"And you've lost your only chance to kill me."
The words landed like a blade.
Jean's heart cracked, quietly but completely. Her breath hitched, fingers trembling around the handle of her weapon as a cold, colder than anything she could ever conjure, spread through her chest. It wasn't fear. It wasn't pain. It wasn't shock.
It was despair.
A deep, suffocating despair that wrapped around her ribs like chains.
'I knew it would end like this... so why... why does it hurt this much?'
Her mind spiraled violently, emotions colliding and shattering inside her like broken ice.
'Why am I shaking? Why does my chest feel so hollow? Why does losing to him feel so, wrong? I'm a Frost. I should be calm... unshaken... dignified... So why does this feel like I'm being erased?'
Her vision blurred. Her pulse hammered against her throat. For a single heartbeat she felt small, fragile, like a thin branch under winter snow.
Then her eyes hardened.
