"I am killing you, Lloyd! Do you understand? I am ending it! Does that not matter to you? Does your life not matter?"

  She squeezed. Her fingers were stronger than steel, reinforced by the magic of the Winter Sovereign. She could have crushed a stone pillar with this grip. She could have bent an iron bar.

  But she didn't crush his throat. Not yet. She applied just enough pressure to cut off the air, just enough to threaten, just enough to demand a response.

  She wanted him to fight.

  She needed him to fight.

  If he fought back, if he summoned his fire or his lightning, if he tried to stab her or blast her away, it would mean something. It would mean he cared enough to survive. It would mean he had some passion left, even if that passion was hate.

  Hate was a connection. Hate was hot. Hate was an emotion that tied two people together. If he hated her, she still existed in his world.

  But Lloyd did not fight.

  He hung there, pinned to the ancient stone wall of the tower by thick spikes of ice that pierced his sleeves and trousers. His feet dangled inches off the floor. His arms were limp at his sides.

  He didn't claw at her hands. He didn't gasp for air. He didn't try to summon a spirit.

  He simply looked at her.

  His eyes were open. They were that strange, beautiful black color that she had fallen in love with months ago. But they were disturbing. They were placid. They were calm. They were the eyes of a man watching rain fall on a windowpane, bored and detached.

  "Fight back!" she shrieked, shaking him violently.

  Her thumbs pressed deeper into his windpipe. She felt the cartilage shift.

  "Use your fire! Use your lightning! Break me! Hurt me! Do something!"

  The wind howled around them, a chorus of mocking ghosts. It whipped her black hair into her face, blinding her for a second, but she didn't let go.

  "Why won't you fight for me?" she begged, her voice cracking, losing its terrifying edge and replaced by raw anguish. "Why won't you hate me? Why won't you love me? Why are you so empty?"

  She stared into his eyes, searching for a spark. A flicker of fear. A flash of anger. Anything.

  Silence.

  The lack of resistance was more painful than any counterattack he could have launched. It was the ultimate rejection. It was a silent statement that screamed louder than words: You are not worth the effort. You are not worth the energy it takes to lift a hand.

  It said that he had already checked out. He was already gone. He had left the building, leaving his body behind as a parting gift for her to destroy.

  The pressure in Rosa’s chest became unbearable. The narrative she had built in her madness—that this was a grand tragedy, a passionate, violent end to a doomed romance—was crumbling. This wasn't a tragedy. It was a farce. She was screaming at a wall. She was trying to murder a ghost.

  "Please," she whispered, leaning her forehead against his.

  Her skin was freezing cold, radiating the chill of death. His skin was warm, but fading. Her black tears fell from her eyes, tracking through the white makeup on her face, and dripped onto his cheeks. They froze there, staining his face like dark scars.

  "Please, Lloyd. Just once. Say my name like you mean it. Say you regret it. Say you love her. Say anything."

  She waited.

  One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

  The wind roared. The massive bronze bell above them groaned as the gale pushed against it.

  But from Lloyd, there was nothing. No breath. No word. No struggle.

  Rosa pulled her head back, looking at him again.

  Panic, cold and sharp, began to prick at the edges of her rage.

  His face was changing. The healthy color was draining away, replaced by a greyish, bluish tint that crept into his lips. His eyelids fluttered, then drooped halfway.

  He was dying.

  She was actually doing it. She was extinguishing the light of the only star in her sky. She was crushing the life out of the man she had sworn to protect.

  And still, he did not blink.

  A horrible, creeping realization began to crawl up her spine. It started in her stomach and worked its way up to her throat. It wasn't that he was stubborn. It wasn't that he was stoic. It wasn't that he was playing a game of chicken.

  It was that he wasn't there.

  "Lloyd?" she said, her voice trembling.

  She released her grip slightly. Just a fraction of an inch.

  His head didn't stay up. It lolled forward, heavy and loose, his chin coming to rest on his chest. It moved like a puppet with its strings cut.

  She stepped back, her hands shaking. The black ice sword she had dropped earlier lay shattered on the floor, glistening like broken glass.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "No," she whispered. "No, don't play games. Don't pretend."

  She grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

  "Wake up! Look at me!"

  The body swayed under her hand, heavy and lifeless. The head bobbed sickeningly.

  The madness that had been fueling her, the hot, black rage that had driven her across the kingdom and turned her into a monster, suddenly hit a wall of absolute, freezing terror. The red haze of anger evaporated, leaving her standing in the cold clarity of what she had done.

  "I... I killed him," she whispered.

  The thought didn't bring satisfaction. It didn't bring the peace she thought it would. It didn't bring a sense of justice or closure.

  It brought an apocalypse.

  She had done it. She had destroyed the one thing she wanted to keep. She had frozen the moment, just like she wanted, but the moment was a corpse.

  She stared at his hands. They hung limp at his sides.

  Those were the hands that had healed her mother when no doctor could. Those were the hands that had built an empire from dirt and scrap metal. Those were the hands that had held hers at the altar. Those were the hands that had touched Mina.

  They would never move again. They would never build another machine. They would never hold a pen. They would never hold a child.

  The blackness in her hair began to recede. It bleached out like ink dissolving in water, turning from void-black to grey, and then back to her natural, shimmering silver. The corruption couldn't sustain itself in the face of such absolute, crushing grief. Her rage required a target, an opponent. It couldn't survive in the vacuum of his death.

  Her eyes cleared. The abyssal black drained away, revealing the terrified, wet grey eyes of the woman beneath the monster.

  She reached out, trembling, to touch his cheek.

  It was freezing.

  Not with the cold of her magic. She knew the feel of magical cold; it was sharp and biting. This was different. This was the cold of meat. This was the cold of an object that no longer held a soul.

  "Lloyd?" she whimpered. "Lloyd, please. I didn't mean it. I just wanted... I just wanted you to see me."

  There was no answer. Only the wind, whistling through the empty arches of the tower.

  The reality of the situation crashed down on Rosa with the weight of a collapsing mountain.

  He was dead.

  She had killed him.

  The realization stripped her bare. The Ice Queen, the Sovereign, the spy, the warrior—all those layers were incinerated in an instant, leaving only a frightened, broken girl standing in the snow.

  She fell to her knees in front of him. She didn't care about the dignity of her station. She didn't care about the mud on the floor.

  She grabbed his limp hands, rubbing them frantically between her own, blowing warm air onto them, trying to spark some heat back into the cooling flesh.

  "Wake up," she begged, her voice high and thin. "Please, wake up. I'll go. I promise, Lloyd, I'll go. I'll sign the papers. I'll give you the divorce. I'll leave the country. You can have her. You can have the baby. You can have the house. You can have everything."

  She pressed her face into his palm, wetting it with her tears.

  "Just breathe," she sobbed. "Just take one breath. Don't leave me like this. Don't make me a murderer."

  She pressed her ear to his chest. She held her breath, straining to hear the familiar, strong rhythm of his heart. She remembered the sound of it. She used to fall asleep listening to it.

  Silence.

  No heartbeat. No rhythm. No life. Just the hollow echo of her own sobbing breath bouncing off his ribs.

  She looked up at his face. His eyes were still open, staring past her, staring at the grey sky, staring at nothing. The emptiness in them wasn't indifference anymore. It was absence. The light was gone. The golden fire was extinguished.

  A scream built in her throat. It started deep in her diaphragm, a ball of pressure that expanded until it tore her vocal cords.

  "NO!"

  She grabbed his shoulders and pulled.

  The ice daggers pinning him to the wall shattered under her strength. They tinkled onto the floor like broken chandeliers.

  His body fell onto her.

  It was heavy. Dead weight.

  She caught him, collapsing backward onto the stone floor of the tower. She pulled him on top of her, wrapping her arms around him in a desperate, crushing embrace. She buried her face in his neck, smelling the scent of ozone, sweat, and the faint, lingering smell of his cologne.

  "I'm sorry," she sobbed into his neck. "I'm so sorry. I love you. I love you so much it hurts. Why couldn't you see that? Why did you make me do this?"

  She rocked him back and forth on the cold stones. Her tears fell onto his face, freezing into tiny diamonds on his skin.

  "I didn't want this," she whispered to the dead man. "I just wanted you to come back to me. I just wanted us to be like we were on the mountain."

  The blizzard around them began to falter.

  The anchor of the storm—her rage—was gone. The wind died down, turning from a scream to a whimper. The oppressive, magical darkness that had blotted out the sun lifted, leaving only the grey, natural light of a cloudy winter afternoon. The pocket dimension she had created was dissolving.

  Rosa looked around. She saw the destruction she had caused. The shattered clock face. The ruined town below, smoking and broken. And the dead man in her arms.

  She was a monster.

  She was the villain of the story.

  The bards would sing songs about this day. They would tell the story of the jealous, mad wife who murdered the Hero of the Empire. They would say she was possessed. They would say she was evil.

  And they would be right.

  She looked at her hands. They were stained with his blood—not much, just a smear from where the ice had pierced his clothes—but it looked like an ocean of red to her.

  She couldn't stay here.

  She couldn't face Mina. How could she look her sister in the eye? Mina was carrying his child, and Rosa had just killed the father. She had widowed her sister before the marriage even began. She had made her nephew or niece an orphan.

  She couldn't face his parents. She couldn't face the King. She couldn't face the world she had broken.

  If she stayed, they would arrest her. They would try her. She would let them execute her. She deserved it.

  But the thought of the trial, the public shame, the look on Mina’s face... it was too much. She was a coward. She knew it. She couldn't face the consequences.

  She gently pushed his body off her. She laid him on the cold stone, arranging his limbs so he looked like he was sleeping.

  She brushed the black hair from his forehead. Her fingers lingered on his skin, tracing the line of his jaw.

  "I will preserve you," she whispered, her mind fracturing, trying to find a new logic to cling to in the chaos. "I will keep you in my memory. The only place you were ever truly mine."

  She leaned down and kissed him. His lips were cold. It was the kiss of a ghost.

  She stood up. Her legs were shaky. She felt weak, hollowed out, as if she had poured all her insides onto the floor.

  She looked at him one last time. The image of his dead, empty eyes burned itself into her retinas. It was a scar that would never heal. It was a picture she would see every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her immortal life.

  She turned away.

  She walked to the edge of the tower. The drop was hundreds of feet.

  She didn't look back. If she looked back, she would break. If she looked back, she would lie down beside him and let the cold take her too. And she didn't deserve that peace. She deserved the cold. She deserved the exile. She deserved to live with the pain.

  She summoned her power.

  It felt different now. It wasn't the hot, rushing power of battle. It was a slow, heavy, mournful tide. It was the blue of deep grief.

  An ice platform formed beneath her feet. It was simple, unadorned. A raft for a castaway.

  She launched herself into the air.

  She didn't fly back toward the capital. She didn't fly south toward the warmth.

  She turned north.

  Toward the glaciers. Toward the dead lands where nothing grew and nothing lived. Toward the place where the silence was eternal.

  She flew away from the ruin of her life, leaving behind the corpse of her husband and the last remnants of her heart. The wind caught her hair, streaming it behind her like a banner of surrender, as the Queen of Winter fled into the oblivion of the snow.

  The scream that tore from Rosa’s throat as she ascended wasn't a battle cry. It wasn't a command. It was the sound of a human soul being ripped in half.

  It started low in her chest, a vibration of pure anguish, and erupted with enough force to shatter the remaining ice constructs in the town square below. Millions of glittering shards rained down on the empty streets like a funeral procession of diamonds, chiming as they hit the stones.

  Rosa didn't look down. She couldn't.

  If she looked down, she would see the tower. She would see the spot where she had left him. She would see the reality of what her hands had done. So she looked up. She looked at the grey, indifferent sky, and she fled.

  She flew blindly. Her vision was blurred by tears that froze instantly on her eyelashes, sealing her eyes shut for moments at a time. She didn't need to see. She didn't need navigation. She just needed to be away.

  Away from Serrum Town. Away from the smell of ozone and frozen blood. Away from the memory of Lloyd’s empty, golden eyes staring at nothing.

  She pushed her mana to the limit. The platform of ice beneath her feet cracked and groaned under the strain, but she fed it more power, burning through her reserves with reckless abandon. She broke the sound barrier with a deafening boom—a thunderclap of mourning that shook the clouds.

  The wind roared in her ears, but it couldn't drown out the voice in her head.

  Murderer.

  The word wasn't spoken; it was felt. It was a weight in her gut, heavier than gravity.

  Kin-slayer.

  Monster.

  She flew faster. The landscape below turned into a smear of colors. Green forests, brown roads, blue rivers—they all blended into a meaningless streak. She was moving so fast that the air friction began to heat the shield of cold air around her, creating a trail of steam that marked her path across the heavens like a scar.

  She wanted to outrun the thoughts. She wanted to fly fast enough that she left her own consciousness behind, shedding her memories like old skin. But the memories were faster than she was.

  Images flashed before her eyes in a strobe-light of horror. She saw Mina’s hand resting protectively on her belly. She saw Lloyd’s calm, sad face as he told her he didn't love her. She saw the black ice tearing through the market. And, most painfully, she saw his body limp in her arms, heavy and cooling.

  "I saved you," she whispered to the wind, her voice sounding small and broken in the vastness of the sky. "I saved you from the demons. I saved you from the politics. Why couldn't I save you from me?"

  She remembered the promise she had made to herself when she accepted the Demon King Bael’s deal all those years ago. I will save my mother. I will bear any cost.

  She had saved her mother. But the cost hadn't been her emotions, as she had foolishly thought. The cost hadn't been her humanity. The cost had been Lloyd. She had traded his life for her mother’s, in a twisted, delayed exchange that destiny had orchestrated with cruel precision.

  "I should have died on Mount Monu," she sobbed, wiping the frozen tears from her cheeks. "I should have let the Lamia kill me. He would be alive. He would be happy. He would be with Mina."

  The thought of Mina brought a fresh wave of nausea that nearly made her fall from her platform.

  How would Mina react? She was carrying his child. She was waiting for him to come home. Instead, she would get news that her sister—the sister she had welcomed, the sister she had tried to love—had flown into a rage and killed him.

  Rosa had not only killed her husband; she had killed her nephew’s father. She had widowed her sister before the marriage even began. She had turned an unborn child into an orphan.

  There was no redemption for this. There was no apology that could bridge this chasm. She couldn't write a letter. She couldn't send money. She couldn't offer an explanation. Any contact from her would be poison.