Lips Like Ice

VII

The shivering has long since stopped, and Lydia knows that this is a bad thing, knows that this is a dangerous thing, but she is too sleepy to care. She spares a thought for the ... irony? Is it irony? Is that the right word?

The pattern that she seems to have fallen into: being too sleepy and too sick to do anything but drift and wake, drift and wake, over and over again, in the bed of a thing that isn't human and doesn't treat her like one. It's a... yes, pattern is the right word.

She is lump under the duvet, and even her own breaths don't warm her any more. They don't fill the space that she has carved out for herself amid cloth and feather. She should be angry about this, she thinks, but then feeling anything at all requires such a great surge of emotion to pierce the scar-spell, and she's just...

she's just so tired... and cold... too cold to feel anything that large.

She is so small.

The Prince has murdered her, and she should hate him for it. But it was inevitable, wasn't it? In a strange way, this was always going to be Lydia's fate, she decides. Neglected to death by a spoiled child, like a hamster left to wither in an exercise ball. An unwanted pet, forced upon a petulant Prince.

She wouldn't say that she's resigned to her fate. But she's certainly not surprised.

And then the door opens.

A waft of warm air from the parlor caresses the outside of the duvet, but Lydia can't seem to make herself move her arms, crawl out of her useless cocoon.

"Come out!" the Prince snarls, and clearly his anger hasn't dissipated yet. "I see her there, come out, or I shall thrash her!" Lydia manages to stir a little, every join screaming, and then stops. It's too cold. She's too tired. She just wants to sleep. He can thrash all he likes. Maybe she'll be lucky and shatter into a thousand shards on the first blow.

A bright flare of light, a rough whooshing sound, and the duvet is stripped away, thrown against the wall. Lydia mewls, and what little warm air she was able to trap against herself is gone. The warmth from the parlor door isn't near enough to make up for it.

"Get up, useless creature!" The Prince pushes on Lydia's shoulder. Or at least, he starts to, but then he stops, suddenly. His hand splays out against her arm and his fingers curl over her back. He leans close and peers at her hand, inspecting her fingernails, then her up to her mouth.

"She has gone blue," he says, and then waits, as if expecting Lydia to be able to answer him.

Even if she weren't too cold to talk, her throat is still searing and tastes of old blood. She just blinks at him, slow and stupid feeling.

"Her skin is so cold," the Prince says, and then looks around the room for the duvet he had just tossed away. "Up, get up," he chivvies. "Go out to the fire in the parlor."

Lydia wants to. More than anything else she wants to. Well, maybe second most—right now she just wants to sleep. Her eyelids are slipping closed, and darkness beckons and it seems calm, peaceful. She smiles, surrendering—

"Don't sleep!" the Prince growls, right in her ear, and Lydia tries to pat him away, only succeeding in pushing at his cheek with her elbow. "It is dangerous for her to sleep. Wake!"

Lydia groans and buries her face in the mattress and hates him. Just wants him to go away and let her be. To have some goddamned compassion for once and just let her die.

A loud scrape of a lock, a click, and the source of the cold air is closed off. He's shut the window. Finally.

Too little too late, Lydia thinks, and wonders if she'd be chuckling right now if she had the breath and strength for it. It's not the least bit funny, not really, but for some reason it strikes her as hilarious. Cold and too much oxygen and disbelief that now is when the Prince decides to take care of his pets mixes deep inside Lydia. It tries to burble out as laughter, but it dies, still-born, when it reaches her abused vocal chords.