#frozen fire

“Hey, I visited, didn’t I?” At the narrowed, sideways look she gave him, he raised his hands in conciliation. “Two days tops this time. I promise.”

Elle blew out a breath that ruffled the long white fringe hanging in her eyes. “Sure.”  

“C’mon, Dani,” he whined, using her old nickname from when they were kids. When they were little and similar in height, they had looked identical. Running amok through Ec’Nelis and introducing themselves to its denizens with the same name had been one of their favorite pastimes.   

Her eyes glowed with annoyance. “What?”

“I need to make sure Pandora is okay. You know that.”

“I do know.”

Danny leaned back and studied her. Elle still wasn’t looking at him. Her feet kicked in the open air, just above the soft plumes of colorful clouds crawling below them.

“I just . . .” She shook her head. “I just feel like so much is going to change.”

He arched a brow at her. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“It’s an I don’t know thing,” Elle said. “Everything has been getting worse and worse for so long, and now with the human here, I . . . I don’t know.” She turned to face him, shifting in the snow, her green eyes wide and earnest. “What if you leave and you don’t come back?”

“That won’t happen.”

“It will,” she said. “Eventually. Won’t it?”

Danny didn’t know what to say to that. He’d never said it aloud, but Elle knew him better than anyone. She belonged here in the Far Frozen, surrounded by the yeti and revered by them like the Frost Princess that she was, but Danny? He didn’t know where he belonged. While Elle had embraced that part of herself and thrived in it, Danny had always felt like an outsider.

“I will be back,” he said, his voice resolute. “There’s too much at stake not to.”

Elle snorted. “Oh, I bet there is.” At his blank look, she rolled her eyes and added, “The human?”

“What about her?”

Her head tilted as she leered at him. “I’ve seen the way you look at it.”  

Danny gaped at her in bewilderment. “I do not look at her in any way.”

Elle shrugged. “I get it, I do. It—she—doesn’t have horns or fur and now that she’s not all feral looking, I guess she’s not terrible to look at. I’m not judging you. Even if she is . . .” she wrinkled her nose, “human.”

“Please stop talking,” Danny grumbled. “I am not interested in a human.”

But then, he felt them—his intrusive and damnable thoughts as they niggled at him from some shadowy alcove in his mind. Creeping through his reason before he had the chance to snuff them out. He was suddenly transported to the memory of Sam’s warm fingers as they blazed down his arm, hastily cleaning the ectoplasm from his wounds. The room was heady with her concern for him, so potent that the innate fear that always wrenched in his presence was held at bay. He had frozen under her touch, too shocked to do anything else but gape at her, utterly overwhelmed by her abrupt proximity. 

Her emotions were always so powerful, like a searing blast of fire over his frigid, writhing core. He shuddered at the memory, still unsure how he felt about it. Or what it had meant.

Continue Reading on A03 HERE

Or start with CHAPTER ONE