Rowan's POV
Thorne had left her alone with a promise to return with more supplies. The silence in the cabin, after he was gone, was immense.
The compulsion started as a itch in her mind, a need to see. To confirm the horror she felt in her bones.
Pushing back the furs, she stood on shaky legs. The floorboards were cool under her bare feet, but not unpleasantly so. It was as if her very tolerance for temperature had been rewritten. She found a small, cracked mirror hanging on the wall by a leather strap, likely used for shaving.
She forced herself to look.
A stranger stared back.
Her auburn hair, the color of autumn leaves that Marcus had said he loved, was gone. In its place was a shock of white, so pure it seemed to glow against the dark logs of the wall. It wasn't the white of age, but the white of fresh snowfall under a full moon. It fell in messy waves around her shoulders, almost glittering.
Her eyes… Her green eyes, which Kira had always joked could be read like an open book, were now the pale, crystalline blue of a glacier crevasse. No warmth, no softness. Just a flat, frozen expanse with a darker ring of blue around the pupil. They looked ancient. They looked dead.
Her face was her own, yet not. Sharper, paler. Her lips seemed a shade bluer. And the frost… it wasn't just on her hands now. A delicate dusting of it clung to her eyebrows and the tips of her white eyelashes. She looked like a statue left out in a blizzard.
"No," she whispered to the reflection. The girl in the mirror mouthed the word back, a pitiful, frozen creature.
This wasn't a transformation. This was a corruption. Marcus hadn't just stolen her wolf; he had poisoned what was left, twisting it into this… this thing.
Tears welled up again, hot and shameful. She reached out, a desperate, foolish need to connect with the human face she remembered, to wipe the stranger's tears away.
Her frosted fingertips touched the glass.
There was no sound, just a sudden, violent sensation of cold leaping from her skin, eager and hungry. A spiderweb of frost exploded from her touch, racing across the surface of the mirror with terrifying speed. In less than a second, the entire mirror was opaque, coated in a thick, intricate pattern of ice. Her reflection vanished behind a wall of white.
She snatched her hand back as if burned, staring at the frozen mirror in horror.
She couldn't even touch something without destroying it. Without freezing it solid.
A broken cry tore from her throat. She stumbled backward, tripping over the pallet and landing hard on the floor. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, trying to make herself small. The sobs that wracked her body were silent and deep, stolen by the enormity of her grief.
She was a monster. A beautiful, terrible, destructive monster. The stories parents told their children to keep them from wandering into the frozen woods. She was the Frostborn, a legend of ice and death.
What was left of Rowan Ashwood? The girl who loved the smell of baking bread, who collected wildflowers, who believed in fated mates and happy endings? That girl was dead at the bottom of the Black Ice River, drowned alongside her stolen wolf.
All that remained was this… this creature in a cabin, crying frost-tears and turning the world to ice.
The door opened, letting in a gust of cold air and Thorne. He took in the scene in one glance: her huddled on the floor, the frozen mirror, her shattered expression.
He didn't sigh. He didn't offer empty comfort. He simply walked over, knelt beside her not too close and placed a bundle of clothes on the floor between them.
"The mirror was old anyway," he said, his voice gravelly but not unkind. He looked at her, his storm-gray eyes holding her frozen blue ones. "The frost will recede when you calm down. It's tied to your emotions. The power… it responds to strong feeling. Right now, your strongest feeling is fear. Of yourself."
"I'm a monster," she choked out, the words raw and true.
Thorne was silent for a long moment. "Marcus is a monster," he said finally, each word precise and hard. "He steals, corrupts, destroys for his own gain. What you are…" He gestured to the frozen mirror. "This is power. Wild, untamed, terrifying power. But it's not evil. It's what saved your life. It's what's going to let you take your life back." He pushed the clothes toward her. "Get dressed. I'll show you that you're not alone in being different."
He stood and walked back outside, leaving her with the clothes and his words.
Monster. Power. Not alone.
She looked at her frosted hands, then at the door where Thorne had exited. He saw the legend, the power. He didn't flinch from the frost.
But he didn't see the girl. Maybe the girl was truly gone.
Wiping her face, she left streaks of melted ice on her cheeks. She reached for the clothes simple, warm trousers, a tunic, a heavy wool sweater. As her agitation settled, she noticed the frost on her hands was indeed receding, melting away without a trace of wetness, leaving only that strange, pale skin.
Maybe the monster was all she had left. Maybe that had to be enough.
Slowly, she began to dress, the soft fabrics foreign against her cold skin. She was a monster in exile.
But for now, at least, she was a monster who was not alone.