Frostbite

Chapter Nineteen

FROST KILLS GUARD, was the headline on the morning newspaper the next day. Eira hadn't expected it to be public so soon, if it was going to be released at all. But seemingly, the news had travelled fast.

"'We suspect it was carried out by the runaway Permafrost, Eira Lowry. This confirms the renegade Frost as extremely dangerous. If you catch sight of her, do not engage in any circumstance. Call for guards or policemen and let them arrest the suspect,'  says the statement given by the captain of the guard this morning,'"  Kea read aloud, distaste evident in his tone. "Fearmongering, isn't it? People will be afraid of the Frosts now. They're sabotaging themselves."

"Maybe they want to be feared," replied Eira quietly. "It's easy to keep the masses at bay if they're terror-stricken. They won't dare try anything. Or, at least, that's what's going through the Frosts' heads." Fear-tactics. That's what the Frosts favoured. They always had.

But it was strange, wasn't it? That the speculation about the guard's killer was actually true.

"You have a point," Kea sighed.

Eira didn't respond. She was too busy trying to ignore how the article took her back to last night, how she felt as if she could still feel the cold, lifeless skin against her gelid palms.

"What's up with you today?" asked Kea, setting the newspaper down on the table and looking her over. "You seem distant."

"I'm fine," Eira asserted. "Why are you even here? It's not even noon."

"Why are you here? You told me you had a day off. Don't tell me you hang around work all day longing for the moment when you can finally scrub another glass."

"I'll be going momentarily."

"You know, I take what I said before back. You aren't distant. You're considerably more prickly than usual."

Eira gritted her teeth. "I said I was fine."

"Are you sure? You say that a lot. It's probably the second most common phrase that's come out your mouth lately, beneath only insults directed towards me. I don't think you've been fine since a couple of days ago in that tavern."

Eira put her cup down with a little more force than necessary. "Can you just drop it? How can you assume to know that something's wrong with me when we've barely known each other three weeks?"

Kea said nothing. He just looked at her with an unreadable expression.

Eira took a rattling breath and got to her feet. She needed to control herself. That all too familiar cold feeling was snaking its way from her shoulders to her fingertips, and she hated it.

"You know what, I concede. I'm terribly sorry for acting prickly towards you. I'm actually not fine in the slightest."

Without another thought Eira stood up and walked out of the inn.

After a few breaths of the bracing outdoor air, she'd momentarily calmed herself. What she'd said to Kea now sounded terribly over-reactive and confrontational.

What the hell had she been thinking?

He had been right—she hadn't been herself since what had happened that night in the tavern. Though everything had been made so much worse by the events of last night. Now every time she closed her eyes she heard that guard's scream; she saw the desolated pieces that had once been his body. It sickened her that she'd inflicted something like that upon another human.