Close enough to see. Close enough that the frost reached the edge of the vanity nearest her hand and stopped dead at the edge.
The ice crackled softly in the sudden cold.
He stared at the frozen mirror. His reflection stared back, pale eyes blazing silver-white, his stripe patterns vivid against his skin.
Phoebe hadn't moved.
She was looking at the frost on the mirror. At the ice on the gift. At his hands. At him.
six
. . .
The frostlily was beautiful.She'd give it that.
A single long stem, wrapped in tissue paper. White petals that caught the frozen light from the mirror. A flower that bloomed only during Frostfall, that vendors sold for obscene prices along the main promenade, that lovers gave to each other on Solstice Night.
The note was folded beside it. Handwritten block letters, no signature.
Phoebe,
Your voice tonight reached me in a way nothing has in years. The way you held that last note during your first set, then took that small breath before the final phrase, that was for me. I know it was. I'll be here every night. Don't be afraid. You found your audience.
Your Truest Listener.
Cold sweat prickled at her hairline under the stage makeup.Her palms grew damp. The room had dropped ten degrees in the time it took her to read the card, and the frost on the mirror was still spreading its gorgeous, terrifying lacework toward the tissue-wrapped stem.
Thorne was beside her with his hands balled into fists and an expression she had never seen on his face.
Not blank. Not stoic. Something that looked like fury but colder.
Her body's threat response kicked in.
It didn't reach for the door or her bag. It reached forhim. A half-step closer, her shoulder nearly brushing his arm, her body making a choice her brain couldn't override. The cold rolling off him should have driven her back. Instead, it steadied her. The sweat at her hairline cooled, her breathing leveled, and she did not step back.
He was already moving.
He lifted his comm to his mouth, his voice clipped and precise: "Thorne to dispatch. Dressing room seven, headliner venue. Unauthorized entry. I need a forensic team and a lock recode, now." He didn't wait for an acknowledgement before switching channels. "Overnight patrol, double pass frequency on the performer's residential block effective immediately. Confirm."
The confirmation came back. He was already at the door, examining the lock mechanism, his pale fingers tracing the seal without touching it. His shoulders filled the doorframe when he turned to give the next order, and she watched the way his body organized itself around the task. Every movement was stripped down to function, every word aimed at one specific outcome.
"I need a secondary scan layer at this threshold," he said into the comm. "Keyed to ping my personal frequency on any entry. Non-negotiable."
She stood in the middle of her own dressing room with a stranger's love letter icing over on her vanity and watched him work. The breadth of him when he turned. The precision in his hands when he tested the window latch. The cold radiating off him.
All of him was steadying her, and she was going to have to think about that later.
He finished his sweep and came back to where she stood. He was closer than protocol demanded, and his eyes were still that blazing silver-white, not fully settled back to their normal ice-blue.
"We will find out who left this and how they gained access." Flat. Certain. "Until we do, your comm stays on your person at all times. Not in your bag."
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't her old manager's practiced concern after incidents. This was colder and more solid, and it asked nothing of her.
She believed him. Completely, immediately, without the usual audit she ran on every promise anyone made her.
"Okay," she said.
He held her gaze for one more second. Then he stepped back, and the professional distance returned like a door closing, and he walked her through every entrance in the venue with his hand hovering near, but never on, the small of her back. He went through testing locks and checking corridors, until the forensic team arrived and the dressing room was no longer hers for the night.
