Rise of The Guardians 2: Just Like Fire

Chapter 21: Aria

I gasped, jerking awake. My lungs suddenly seemed too empty, and I struggled to gain my breath. My eyes focused slowly, and the icy ceiling and a shock of white hair came into view above me. The bracelets were cold in my clenched fist.

"Aria?" Jack asked, shocked as he brushed some of my hair out of my face.

I smiled sheepishly. "Hi."

He gaped down at me. "How...you...you...you were dead."

"And now I'm not." I agreed teasingly, sitting up and looking at him.

"But how?"

"Even hell didn't want me, so Lucifer sent me back here to terrorise you." I joked.

He rolled his eyes, but couldn't stop his grin. "Seriously. How?"

I handed him the bracelets. "Mother Nature says hi."

He rolled them over in his palm. "What?"

"Yeah. I know. But she said they were important." I shrugged. "But it doesn't matter right now. We need to get out of here." He held the bracelets out to me. I went to take the gold one, but my fingers caught the silver and wrapped it around my wrist almost before I realised. "Keep the other one." I decided. "Gold suits you."

I pushed myself to my feet, holding my hands out towards the icy barrier. The power came slower than normal, sluggish almost, but it came. Satisfaction rose strongly as I watched the ice melt, and I found myself grinning widely as water pooled around my bare feet.

Jack sighed. "Remind me never to piss you off."

"Oh you don't have to worry about that. But maybe you should warn Tooth." I smirked, finished making a hole large enough for us to leave through. "Her incessant whining is aggravating at the best of times."

He nodded and smirked back at me. "Amen."

The ice began stinging the soles of my feet as we walked down the long passageway, so I stopped walking and floated above the ground, feeling the air currents eddy beneath me as we left the cave into blinding sunlight.

I rose further into the air in preparation for the trek back to the Pole.

Out of one of his pockets, Jack pulled out a tiny glass dome. "North gave all the Guardians one of these. Mini snow globes. Let's arrive in style." He said, pulling me back down to the ground by my ankle as though I was an errant balloon and my leg the string. He smirked at the expression on my face. Wrapping his arm around my waist and creating a truckload of electric tingles down my spine, Jack threw the globe at our feet.

Fleetingly, I realised that I hadn't burnt Jack when he touched me, and I wasn't freezing. But I didn't have time to think about it anymore than that.

We were elsewhere.

҉

Stumbling a little, Jack and I emerged into the meeting room at the Pole, the chair I had created only hours ago shoved up against the far wall. Tooth glared at it sullenly until she noticed us.

"Jack!" She began, but didn't get any further.

"You found her." North boomed.

There was a flurry of activity and noise as Jack told the rest of the Guardians what had happened in the ice cave, as I added bits he got wrong. My gut clenched as I thought about what I needed to do. I glanced around the room and realised that Tooth was staring at the hoodie that I was still wearing. Jack's hoodie.

"I need to say something." I blurted.

The others turned to stare at me. "Ok." They said hesitantly.

"You might want to sit down."

I looked down at the table as we sat there in silence. I could tell that the others were staring at me, demanding an explanation. But I still didn't know if I would be able to do that. The words seemed to catch in my throat.

North cleared his throat. "Are you alright?"

I didn't know what to say. "No." He looked at me strangely, and I tried to elaborate. "You don't understand yet. When we were in that cave, I told Kronos the story of his wife and daughter. How his daughter died in a car accident while she was trying to get her mum out of the car, and how he blamed his wife. Then murdered her three years later. Happily."

"Where are you going with this?" Bunny growled.

"His daughter? The one that died?" I drew in a deep, almost choked breath. "That's me." I dropped my head to look at my fingers.

They all stared at me a moment. I could feel their eyes on me.

Tooth reacted first, standing up and knocking over her chair. "I always knew there was something wrong about her. She'd evil and she's been manipulating us the entire time!"

I snorted. "Are you kidding me? That man has caused my death twice, and he murdered my mum. Do you really think I would ally myself with such a monster? And if I was allied with him, why the hell would I tell you that he was my father in a past life? I knew you hated me, but that is heartless."

I pushed away from the table, my fingers sparking with so much magic I had to curl them into fists. I gave her another venomous look and left the room, blinking quickly so that my unshed tears didn't fall.