I want to put my hands on him.
The thought lands sharp and sudden and I don't push it away. I let it sit there. I let myself want.
“Thyran.”
He stops mid-swing. Turns. The axe rests on the stump. His white hair is damp with sweat. His chest rises and falls and I track the movement without meaning to.
I hold up the flower. “Where did you find this?”
He sets the axe down and walks toward me. Stops a few feet away. I have to tilt my head back to see his face.
“High ridge. North face. Half a day’s climb.”
“Nothing grows up there.”
“Ice-blooms do. Rarely. They grow inside their own ice. The cold makes them.” He reaches out, and for a moment I think he’s going to touch the flower. But his hand stops short, hovering. “If they get too warm, they die.”
I look at the petals in their shell of ice. Then I look at him. At the heat coming off his skin. At the steam still rising from his shoulders.
“How did you carry it home?”
He doesn't answer right away.
“Carefully,” he says.
I turn the flower over in my hands. Half a day’s climb in each direction. Hours of walking with this fragile frozen thing held away from his body, away from the heat that radiates off him constantly. Keeping something cold alive against everything his body wants to do to it.
“It lives inside its own cold,” I say. “Like you.”
His expression shifts. “No. Not like me.”
He takes off his glove and holds out his bare hand.
“Touch me.”
I hesitate. Then I reach up and press my palm flat against his chest.
Heat. Not just warmth, but heat. Real and intense, radiating through his skin. His heart beats hard against my palm, steady and strong. The temperature of him seeps into my fingers and makes them ache with returning warmth.
“I am not frozen,” he says, low, the words vibrating in his chest. “I am burning. All the time. The others, the clan, they are cold. Ice in their veins. In me...” He covers my hand with his, pressing it harder against his chest. “Fire.”
“But why?” I ask. “Have you always been like this?”
He takes a breath. His hand presses harder against mine. His fingers flex, curl, then go rigid.
“No.” The word comes out rough. “I was cold. Like the rest of them. Cold for seven years in that chair.” He looks down at my hand on his chest. “It started the day I carried you home.”
His grip tightens. Every tendon locked. Holding himself in place.
I lean in. Press my cheek against his arm. Close my eyes.
Every muscle locks.
His hand lifts from mine and hovers over my back. The heat of it against my spine, so close but not touching.
“It’s okay,” I whisper against his arm. “You can touch me.”
His hand settles between my shoulder blades. Light. His fingers spread across my back, and a shudder runs through him.
