Pyrehold, Day Thirteen
Toy knew better than to push.
Even after she touched his hand. Even after the frost hadn't killed him.
Even after she whispered her own name out loud.
Trust wasn't something you cracked open like a vault. It had to be thawed. Slowly. Patiently. One breath at a time.
So on the thirteenth day, Toy sat with her again. A little closer now. No chains between them. No blade drawn. Just silence.
And presence.
She hadn't spoken since that moment. Not about his curse. Not about Kaelith, the guardian spirit. Not about the tears frozen into the edges of her eyes that night.
But she hadn't shut him out either.
She watched him write in the logbook, listened when he muttered to himself, and tilted her head whenever he mentioned names — names of guards, prisoners, even birds he remembered from his childhood.
He was building something.
So when she finally spoke again, it wasn't loud. It wasn't grand.
It was like a stone falling into still water.
"My sister used to call me Ellen."
Toy blinked.
She didn't look at him. She stared at the opposite wall, where a torch flickered and cast long shadows across the frost-laced stone.
"I haven't heard that name in years," she said. "Even I almost forgot it. I buried it… with the lake. With Kaelith."
"Ellen," Toy repeated, testing it on his tongue.
She flinched.
"Do you want me not to say it?"
"No," she said, slowly. "I think I needed to hear it."
Toy closed the logbook gently and leaned forward on his elbows. "Why did she call you that?"
"It was my true name," Lara said. "Before the frost. Before the collar. Before the world started calling me a Catastrophe."
"I thought 'Lara Frostborn' was your true name."
"It became my name," she murmured. "When I lost everything else."
She took a breath — not shallow, not panicked. A full breath. The kind someone takes when they're pulling something painful from memory.
"My sister gave me away," she said. "To the Empire. She traded me for her own freedom. Told them she could control me. But she lied. She knew they couldn't."
Toy didn't say anything. He didn't need to.
"I was powerful," Lara continued. "But I wasn't cruel. Not until they made me into a weapon. Not until they shattered Kaelith's body and sealed his spirit inside me."
"That's why you're cold," Toy said softly. "You're holding what's left of him."
"I'm holding what's left of me."
Toy's fingers curled around the edge of his sleeve. "You're still Ellen."
"No," she said. "I'm not."
He looked at her.
She turned her head slowly, meeting his gaze full-on. Her eyes glowed faintly — not with magic, but with the weight of everything she had endured.
"I was Ellen. Then I became Lara Frostborn. Then I became the Witch. The Catastrophe. The Prisoner. The Silent One."
He watched her breathe again.
"But maybe," she whispered, "maybe with you… I could be something else."
Toy stood up slowly and crossed the small space between them.
He sat beside her. Not across from her. Beside her.
Then he pulled something from his satchel.
A small piece of coal.
He placed it into her hand.
She stared at it.
"What is this?"
"A name," he said.
He pointed at the floor.
"Write it. Whatever you want to be next."
Lara stared at the coal. Her fingers trembled.
And then she bent, slowly, pressing the tip of the coal to the stone.
She didn't write "Lara."
She didn't write "Witch."
She didn't write "Ellen."
She wrote a single letter.
L.
And for the first time in years, her shoulders shook.
Not from cold.
But because she was crying — and letting herself cry.