The Ice Breaks

The boardroom doors had barely latched shut before Madam Vane’s hand clamped onto Frost’s arm. She didn’t speak; she simply led him through a hidden door behind the mahogany paneling into a soundproofed observation room.

The air here was thin and smelled of the same lavender that haunted his nightmares. She spun him around, her eyes manic as she searched his face.

"I saw it, Frost," she hissed, her voice a sharp needle. "The flicker. The weakness. You looked at that image of your father and you blinked. Do you want to end up like him? A memory? A failure?"

She reached up, her fingers digging into his cheeks, forcing his eyes to stay wide. "You are my perfect heir. You are a machine of stone and glass. If you let a single emotion through those eyes, you lose everything. You are nothing without the ice I put inside you."

She leaned in until their foreheads touched, her breath cold. "Go home. Scrub the humanity from your skin. Tomorrow, I expect you to be absolute.”

Frost left the building an hour later, his heart a block of lead. He was exhausted, his mind frayed by the constant pressure of her gaze. As he strode toward his private car, his mind was already calculating the next day's firing, his jaw locked in a permanent, frustrated snarl.

He was moving so fast he didn't see the flash of bright yellow.

CRASH.

A delivery bag burst open, scattering warm cartons of noodles across the pavement. Frost didn't stumble; he stood like a pillar, looking down at the girl on the ground. She was small, wearing a stained apron and a cap tilted sideways, her face flushed with the heat of the city.

"Watch where you’re going," Frost spat, his voice like cracking glaciers. "A mindless creature like you shouldn't be allowed on the same sidewalk as people who actually contribute to society. You’re a clumsy stain on this street."

The girl, who had been about to apologize, froze. Her eyes went from wide and shocked to burning with a sudden, violent fire.

"A stain?" she repeated, scrambling to her feet. "You think because you’re wearing a suit that costs more than my life, you can talk to me like I’m trash?"

"I don't think it. I know it," Frost said, his gaze fixed and inhumanly cold. "Now move. You’re polluting my air."

He turned to walk away, dismissed her as he would a broken piece of office equipment.

He never saw the strike coming.

With a scream of pure rage, the girl lunged. She didn't slap him—she pivoted and delivered a vicious kick directly to the center of his chest. The force was immense, fueled by a lifetime of being looked down upon.

Frost’s breath left him in a sharp wheeze. He hit the concrete hard, the wind knocked out of him, his expensive suit dragging through the spilled noodles.

"You listen to me, you frozen freak!" she yelled, standing over him as he gasped for air on the ground.

"Money doesn't give you manners! You might be 'perfect' in that big glass tower, but down here, you’re just a pathetic man who doesn't know how to say 'excuse me'! Maybe if you blinked once in a while, you’d see the world doesn't revolve around you!"

Frost looked up at her, his vision swimming, his chest burning with a pain he hadn't felt in years. For the first time in his life, someone had broken his flawless exterior—and she had done it with a cheap pair of sneakers.

He had never been this embarrassed before.

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