Snowmancer

Chapter 5, Part 1: Jem

Jem

The fire was too big for the tiny hearth in the corner of my tower room. The coals tumbled onto the stone floor, shooting sparks, but I ignored them. The sparks died on the bare stones.

The tower room hadn't been designed for habitation. Before I'd become me, my father had brought me up to watch the glittery katara flying over the ocean through the large glass window. Just him and me, as he explained how the world worked as his son stared in wonder.

But that had been before. Banned from company, I'd made the small room mine to rest in peace. The tiny fireplace had never bothered me before, but it wasn't I who needed it. With the fire roaring, the heat suffocated me and burned my cheeks, yet it only slowly melted the ice from Ilyas' veins.

Ilyas lay as still and as cold as the dead. I'd towelled him off the best I could, counting the seconds as the fire dried his black hair. I slipped a fur hat borrowed from the royal children over his head and hiked the blankets up to his neck.

Underneath, he was naked. My cheeks were hot, and not just from the fire. It was ridiculous to even consider it. I'd seen Ilyas nude in his harem, striding around the mats like he was clothed in the finest silks.

But now, he lay so vulnerable, so approachable. His jaw relaxed, and his fingers curled, palm up, from where I'd set it. His lips parted, and when I leaned down my ear to check his breathing as instructed, warm puffs sent tingles down my neck. My eyes dropped to the blanket edge, Ilyas' warm brown skin extending underneath. My fingers reached to raise the blankets an inch. I caught myself, jerking upright and slamming my flat hand on the bare stone.

Ilyas would sneer and ridicule me if he knew my temptations. He'd demand I bring him a new attendant to fend off my weakness. But I couldn't risk clothing him. If I tugged the cloth too hard, his skin would tear and scar.

I'd checked him for signs of frostbite, frostnip, and chilblains. Her Majesty, well studied in medicine, had checked too, slipping in and out like a ghost. A single scar, a single nerve damaged, would ruin his perfect body. That was far more important than his nudity.

When would he start shivering? He'd been unconscious ever since I'd fished him out of the water. He'd sunk without a fight. Didn't he know how dangerous the ice was? But he couldn't. In Nuriya, there was no ice. No cold water. No reason to know he needed to fight as hard as he could, to freeze his arms to the ice to keep his head above water.

He didn't even know enough to recognise the inlet. To know that while the ice never fully melted, it was thin at that time of year. Every Lumian child knew better than to run across.

But he didn't know. Ilyas couldn't be so eager to escape that he'd risk himself like that. He couldn't, could he? No, he hadn't known. He'd just seen it as the only escape route left him, because I'd stupidly believed he'd know better.

Where did he think I found the ice for the dragon?

I shook my head, and knelt by his pillow. He might have been clever in Nuriya, but in Lumi, he was like a babe.

Carefully, I laid my fingers across his forehead, just under the cap. His skin felt warm, and at the rush of reassurance filling my chest, I scowled at myself and pulled my hand away. How would I know how warm a normal human should be? I was only taking liberties with him.

He needed to get warm enough that he started shivering, warm enough so his body would start waking up instead of slowing down.

I glanced at the demon hovering outside the window, and it nodded its beak at me. It was not one of my usual snow forms, taken from the local creatures, but a creature I'd seen in Nuriya flying over the ocean like a bird, if birds bore wings and feathers instead of the serpentine, scaled form of katara. A snow form wouldn't survive the heat inside, so I needed something capable of lurking outside in the scant moments I left the tower, to warn me should Ilyas take a turn for the worse.