Icebound hearts

Episode4

Bella

The investigator’s pen hovered over her notepad. “Miss Bella, can I have a word with you?”

I couldn’t take my eyes away from the ice. From the bracelet. From the letters smeared in red across the white surface like something out of a nightmare I hadn’t woken from yet.

“Bella.” Kael’s hand tightened around mine. “Look at me.”

I didn’t. I couldn’t. My knees buckled, and the only reason I didn’t hit the ground was because his arm caught me first.

The investigator didn’t wait for composure. “We need you to give a statement about Angel.”

“Statement?” I said, my voice somewhere far away from my own body. “What statement?”

“Her full name?”

“Angel.” The word cracked in half coming out of my mouth. “Angel Mercer. She is…was my roommate.”

The investigator wrote something down, her expression unreadable. Around us, the crowd had grown thick with whispers and the distant sound of someone sobbing. Lyra, still wrapped in Luke’s arms, hadn’t stopped shaking.

“Did Angel have any enemies? Anyone who would want to hurt her?”

“No. She is…” I stopped myself from saying is. The correction sat in my chest like a stone. “She was the nicest person I know. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

The investigator’s eyes flicked toward the message carved into the ice, then back to me. Something in her gaze sharpened. “And you have no idea why someone would write that.

“None.”

Kael’s grip on my hand tightened again, a silent warning. Don’t say more than you have to.

The investigator studied me a moment longer, then snapped her notepad shut. “We’ll need you to come in for a full statement later today. Both of you.” Her gaze moved to Kael, lingering there with something like suspicion before she turned and walked back toward the cluster of faculty gathering near the pitch.

The moment she was out of sight, I turned and hurried out.

*******

The first few nights felt different. Too quiet. Lyra barely spent time in the room. And she barely spoke to me. The investigation was still ongoing, and for some reason, she kept avoiding me.

Kael became a regular face around my place. He visited at odd hours and still left in the middle of the night. It went on for a week, until he stopped.

After two days of not seeing him at night, I finally crossed paths with him in school.

“Hey,” I leaned closer to him.

He locked hands with me and kissed my forehead. “Play along. Ryder is looking,” he whispered.

Kael’s lips were warm against my forehead, gone before I could fully register them, and somehow that brief, practiced contact did more damage to my composure than Janelle’s claws ever had.

“Is he still looking,” I murmured, low enough that only he could hear. He shook his head. “Nope,” I stood there for a second too long, fingers brushing the spot his mouth had touched, before I remembered myself and walked into the class.

Professor Lockhart walked in, holding his usual projector control. He turned the screen on and moved slides away from the first. “Partners for the semester project will be assigned by the me,” Mr. Lockhart announced, sliding a chart onto the projector. “No exceptions. You’ll be grouped into teams of two. Each team is expected to submit their result before the end of next week.”

I scanned the list lazily, mentally preparing for whatever disaster the universe had cooked up for me, and then I saw it. Belladonna Voss — Ryder Kane.

My stomach dropped through the floor.

I turned in my seat, half convinced I’d misread it, and found Ryder already looking at the board with the same expression I probably wore, mild confusion edging into something unreadable.

Then his eyes shifted, found mine across the room, and he smiled. Not the wide, easy smile he gave his teammates or the girls who orbited him like moons. Something smaller. More private. I looked away immediately.

Fuck! He caught me staring. My body went cold on my chair. I felt someone behind me. A scent not so familiar.

“Looks like we’re stuck together,” Ryder said, sliding into the empty seat beside me before I’d even processed that he’d moved.

“Looks like,” I managed, grateful my voice didn’t betray the chaos currently unfolding in my chest.

This close, he smelled like pine and something warm underneath it, and the easy confidence that usually made him untouchable seemed to soften the nearer he sat. “You’re the scholarship girl who aced last month’s geography exam,” he said. Not a question.

“You know who I am?”

“Hard not to. You’re the only person who didn’t fall apart when Mr. Lockhart cold-called on the Treaty of Astrana.” He leaned back slightly, studying me with open curiosity, the kind I wasn’t used to receiving from people who looked like him. “I’m Ryder.”

“I know who you are too,” I said before I could stop myself. “Everyone does.”

Something flickered across his face. “Everyone knows the captain. Not everyone knows me.”

The admission caught me off guard, slipping past my defenses before I could brace for it. There was an edge of loneliness buried in those six words, something I recognized instantly because I carried the same thing myself, just dressed in different clothes. The golden boy nobody bothered to actually look at. The scholarship girl nobody bothered to see at all.

“Well,” I said carefully, “I guess we have a project to figure out, then.”

He smiled again, that smaller one, and pulled his books closer to mine. “Guess we do.”

We worked through the period in fits and starts, trading theories about supernatural treaty law, and somewhere between his terrible handwriting and his surprisingly sharp insights, the conversation slid into something easier. He asked about my music. I deflected. He asked again, more patient the second time, and I found myself telling him about the evaluation coming up before I’d consciously decided to share it.

“You should sing something for the showcase,” he said.

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because no one’s supposed to notice me,” I said, and the words came out more honest than I intended.

Ryder considered that for a long moment, gaze steady in a way that made it hard to look away. “Maybe that’s the problem,” he said. “Maybe you’ve just been around people who weren’t paying attention.”

I didn’t have a response for that. Across the room, I caught sight of Kael watching us from his seat near the back, his expression carefully blank in the specific way that told me it wasn’t blank at all. Our eyes met for half a second before he looked away, jaw tight, and turned his attention back to whatever Corvin was saying beside him.

The bell rang before I could untangle whatever that look had meant, and Ryder gathered his things slower than necessary, lingering at the edge of my desk.

“So…will I be seeing you tomorrow?” But the question clearly settled in an awkward manner. He was forced to elaborate. “For the project.”

“Same time tomorrow,” I laughed.

He left with that same private smile, and I sat there a beat longer than I should have, very aware of the fact that something inside me had snapped. Slowly, I turned to look at kael. He winked at me, smiled a little and faced the book on this desk.

I exhaled, holding back my smile for a moment.

The class door opened before the professor left, and the detective from days ago returned. Her eyes were on me. I didn’t need someone to tell me what was coming next.

**************