must find the truth of it before it finds us, and we cannot do that from here." He paused, and for a moment the old spirit looked tired. "The last time we met it, we paid a price I would rather not pay twice."

Theon opened his mouth to protest, but the words died. He looked at Seraphina and saw the quiet certainty in her face, and he understood that this had been decided long before they walked through his door. Instead he asked, "And her?" His gaze drifted to the girl in the blanket.

She flinched. Seraphina rose, crossed the room, and crouched in front of her, speaking in the voice one uses for frightened children. "She has no name and no master. A dragon without either has nothing to hold her power in place. Since her defeat it has been slipping through her fingers, and it frightens her. She is not afraid of us. She is afraid of herself."

"I never wanted to hurt her," Theon said quietly, and guilt hung on every word. "I only wanted the fighting to stop."

"I know," Seraphina said. "She knows too."

The girl looked up. Her voice came out thin and rusty, as though she had not used it in a long time. "You did not finish me. I remember." She swallowed. "I have been alone for so long that I forgot what it felt like when someone chose mercy. Why?"

Theon had no clever answer. "Because you were hurt," he said at last. "And it did not feel right." ⅇ

A long silence settled over the room. Then the girl turned to Cryvathar and spoke as though she had practiced the words in the dark. "I wish to enter a contract with you and the lady. If you will have me."

Cryvathar’s stern face softened by a fraction. He glanced at Theon. "She has chosen us. But I will not take what is yours without your word. You are the one who defeated her."

Theon looked at the girl for a long time. Part of him wanted to say that he could protect her himself. Then he thought of Seraphina’s patient hands and Cryvathar’s ancient weight, and of everything about power that he still did not understand, and he knew the honest answer. "Take her," he said. "She will be safer with you. Please look after her." It cost him something to say it, and he was surprised by how much.

"We will," Seraphina promised.

Cryvathar stood and held out one hand. The girl placed her small cold fingers in his, and Seraphina laid her own hand over both. The room fell completely still.

"Child of frost, daughter of the first winter," Cryvathar said, and his voice seemed to rise from somewhere beneath the floor of the world. "You have entered this contract of your own will. Let it bind you, and let it free you. From this day you are no longer nameless. Your name is Isyldra."

The word rang through the room like a struck bell.

Frost bloomed across the window glass in great silver ferns. The breath of everyone present turned to white mist. Snowflakes began to fall from nowhere, drifting over the bed and the floor, and none of them melted. Lyra stirred and murmured in her sleep. Isyldra gasped as pale blue light spread beneath her skin, tracing her arms and throat like veins of ice. Her hair lengthened and brightened until it fell past her waist in a sheet of silver white. Two slender horns of clear crystal rose from her brow, and her eyes, once clouded and uncertain, cleared to the blue of a winter sky at noon.

The power that had been spilling out of her stopped. It folded inward and settled, quiet and deep, like a lake freezing over for the season.

A small mark of frost glittered on the back of her hand, and matching marks glowed on Cryvathar’s and Seraphina’s. Isyldra looked at her fingers, then at the two people holding them, and a smile broke across her face, clumsy and astonished and real.

"Isyldra," she whispered, trying it out. "It is mine."

"It is yours," Seraphina said warmly.

Frost curled over Isyldra’s palm and folded itself into a perfect snowflake. She held it up to the light as if it were the most precious thing she had ever made.

Theon found that his throat had gone tight. He had watched a frightened creature become whole, and he felt nothing but gladness, with a small ache beneath it that he chose not to name.

"Pyro and NIVARETH will remain with you," Cryvathar said, turning back to him. "They will guard you and the academy while we are gone. Listen to them."

"I will," Theon said. He had grown used to being watched over by people far stronger than himself, and today, at least, he found he did not mind. Then he hesitated. "Cryvathar, if you are really going to face something like that, what will you fight with? What will you do if you run into danger out there?"

Cryvathar’s brow lifted. A strange, almost amused light came into his old eyes. "Who do you think I am?"

He raised his right hand, palm open. The room dimmed as though the world had drawn in a great breath. Threads of white gold light spiraled up from his palm, impossibly fine, and wove themselves into the shape of a blade. It grew longer, sharper, brighter. A hum filled the air, so low that Theon felt it in his teeth. The frost on the windows turned to rainbow glass, and the falling snowflakes froze in midair, trembling.

When the light folded away, Cryvathar held a sword that did not seem to belong in this world. It looked plain, almost simple, yet staring at it made Theon’s chest ache, as if the blade were a word in a language he had forgotten how to speak.

What? Theon thought. That is a divine level sword. But no one has ever reached the divine realm. No one at all.

He said it aloud, in a much smaller voice than he intended. "But no one has been able to reach the divine realm."

"That is true," Cryvathar said calmly, turning the blade so the light ran down its edge. "No one has reached it. That does not mean I cannot conjure a divine level artifact."

Theon stared, and then he let out a helpless, breathless laugh. "You could have mentioned that sooner."

"Where would be the fun in that?" The sword broke into drifting motes of light and was gone. The snowflakes fell again, and one landed on Theon’s hand and melted.

"Then I suppose I can stop worrying about you," Theon said.

"Never stop," Seraphina said, and she laid a hand over his. "Worry is only love with nowhere to go. Just do not let it eat you."

Theon swallowed. "Come back safe, all three of you. Please."

"We will," Cryvathar said, and he clasped Theon’s shoulder, a rare gesture, his grip warm and heavy. "Tell Lyra we did not wish to wake her."

They moved toward the door. Isyldra lingered a step behind, her fingers twisting the edge of her sleeve. At the threshold she turned and bowed to Theon, deep and unpracticed.

"Thank you for not ending me," she said. "I will remember it."

"Take care of yourself, Isyldra," Theon said. "It is a beautiful name."

Color rose in her cheeks. She ducked her head and hurried after the others, and the door closed behind her with a soft click. The air still smelled of snow.

Theon lay back and stared at the ceiling. The room felt larger now, and much emptier. A calamity returning, an enemy older than the academy, and two of the strongest people he knew walking straight toward it. He drew a slow breath and tried to hold the fear at arm’s length. It was harder than he wanted to admit, and his hands trembled. Lyra shifted in her sleep, and he gently tucked the blanket over her shoulders. Whatever was coming, he thought, he would meet it the way he always had, one step at a time and with the people he loved close enough to touch.

Barely a minute had passed when the door crashed open so hard that it struck the wall and rattled the glass.

Lyra jolted awake with a cry, and Theon sat bolt upright, his pulse hammering. The Headmaster stood in the doorway, robes disordered, hair badly tangled, his chest heaving as if he had run the whole length of the academy. His eyes found Theon at once.

Theon had seen the Headmaster stay calm in the face of an entire army. He had never seen him like this.

"Theon, forgive the intrusion," he said, and his voice shook with something that was not quite fear and not quite triumph. "I have news. I finally have a lead on who the traitor is."