Born Of Frost Bound by Silver

Eighteen Claire's POV The glass shattered in my hand before I even knew I was holding it too tightly. "Claire!" Mom's chair scraped back. "Are you hurt?" I opened my fingers. Water ran down my wrist, and the glass lay in clean, glittering pieces across my palm. There wasn't a single scratch on my skin. "I'm fine," I said. "It was already cracked." It hadn't been. Mom and Dad looked at each other across the breakfast table, one of those long, silent looks I'd been catching for years. Then Dad cleared his throat and smiled too brightly. "Happy birthday, sweetheart. Eighteen. Tonight, after dinner, we need to talk." "About what?" "Tonight," Mom said softly, and squeezed my shoulder. I should have pushed. Instead I stared at the glass in my hand and tried to ignore everything else: the burnt toast two floors below in the staff kitchen, the gardener's cigarette drifting from the far gate, the mint in Dad's aftershave so sharp it stung my nose. My whole life, the world had been a little too loud, a little too strong. Today it felt like someone had turned every dial to maximum. Eighteen. Something was changing, and I had no name for it. The whispers started the moment I walked through the school gates. Is that her? The birthday girl? Her parents bought the whole east wing of the library, you know. I kept my chin up and my earbuds out. I'd learned a long time ago that ignoring people was the fastest way to make them stop. Except for one. "Well, if it isn't the annoying arrogant Anderson Blackthorn." He leaned against my locker like he owned it, and honestly, in this school, he practically did. Tall. Dark hair falling carelessly over cold gray eyes. A jaw that belonged on a magazine cover. Half the girls in the hallway had stopped walking just to look at him. I wasn't one of them. "Move," I said. "Say please." "Move, or I'll move you." Someone gasped behind me. Nobody talked to Anderson like that. His mouth curved into a slow, dangerous smile, and for some reason the hair on my arms rose. "You know," he said, lowering his voice, "people have been talking. About how the heiress doesn't look anything like her parents. Not their eyes, not their smile, not even their scent." My blood went cold. "Their what?" Something flickered across his face, as if he'd said too much. Then the smirk returned. "Figure of speech. But maybe you're adopted. Maybe that's why you walk around like you're better than all of us. Like you've got something to prove." I don't remember deciding to move. My hand shot out and closed around his wrist. I heard it before I felt it: a faint creak, like wood bending under pressure. Anderson's smirk disappeared. His eyes dropped to my fingers, then lifted to my face. For one second there was no arrogance in them at all, only shock. "Let go," he said quietly. "Take it back." "Claire." I squeezed harder. The corridor had gone silent. I could hear his pulse hammering under my thumb, strong and fast, and strangely it wasn't fear I smelled on him. It was something wild. Then the world flipped. I didn't even see him move. One moment I was holding his wrist, and the next my back slammed against the lockers hard enough to rattle every door on the row, my hands pinned above my head, his body caging mine. He wasn't even breathing hard. He was so much stronger than me. It wasn't even close. "You," Anderson said slowly, his face inches from mine, "are not supposed to be able to do that." "Get off me!" He didn't. His nostrils flared. He leaned in, and for one insane second I thought he was going to smell my neck. His eyes searched mine, the gray in them rippling, and I could have sworn that something gold flashed deep inside. "A human girl can't break a bone," he murmured, almost to himself. "A human girl couldn't have even bruised me. So what the hell are you?" The bell shrieked. He let go as if burned. I slid down the locker, rubbing my wrists, and when I looked up he was already walking away with the fools that alwsys cluster around him. He stopped at the corner of the hallway and glanced back at me once. It wasn't a glare. It was the look of a man who had just discovered something he couldn't explain, and didn't like. The house was quiet when I got home. Mom and Dad's cars were gone. A note on the kitchen counter said Back by seven. Dinner at 8. Love you! in Mom's looping handwriting, and beneath it a small wrapped box with my name. I should have opened it. Instead I stood in the empty hallway, rubbing my sore wrists, hearing Anderson's voice again and again. A human girl couldn't have even bruised me. Then I smelled it. Faint at first, so faint I thought I'd imagined it. Lavender, and rain on warm stone. It didn't belong to Mom or Dad or any of the staff. It was a smell I had never smelled before, and yet something deep in my chest tightened like a long-forgotten song. I followed it up the stairs. Past the second floor. Past the guest rooms. Down the third-floor corridor I had walked past a thousand times without ever noticing the narrow door at the very end, painted the same cream as the wall so it almost disappeared. It was slightly open. The scent poured out like a breath. I pushed the door open with two fingers. Dust. Sheeted furniture. A small window glowing orange with the setting sun. And on the dresser, in a silver frame, a photograph of a girl. She was maybe seventeen. Long dark hair. A tired smile. A tiny crescent-shaped birthmark just beneath her left ear. My hand went to my own neck before I could stop it. She had my face. Not similar. Mine. Every line, every curve, down to the tilt of the left eyebrow. It was like staring into a mirror from another life. My fingers shook as I lifted the frame. On the back, in faded ink, was a single line of handwriting: 'Her name was Clara. She would have wanted you to know.'