Lucas POV
The scotch was supposed to numb the static in my brain. Tyler had been talking for twenty minutes about the Nile Town rigs, but his voice was just a dull hum against the background radiation of my disorder. I was sitting by the floor-to-ceiling window of the penthouse, watching the busy streets, feeling the familiar, jagged chill creeping up my spine.
"I'm heading to my room, Tyler," I muttered, setting the glass down. "The whiskey isn't working."
"It's the company, Lucas," Tyler laughed, though his eyes held a flicker of genuine concern. "Go on. Sleep it off. We'll conquer the world in the morning."
I stumbled into my suite, the darkness of the room feeling like a heavy shroud. I didn't turn on the lights. I started at my tie, my movements clumsy. My Agnosia was creeping in, I felt a low-frequency vibration in my ears that usually preceded a seizure.
Then, the air in the room changed.
The scent of the hotel linens was suddenly replaced with florals mixed with something like jasmine and rain.
I turned, my hand reaching instinctively for the small starch of my back where I usually kept my blade, but I stopped. A shadow moved toward me.
A woman. She was swaying, her movements disjointed, as if she were walking through deep water.
"Who are you?" I demanded with my tone sounding like a cracking ice. "How did you get in here?"
She didn't answer with words. She stumbled into the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains, and I saw her. I'd recognize that face, she was the woman in the red coat from the street. Well Only the coat was gone now.
She looked fragile, her eyes wide and clouded with a terrifying haze.
But what was she doing here, I thought to myself.
Before I could call Brandon, she was in my space. Her hands were burning with a feverish heat, as she grabbed my lapels.
"Please," she whispered.
I reached out to steady her, my cold palms meeting the searing skin of her shoulders. The contact was like an electric shock.
*Heat.*
It ignited a fire that surged through my fingertips and raced straight to the center of my frozen nervous system. For the first time in years, the Cold in my marrow from my Agnosia fled.
I tried to pull back. "You're drugged. You don't know what you're doing."
"I... I can't..." she whimpered, her head falling against my chest. Her breath was ragged, smelling of the same sweet, metallic poison I had recognized a thousand times in the underworld.
She looked up, and in the dim light, our eyes locked. There was no logic left in her, only a desperate, chemically induced hunger. She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to mine.
The last of my restraint snapped like a brittle twig.
My body, starved from warmth for five long years, reacted with a violence that terrified me. I didn't care who she was. I didn't care about the board meeting, or Uncle Spencer, or the Elliott legacy.
I swung her up onto the bed, and captured her lips. She held my neck with her two hands and pulled me closer, deepening the kiss. My hands, usually so calculated and precise, now tremy as I lost myself in the fire she brought into the room. For one night, the CEO of ZigLan Autos was gone. The Ice King was dead. There was only a man, finally feeling the sun after a lifetime of winter.
....
The next morning.
I woke up with a clarity that felt like a physical weight on my chest. The cold was back, but it was different quieter, as if it were observing me from a distance. My nervous system was calm.
I reached across the bed, my hand searching for the warmth of the night before.
But the sheets were cold.
I sat up, my heart hammering against my ribs. The room was empty. The scent of jasmine and rain still lingered in the air.
I looked at the bedside table. A small piece of hotel stationery sat there, the edges slightly crumpled. I picked it up, my pulse spiking as I read the messy, hurried script:
" I'm sorry. I don't know how I ended up here. Please... just forget this happened."
I crumpled the paper in my fist, my jaw tightening until it ached.
"Brandon!" I roared, standing up and grabbing my robe.
My assistant appeared at the door in seconds, his face pale. "Sir? Is everything alright? Mr. Tyler is downstairs..."
"Check the security footage for this floor," I interrupted, my voice sounding like a blade being sharpened. "Between midnight and 6 AM. I want a name and an address. And I want to know who let her into this room."
"A woman, sir?" Brandon asked, his eyes wide.
"Yes" I muttered, walking towards the window.
Down in the harbor, the fog was lifting. I thought about what happened last night.
I had spent my life building a throne of glass, thinking that ice was my greatest strength. But as I stared out at Flensburg, I realized the truth.