Chapter 44: What the Cold Left Behind

The inner kitchens of the Ashborn estate were a furnace of noise and heat.

Massive iron spits groaned under the weight of roasting meat. A dozen servants moved in a rush of flour, steam, and shouted orders. Standing near the central prep tables, Viscountess Cecilia directed the flow of the morning rations. Draped in thick, dark mourning wool, the Viscountess pointed with sharp, elegant gestures, ensuring the cooks didn’t waste a single drop of rendered fat.

But every few minutes, Cecilia’s gaze would drift toward the corner table where Lilian sat.

When the Viscountess looked at her, her expression softened.

The same look she had seen on the guards in the halls.

Pity.

Lilian gripped her charcoal pencil tighter, her knuckles turning white.

It snapped.

She stared at the broken black tip.

It trembled slightly in her fingers.

Soft bedding. Warm air.

Too soft. Too warm

The smell of frost and iron—

Lord Roderick standing at the foot of the bed.

‘The frost took them.’

Lilian squeezed her eyes shut. She focused on the voice calling out the morning weights.

Beside her, Aria stood over an open ledger, checking the seals on the morning grain sacks. She was meticulously counting the inventory, calling out the numbers for Lilian to log.

“Three sacks of winter wheat, lower cellar,” Aria called out, brushing a stray lock of hair from her forehead.

Lilian swept the snapped charcoal aside and logged the number. The young heir hadn’t looked at her with that fragile sorrow at the graves. He hadn’t seen a ghost to be mourned.

You will not freeze again. Do not let her miscount the grain.

A command. A purpose.

“Two casks of salted venison,” Aria said, pausing to glance at Lilian. “Are you keeping up?”

“Yes, My Lady,” she answered quickly, logging the meat.

She wiped a smudge of charcoal from her pale cheek and looked past Aria.

Staring through the thick, frost-rimed glass of the kitchen window.

The glass overlooked the backyard.

Outside, the sun was pale, bleeding silver over the mountains.

Mud frozen solid.

The sounds of wooden swords clashing reverberated in the air.

Across the kitchen, Viscountess Cecilia gasped, bringing a gloved hand to her mouth. The servants nearest the window stopped working, their hands dropping from the dough and meat.

In the center of the courtyard, Marcus swung a massive, iron-banded practice sword in a brutal, horizontal arc.

The wood slammed into Arthur’s ribs.

The impact lifted the thirteen-year-old boy off his feet and threw him sliding backward.

Arthur hit the frozen slush hard, his practice blade clattering out of his grip.

Lilian stood up from the table. She expected the boy to cry out. She expected Marcus to drop his weapon and rush to the heir’s side, apologizing for the brutal strike.

The High Mage didn’t move.

In the frozen mud, Arthur curled inward, a harsh, jagged cough tearing from his throat.

Marcus stood over him, waiting in silence.

Slowly, the young lord rolled over. His tunic caked in dark slush. He planted a soot-stained, trembling hand into the dirt and pushed himself up to his knees.

Arthur reached out, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of his fallen sword.

Lilian exhaled a sharp breath.

He bled. He faltered.

And still, he rose.

━━━━━━━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━

The packed frost scraped against Arthur’s knees, biting through the ruined wool of his tunic.

His lungs burned. Every pull of the jagged morning air scratched his dried throat. The right side of his ribcage throbbed, a dull, rhythmic agony where the practice blade had struck him.

He gripped the hilt of his weapon.

The iron-banded timber was slick with winter rime, and to his frail, thirteen-year-old arms, the weapon felt like hoisting a stone pillar.

Thirty feet away, Marcus waited.

The High Mage stood in the center of the courtyard, draped in mail and a dark cloak. The veteran loomed like a siege engine waiting to be unspooled. He held his sword casually in one hand, the tip resting in the dirt.

Arthur forced his breathing to slow. He tried to strip the panic from his mind and look at the fight as a problem of architecture.

He had no training. No forms. No instinct.

Only weights, angles, and timing.

Things he understood… just not fast enough.

Marcus shifted his weight. His right heel pivoted an inch into the hard-packed soil.

Arthur watched the shift in the veteran’s stance, searching for where the strike would fall.

He didn’t even see Marcus move.

The sword simply blurred in front of his eyes.

Theory was useless when the hardware was this slow. Marcus crossed the distance in a breath. There was no time to calculate angles. The timber whipped upward, tearing through the air with a sharp hum.

Arthur barely managed to flinch before the strike bypassed his nonexistent guard completely.

The blunt edge caught him clean.

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The force drove straight through his frame, hollowing his breath.

He lay there for a second, staring up at the pale light of dawn. Frustration coiled tight in his chest. His mind understood the mechanics of the failure, but his physical vessel was simply incapable of keeping up.

Marcus wasn’t someone he could predict. He was just… faster.

The young heir dragged himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming protest of his shoulder. He picked up his fallen weapon.

He looked inward—past the failing muscles, down to the dormant knot of pressure sitting beneath his ribcage.

His core.

He had felt it twice before.

When the Werewolf tore into him.

When he ran through the slums.

Both times, he hadn’t cast a spell.

The aether had simply flooded his veins like boiling water. Dulled his nerves and reinforced his fragile muscles.

He had no idea why it had happened. Or how.

Marcus did not give him time to breathe.

The veteran advanced again, his boots crunching on the rime. He raised his weapon high above his head in a brutal, two-handed grip. A vertical strike designed to shatter a block entirely.

Arthur didn’t try to read the footwork this time. He closed his eyes for a microsecond.

He reached down into the dark, cold space of his core. He tried to force the dormant energy outward into his limbs to catch the falling blow.

The core stuttered.

It sparked. A thin warmth flickered in his chest that refused to flow.

Arthur opened his eyes. The descending shadow of Marcus’s strike blotted out the sun.