BURN

the coronation incident

Tedros wakes from a restless sleep with the overwhelming feeling that something is wrong. A noise, just on the edge of his consciousness, has woken him. He can’t place it, but he doesn’t think it was good, not with the way his heart is pounding and his body temperature is plunging so rapidly. It sounded like something sliding, almost like metal and a fabric, similar to what he hears in weapons training--

It sounded like the rasp of steel on leather.

Tedros’s eyes shoot open just in time to see the knife plunging towards his chest.

He doesn’t scream. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t.

Instead, he does something that, had anyone else done it, would have been indescribably stupid.

He bolts upwards, snaps his hands up, and grabs the knife by the blade.

There’s a horrible screeching, cracking sound, and Tedros squeezes, feeling his skin breaking--

With a crash, the knife, hilt and all, shatters into a spray of ice. His attacker recoils with a curse as tiny fragments of ice skitter everywhere

Tedros whirls to face his would-be-assassin, raising bloody hands, palms outwards.

“Don’t think that because you’ve sliced up my hands I can’t kill you.” he snarls, flexing his fingers, letting his body temperature plunge. A frozen droplet of blood slips from his palm and clatters to the floor. The bloody gashes on his hands have iced over, his injuries ceasing to bleed. 

The hooded man gazes down at the quickly melting-fragments everywhere. There’s a quiet crackling sound, and without looking, Tedros knows there’s ice crawling up the walls and up his bedpost-- and up his face.

Then, slowly, his assailant looks up.

Tedros recognises the red eyes glaring at him a second before he speaks.

“I won’t lie, I thought you weren’t in control of your powers, at the moment.” says Ravan coldly, pulling down his hood. “But I don’t doubt you can kill me, little Snow King.”

Tedros stares at him, slowly lowering his hands.

“Someone let you in?”

“Climbed.”

“I see.” 

They remain still for a moment, at an impasse. Ravan doesn’t seem to be armed with anything else, and Tedros will not attack him.

He slowly lets out a breath. It doesn’t steam, although Ravan’s does. 

“If this is about the coronation incident--”

“Of course it’s about the coronation.” sneers Ravan. “Just because I’m the only one out of your court who knows you’re a danger to everyone around you, doesn’t mean you’re any safer. Don’t suppose you’ve told your lovely bride about your little… talent, have you?”

Tedros clenches his teeth and remains silent.

“More people at risk.” Ravan shakes his head. “I know you don’t like Hort, but I would have thought you’d have some care for your future wife--”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” snarls Tedros. “I didn’t attack Hort on purpose! I lost control by accident, because Weatherford had been plying me with those damned drinks all day! I didn’t mean to do any magic, let alone expel icicles, and I certainly didn’t mean to put them in the wall by his head. You know what ivy does--”

“And so do you. So why are you taking it?” hisses Ravan.

“I don’t have a choice.”

“If you convinced them it made you more dangerous, rather than less, they might reconsider.”