LITMIR.BIZ

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in his life, watching Drake bleed to death under his hands. “I’m sorry, baby, I—don’t, please, I’m gonna figure it out, just don’t—”

      Drake’s lips twitch into a smile. “Worth it. It was worth it.”

      His eyes slide shut.

      Before Shane can do something—the tattered thoughts in his mind run to blasting apart the whole countryside, or killing himself, or trying to pick himself up and continue when the last thing he loved in the world is gone—Drake freezes in his hands. He turns to ice in an instant, clear and cold as a white figure steps out of a sudden cyclone of ice.

      Shane’s blood goes cold, and not just because he’s holding Drake’s frozen body. He knows exactly who’s come to see him in this godforsaken wasteland. “The Ice King, isn’t it? I’ve killed a few of your men.”

      “And more of my creatures. You are a powerful mage, Shane Conell.”

      “Why are you here?”

      Frozen lips thin, into what could generously be called a smile. “Because this is the greatest opportunity I am ever likely to get. Do you want to save him?”

      Shane’s heart constricts. Never in his life has he wanted so badly to unmake something that’s happened, not even after the death of his family. “I can’t. I tried. I lost him.”

      “He’s not dead yet. Not quite. I can heal him, and give you power even far beyond what you have now.”

      Shane hesitates. A part of him wants to scream at himself for hesitating when Drake’s about to die, could die at any second, but they haven’t lived this long without learning to be suspicious of anyone who wants to help them. “Would he be truly healed? Not dependent continually on you for life, or trapped in a strange limbo, or suffering forever?”

      “He would be exactly as he was in the instant before the blade cleft him,” the Ice King clarifies. “No bindings, no bonds. He would be free, just as he was.”

      “And me?”

      The creature’s eyes narrow slightly. “I think you have some idea already.”

      They’ve fought the Ice King’s vassals before, Shane and Drake. The men and women of the Frozen Court are powerful, but cold, long since devoid of humanity in exchange for whatever cheap trinkets the Ice King tossed their way.

      Every part of Shane rebels, screaming in horror at the very idea, the thought of having body and soul enslaved to a cold, remorseless creature like this. “No pacts,” Drake’s voice echoes in his mind. “No deals. Nothing that binds us to anyone except each other.”

       But I can’t be bound to you if you’re dead.

       I can’t be anything if you’re dead.

      Drake’s lifeless face looks peaceful, as if he’s sleeping, and Shane is absolutely sick of being helpless. Most powerful mage in the world, and what does it get him? Couldn’t save his family. Couldn’t save his boyfriend. Can’t save himself.

      How long will he even last, without Drake to keep him grounded, keep him sane? He remembers the time before moving in next door to the Young household. He remembers the hate, the shame, the anger and sadness that had been his constant companions, knowing he was different, that he was probably responsible for his parents’ deaths just by being himself.

      Was it going to be like that from now on, without him?

      Drake was wrong. It isn’t worth it, not without Drake there. Wiping his face on one bloody hand, Shane nods. “Yes. Okay. You can have my soul if you fix him.”

      With the last feelings he’s ever going to have, Shane looks down at Drake’s sleeping face, then watches the ice melt, the wound close. Drake opens his eyes and grins, sitting up. “That was a close one, huh?”

      Shane gives him a smile, the last one he’ll ever feel. “Baby, you have no idea.”

      Then the Ice King rips away his soul.

       Chapter Three

      One of Shane’s boots hits the ground before his car’s wheels have entirely stopped spinning, crunching satisfyingly against the gravel. He shrugs on his coat, a thick leather jacket that has just about no effect on how much cold he feels, and buckles on his swordbelt, then checks his hair in the mirror. Huh. Black today. Maybe he was looking forward to this.

      It does feel good, he supposes, to stretch his legs. It’s been a week since the last time he left the Ice King’s fortress, concealed under a wholesale illusion covering an obscure government-sounding office. Even then, he’d only left to get drunk and pass out at Drake’s doorstep—or was that the time he’d crashed service? It’s hard to remember the things that don’t matter. Mostly it just feels cold.

      He unclips the GPS from his windshield, palming the little device. He taps it with a finger, flicking it to life. “Hey. Where is he?”

      “Turn left. In four hundred feet, turn right onto Seventeenth Street.”

      “Who the hell measures in feet anyway?” he grumbles, stuffing it into his pocket along with his hands, strolling off down the street.

      “Turn left.”

      Shane pauses, then pulls the GPS out to scowl at it. It’s a new model, and should be able to handle the spell he’d put on it for a year, at least. “You said turn right.”

      “Turn left,” it repeats, stubbornly.

      “Look, this isn’t complicated. Find Roy. How many feet?”

      “Your destination is on the left. Right. Left.”

      “Fucking piece of shit.” Shane jabs at the buttons, succeeding in changing her voice to Arabic, then Japanese, then Dark Fae, which he’s pretty sure wasn’t included with the regular package at Radio World.

      “Snearthen Asghar.”

      He’s so preoccupied with snarling every Dark Fae curse he knows at the thing that he doesn’t notice the men creeping up on him until the cold barrel of a gun presses against his temple.

      “Your wallet and your keys. Don’t turn around. Don’t fucking look at me.”

      Oh, this man wants to be menacing. Shane tries, with limited success, not to smirk. “My keys?”

      “You got a sweet ride.” One of the men sneers, pressing closer to him. “Maybe you’d be a sweet ride too, huh, faggot?”

      “Well, if you’re offering.”

      The wandering hand freezes, then pulls back in obvious confusion. “What the fuck did you just say to me, shithead? You wanna eat lead?”

      “Probably tastes better than your dick.”

      That does the trick. A thought from Shane freezes the hammer on the gun a split-second before it clicks, leaving one thug cursing at the damn thing as Shane moves, slamming the heel of his hand up into the second man’s nose, hard enough to drive bone splinters into his brain.

      “Cheap trick,” he says with a shrug as the dying man collapses to the ground, twitching and bleeding from the nose and ears. “Effective, though. How about you, big man? You wanna bleed?”

      The second thug tosses his useless gun to the ground, hands in the air. “N-no, man, I didn’t—”

      He doesn’t bleed. Shane freezes him where he stands, an unguarded touch of his finger lowering the man’s temperature to somewhere that he vaguely remembers from high school only registers on the Kelvin scale. “It’s a cute conceit, that you can unfreeze someone,” he remarks casually, shaking off the ice clinging to his finger. “They come back to life a hundred

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