A Crack Appears In the Ice

(Paige’s POV)

Floor's icy touch digs deep, settles in my bones like an old ache. Real. Only truth here. That dream-music from the dance? Gone. Quiet now - so quiet it hums. Her voice still hangs there. Hand over the pen.

This thing I hold - mine. Every word on the page - shaped by me. Messed up, falling apart, still belongs to me.

Hours pass before I rise. The maid comes back, carrying a tray unlike the earlier one. This holds only a cup of broth. A piece of toast, plain and crisp. Water in a small glass. Nothing more. Sustenance meant for someone broken. Meant for bodies locked away. Where strength is measured by what you’re allowed to eat.

It sits next to me now, placed there without a word. Her hands move fast, like she fears being caught. I watch how she glances at me - quick, sharp - then pretends to look elsewhere. What haunts her shows clear. That works just fine.

Up I rise when she's gone, movement stiff, every joint creaking under its own weight. From the table, I lift the glass - water gone in a single rough swallow. Toast tastes dead on the tongue, yet somehow it still ends up inside me. Then comes the broth, sharp with salt, burning through the chill. Warmth spreads, slow and quiet, as if something basic remembers how to work again.

Refusal isn’t defeat. It’s just planning. When something stops working, it gets set aside. If it limps along, someone watches it, keeps it near, makes use of what remains.

It has to work this way. She must feel sure that leaning on me makes sense.

Fresh paper waits on the table when she arrives. A brand-new box of paints tucked under her arm. Not a word about the ball - silence sits between us like furniture. Her hands move slow, steady, sure. Focus wraps around her like a coat.

A quiet start might help, she suggests, arranging the little table right there. From the hall's bouquet, one smooth white lily slides into a clear cup. Look at it, just like that, then put it down on paper

A shape forms before me. There’s a bloom torn away, wilting now in still liquid. A symbol sits there - too clear, almost rude.

A brush finds its way into my fingers. Shaking, really - this tiny dance never stops. Not pretending here. Weakness runs through me after too many quiet hours. Water first, then the edge of the blue paint cake catches the bristles. The blank page waits, just sitting there.

It's already clear what needs saying, so I leave it be.

Fingers drift without asking. Marks appear - not sharp, just pools of hue, forms half-hidden. Blue turns on itself, gray drags behind. In the middle, a stain blooms. White tears across, sudden and thin.

A blast of cold hits. Not just snow - this feels empty, like silence given form.

Cold seeps through each brushstroke. Not just a color, but something alive. Drips echo where silence should be. Her fear sits heavy in the corners. Mine stays outside, locked away. The dark does not wait. It pulls you under slow.

Her eyes turn sharp, fixed on me. Warm air brushes my forehead as she shifts closer. A quiet sound escapes her lips - curious. Could it be something seen before living? Maybe just a moment pulled from long ago

Silence comes instead of words. There it sits - just a fleck, pale and quiet, tucked into the turning blackness. Not much, really. A sliver that might be light, or perhaps something cold and shiny drifting loose.

The brush rested on the table. Then silence filled the room.

Over there, past the old fence line - that’s where we are headed, Paige,” she says, keeping her words soft but focused. Share what you know

From the canvas, my gaze slides to her. A hint of what chilled me down there leaks into my stare - just enough. My throat tightens before I speak. The word scrapes out. Barely more than air. "Cold." Then again, softer. "So cold." Water hums beneath those syllables. Murmuring without sound

Something shifts in her gaze. Not quite hunger - more like recognition catching fire. The way she sees it, these words come from somewhere sacred. To her, the murmuring stream isn’t just sound - it’s speaking through me.

Yes. Only her understanding misses the mark.

Her fingers close over my hand. Where exactly, she asks again. The pressure steady. Picture it clearly, she says. Not vague. Name the spot inside your thoughts

My eyes move away from her, shifting to the window, then to where the garden grows untamed. A quiet sound comes from me - “Old stone” - spoken slow, half-lost in breath. The air carries it under drooping branches, those heavy-headed trees. There’s a scent there. Wet soil. Water that stays too long

Half the old farm buildings on the property are now gone. Still, the icehouse remains exactly as it was.

Her hand squeezes mine - just once - then lets go. Up she rises, moving back and forth in quick little steps. "The icehouse," she whispers, almost like she forgot I’m there. Suddenly still, her eyes shift, sharp now, weighing something. They land on me: shaky, weak, the page beside me scribbled wild.

Fear from her past might be what she thinks flows through me. A location soaked in old dread, perhaps. That balance probably brings a quiet smile to her editor's face.

Her voice shifts, warmer now, as if handing out a prize. Good job, it seems to say, like I obeyed on cue. Take a break. There will be more of this when the sun comes back

Out the door she goes, canvas in hand.

---

It won’t start tomorrow. Not the one following either.

Off Beatrice goes, gone from the usual rhythm. Just quiet servants now show up instead. Garden strolls still happen, though watched by some thickset man hired lately, trailing behind at about ten steps. Paths of crushed stone are fine to follow freely. Yet if my foot strays near the weeping willows, a rough cough breaks the air - like stones dragged over stone.

A test is what I’m in right now. A thread - she placed it in my hands, then stepped back to observe whether I’d tug on it.

Far from the icehouse my gaze stays. Painting storms happens no longer. Back into empty space I go - though this time, eyes open wider. Listening takes hold. Servants’ routines pass before me, tracked without sound. That stillness arrives around midday, sun pressing down, everything bare, everyone hushed.

Memory finds its way back, sometimes when I least expect it.

It isn’t about the ball. Survival feels impossible right now.

That quiet stillness returns to me now. Stolen seconds, real and fragile. How Noah stayed up reading in his study, pages open long past midnight. Later, I'd see him slumped over paperwork, face resting on cold paper, breath even. His eyelashes cast soft lines across tired skin. The sharp edges he wore each day softened then - gone was the rigid control, replaced by something vulnerable. Just a boy really, too good-looking for comfort, worn down by things unseen. My chest tightened every time. A dull ache spread behind my ribs when I watched without moving. Breathing felt dangerous; sound might pull him back, make the walls rise again.

Breath caught as fabric warmed by skin pressed into mine during that quiet moment between shelves. A shift happened there, subtle, when his hands moved my shoulders back, positioning them just so. Resistance mattered less than feeling the way heat traveled from one body to another. Focus slipped every time he spoke near my neck, low and rough. Protection felt like surrender instead of strength. The room narrowed to where our bodies almost touched. Attention drifted despite knowing what came next. Sound blurred behind heartbeat thuds. Words reached me late: Was I paying attention?

Not really. A sense came over me.

That shade of blue sticks in my mind - his eyes when rage burned behind them, not icy but fierce, wild fire barely held back. Like clouds splitting open right before lightning hits, charged, unpredictable. Yet in those moments, odd as it sounds, I found peace. The anger came straight from him, raw, unpracticed. Not planned. Meant for someone who mattered.

Became. That old moment cuts like steel.

Buried deep, those thoughts stay locked away. A weakness they’d only feed. The quiet pain grows loud, sharp enough to break anything.

This time, it’s the strategy that holds my attention. That single hairpin rests in my palm. Water still fills the room below. Right here, right now, everything shifts toward the last move - getting her to lead me to where the vision began

Fog presses against the window just like the colour drying on my canvas. Beatrice steps inside, though not by herself. With her walks Vivian, silent. In the frame of what used to be my living space they freeze, both sharp as blades, dressed in quiet power.

“She’s listless,” Vivian observes, her voice bored. “Perhaps the crisis has passed. She’s just… empty. As I said.”

Blink by blink, Beatrice watches. My gaze stays locked on my hands, fingers moving slow across the skin like they’re lost in some unknown country.

“No,” Beatrice says slowly. “There’s more. She’s… connected to something. A place of power on this estate. I need to see how she reacts to it.”

Vivian’s bored expression sharpens into interest. “The icehouse? Don’t be absurd. That’s just a childhood nightmare.”

“The mind and prophecy are not bound by logic,” Beatrice replies, her tone that of a lecturer. “Fear can be a conduit. Her vision was of cold, whispering water. In old stone.” She turns to me. “Paige. Would you like to go for a walk? To a special place?”

I don’t react.

She comes forward, takes my hand. Her touch is deliberately gentle. “It might help the memories flow, my dear. The visions. It might… loosen them.”

My gaze darts to her face, then slips off. A tiny nod follows - barely there, almost unsure.

Vivian scoffs. “This is a waste of time.”

Fine, humor me," Beatrice says, lips stretching into a narrow grin.

This is me now, moving along the loose stones with Beatrice on one side and the heavyset caretaker on the other. Toward the drooping trees we go, step after step. Moisture climbs into the atmosphere. A chill settles in. Where bird songs once bounced, there's only wetness falling from broad leaves. Silence fills the space between each drop.

Breath catches, pulse kicks up hard beneath the skin. Showtime now. Lights hit, space opens wide. Every move has got to land just right.

The icy shape of the building appears, its roof close to the ground. My pace slows without meaning to. There - breath sticks, loud in my throat.

What's going on, Paige? Beatrice says, her eyes fixed on me, sharp and steady.

A shiver climbs up from my toes. The opening ahead swallows the light. My fingers dig into my shoulders. Softly, I say it: not happening.

“What do you feel?”

A shiver runs through me as I say it - cold. That moment comes back sharp: her fingers, the wetness, how fast my pulse jumped. Everything feels off now. Those sounds inside my head? They aren’t calm. Anger lives there

A spark of something wild shines in Beatrice's gaze. Move nearer, she seems to say without words

Back I stagger, off balance. A grip at my arm - firm - a nudge ahead.

“Just to the door,” Beatrice coaxes. “Show me what you see.”

Something pulls me ahead, stopping just at the broken wooden door, cracked open a little. From inside drifts a stink - damp rot mixed with old chill. That odor? It matches how I feel when hope runs out.

A shadow stretches before me. My muscles loosen, caught between acting fear and feeling it. Cold stone surrounds like a grave waiting. Maybe even meant for me.

Here he is, I say, barely more than a whisper now.

A voice says only one word. Behind me stands Beatrice, close enough to feel but not touch.

“The… the guardian,” I stammer, pulling from old novel tropes, from half-remembered myths. “Of the deep water. He’s… sleeping. But he listens.”

A whisper in frozen water might sound like this. Not clear, more like fog without shape.

Beatrice is riveted. “What does he guard?”

Staring at her, my eyes stay open, fixed. "The truth," I say, voice low. Down goes my stare, toward the grimy threshold, where wood kisses cold rock. That small silver thing - her hairpin - lies hidden below, swallowed by damp shadows. Just a speck. Still true.

I stumble, one palm pressing against my brow. The noise grinds through me - my legs give way without warning. A low groan escapes as the room pulses around me.

Falling, I’m caught - his hands stop my drop. Heavy, lifeless, I sag against him.

“Take her back,” Beatrice orders, her voice vibrating with excitement. “She’s not empty, Vivian. She’s a key. And I’ve just found the lock.”

Carried now, away from the icehouse, my head bumps slow on a coarse fabric shirt. Stillness holds behind my eyelids, even when the steps jolt us both.

A quiet hardness forms behind closed lips. This grin does not welcome. It stays hidden, sharp at the edges, growing without sound.

She believes.

There it sits, the lock discovered. Turning the key comes next.