Seeing her mother opposite her filled Yuuki with a rage she never knew she could hold, especially against someone so precious to her. Her own mother! Working with Ruby. The vile taste in her mouth caused some discomfort, and took her attention away from what was being said.

  Since she was only paying attention to her mother, Yuuki was the first to notice her mother’s hand reaching for the hilt of the sword on her back. Yuuki stood up, only to find that she was just a second too late. Vines had coiled around everyone at the table.

  Everyone except for one person.

  Her.

  “Yuuki, join us. You can still be saved.” Her mother spoke sweetly.

  It was sickening.

  Join them? Join the person who killed Crystal?

  A sick joke if nothing else.

  “You were always with her, weren’t you?” Yuuki was a bit shocked by the extreme malice in her own voice. Not surprised that she was aiming malice at her own mother, more so the sheer magnitude of it. Yuuki couldn’t think of a single time that she had exhibited such pure emotion at once.

  “You were always headstrong, just like your father.” Her mother shook her head. Yuuki’s ears twitched atop her head. Had she heard regret in her mother’s voice? “There is something keeping you over there. Maybe someone.”

  As her mother looked at Sarman next to her, Yuuki unconsciously moved an inch closer to him. Their time the night before was racing through her mind. Just thinking of her mother hurting Sarman was making the rage inside her grow.

  Yuuki’s knuckles were turning white from the pressure of making a fist.

  She didn’t have anything else to fight with.

  No swords.

  No magic.

  Only her bare hands.

  But she would make sure to protect Sarman until he could get out of the vines, no matter what.

  “-mber…”

  A familiar voice echoed in the back of Yuuki’s mind, but she pushed it away. This wasn’t the time to be getting distracted by something else.

  “If I had to hazard a guess, it would be you, young man. So tell me, what are you to my daughter?”

  Sarman stayed quiet.

  He wasn’t going to reveal anything.

  But if he did that, Yuuki knew that her mother wasn’t one to lightly threaten another person. Every hair on her tail was standing on edge, waiting to see what her mother would throw at them.

  “It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to say anything, I know it’s you. I guess this is goodbye.”

  Yuuki stood at the ready. She would defend Sarman, no matter what her mother threw at her.

  At least, that was her plan.

  She wasn’t fast enough to see the vine whip past her face. She wasn’t fast enough to catch it.

  Yuuki wasn’t fast enough to save him.

  She heard it.

  It was loud.

  It rang in her ears.

  That sickening sound of a body being punctured.

  “No…” Yuuki whispered as she turned around.

  There he was.

  Still standing, a soft smile on his lips as he looked at her.

  His hand reached out.

  “No…”

  “-member!”

  The voice in her head came back.

  Yuuki didn’t care.

  She reached out and grabbed Sarman’s body as he fell.

  “You’re fine. You’re fine. Salamander can heal you. Your phoenix feathers! They should activate any moment now!” Yuuki rapid fired off whatever she could think of as she cradled the silent Sarman. He never responded to her. He only smiled.

  “Remember!”

  Sarman couldn’t die. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Don’t worry.” Yuuki looked back at her mother as she started talking again. She was stroking the vine, still covered in Sarman’s blood. “He’ll be dead soon.” The vine shrunk until there was nothing left of it. “That vine was coated in the poison of the Azure Lilies. A rare poison with no cure in the entire world.”

  A cough from Sarman brought Yuuki’s attention back to him.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “It’s the same as Crystal… and my mother…” His voice was weak, yet his words shook her to her core.

  The same as Crystal?

  And his mother?

  Her mother was responsible for both.

  Yuuki began to shake.

  Her nails cut into the skin of her palm.

  “Remember!” That same voice called out to Yuuki. It was familiar. She had just heard it. Why was it calling out to her?

  “Remember!” She felt a hand wrap around her.

  “Crystal…?” Yuuki whispered the dead queen’s name.

  “Remember, the gift I gave you. Let your emotions out.” Crystal’s voice called out to her. It was instructions.

  Yuuki looked back down at Sarman. His smile. His eyes, pained as they were, the gaping hole in his chest. Yuuki couldn’t bear it.

  It was her mother’s fault.

  She hated her mother.

  Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.

  Yuuki’s fury grew.

  Rage. Rage filled her chest. Yuuki felt the rage threaten to overtake her.

  “Let it out!” Crystal’s words echoed again.

  Yuuki slowly put Sarman on the grown before sitting back on her knees.

  She looked up.

  She closed her eyes.

  “AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  Yuuki let out the most ferocious, guttural, cry that she could. Everything she was feeling was put behind it. As she screamed out, Yuuki could feel the rage inside of her trying to break out of her body.

  It wasn’t coming out through her scream.

  It wanted to leave through her hands.

  It wanted to leave through her feet.

  The rage was consuming all of her flesh.

  Yuuki let it out.

  She heard the cracking.

  She felt the ground beneath her feet grow slick.

  Yet she didn’t open her eyes.

  Not until the room was quiet for some time.

  Yuuki opened her eyes and was met with a crystal room.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  She could see her own breath.

  The room had been frozen.

  Every person in the room was frozen.

  Sarman beneath her.

  Nic and Aria nearby.

  Her father and uncle behind her.

  And her mother and Ruby across from her.

  Even the senators in the seats above.

  She was the only person unfrozen, though she had some ice crystals covering parts of her hands.

  Yuuki reached up to her face and found more small ice crystals there.

  Had her rage created the ice?

  Had the magic in her blood that had been locked for so long been granted to her?

  Yuuki stared at her hands, partially amazed, and partially in fear of her own strength.

  She could feel the ice all around her. It was an extension of her own body. Everything the ice touched, she felt. The faint heartbeats of those within the ice, getting ever slower as they continued to become slower.

  What would happen if she tried to take back the ice from just one person?

  Yuuki touched the frozen body beneath her. She focused just on the ice around her hands. She imagined the ice being absorbed back into her own hands.

  Closing her eyes, she tried harder.

  Nothing happened.

  “Damn it, is there nothing I can do now?” Yuuki cursed at her own stupidity. She didn’t even know if the ice truly came from her, why would she be able to absorb it?

  “It did come from you.”

  Standing in front of Yuuki was the ghostly apparition of Crystal. Her hair and dress were swaying in an invisible wind. All of Yuuki’s problems seemed to disappear just seeing her again. All she wanted to do was scream out Crystal’s name, to talk with her about everything, and gain her wisdom.

  But she knew that Crystal wasn’t actually here.

  This was her heart and her brain playing a cruel joke on her.

  “I’m not just a figment of your imagination.”

  “Sure you aren’t. Crystal died. The dead don’t come back.” Yuuki scoffed at the apparition of Crystal that her mind was showing her.

  “Well, she is dead, that much is true. But I am truly here.”

  “What?” Yuuki looked at the apparition, confusion plaguing her mind.

  “When the real me was dying, I gave you a gift, didn’t I?” Crystal's apparition reached out and grabbed Yuuki by the chin, holding her face up. “That gift was this power of yours. I unlocked the magic hidden within your blood. That past me left a portion of her consciousness within you. That consciousness is me.”

  “So… you’re Crystal? Really?”

  “That’s right. I was left behind to help you understand this gift once it fully manifested.”

  Yuuki looked down at her hands again. The apparition in front of her was here to help her understand. Was this gift something that she would come to be used to in the coming days?

  “Sadly, my time is almost up. There isn’t much left for me to say.”

  “What?!” Yuuki snapped her head to look at the apparition again. “But I barely know anything about this magic! What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Hear.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hear what the ice is telling you.”

  Hear the ice? Had the apparition gone mad? How could Yuuki possibly ‘hear’ ice?

  “Feel what the ice wants.”

  The apparition continued on, not caring about Yuuki’s confusion at its words.

  “Think about why it appeared now. And then you will understand your own strength.”

  Yuuki was about to call out to the apparition again, but it was already gone, leaving only the cold, still, air in its place.

  Hear, feel, think, and understand. Yuuki boiled down the insane strategy to those four simple concepts. She closed her eyes and focused on the ice again.

  She had been told to hear the ice so she could learn to feel what it wanted.

  Yuuki could feel the ice, just like before. It was like an extension of her own body. With her eyes closed, she paused. She stopped breathing as her cat ears twitched. She was listening as hard as she could to her surroundings, listening for anything in the quiet senate chambers.

  There was a slight hum around her.

  Was that music?

  Was the low hum she was hearing the ice talking to her?

  Was the ice trying to get her attention?

  The hum grew higher pitched as she was thinking, as if responding to her own thoughts.

  Yuuki was happy that she had learned how to listen to the ice. Now she had to figure out how to interpret what was being said to her.

  She could feel her heart starting to beat faster in anticipation.

  As it did, the ice’s hum become lower in pitch.

  Was that bad?

  The ice raised its pitch in agreement.

  Yuuki took a deep breath. She had to calm herself down. She believed that to be what the ice was telling her to do. If Yuuki wanted to be able to control the ice, she had to do what it wanted as well.

  As she calmed down, she could feel the ice becoming more responsive to her.

  It had originally been unleashed by her anger and fury, but in the end, the ice within her wanted Yuuki to stay calm while using it. The ice seemed sentient enough to know that it could be deadly if used by the wrong person.

  Yuuki reached down and put a hand on Sarman’s encased body. She tried to take back the ice again, only to find it refusing to listen to her.

  “Why won’t you listen to me? Unless…” A thought creeped into Yuuki’s head. What if they were warning her? What if the ice was telling her that Sarman would die as soon as she took away the ice?

  “Is that what you are trying to tell me?” Yuuki whispered to no one in particular.

  “Hm? Have I been talking to you?” A familiar, gentle yet old, voice appeared from beneath her. Yuuki opened her purple eyes to find a flaming lizard sitting atop her hand.

  It was a coincidence far greater than should have been possible.

  And yet, the spirit was the only one who could give her a concrete answer.

  “Salamander, if I free Sarman from the ice, will he die?”

  The flaming lizard looked up at her.

  “Yes.”

  Yuuki’s breath stopped.