He has fired seven nurses this week, and if your child makes a single sound, you will both be thrown into the snow, Chief Guard Mikhail warned me at the heavy iron gates of the Volkov estate.
Back in the west wing, the waiting was unbearable. Lily, sensing my distress, clung to me, her small hand a warm anchor in the growing cold.
I glanced at Damian’s master bedroom door. A faint, blue light flickered from beneath it, pulsing rhythmically. It was growing brighter.
The cold in our wing deepened, biting at my exposed skin. I pulled a blanket tighter around Lily.
A sudden, piercing shriek ripped through the manor. It was a guttural sound, filled with terror. It came from Damian’s room.
Then another, followed by the sound of crashing furniture and frantic footsteps.
“What was that?” I murmured to Lily, holding her close. She looked up at me, her eyes wide with a silent question.
The blue light intensified, now a blinding, ethereal glow emanating from under Damian’s door. The cold was unbearable.
Suddenly, the door burst open. Two guards stumbled out, their faces chalk-white, eyes wide with horror. One was Mikhail, his stern composure shattered.
“Run! It’s… it’s burning!” Mikhail screamed, ignoring his previous orders. He didn’t even look at us as he fled, stumbling down the hallway, leaving a trail of ash on the pristine carpet.
Inside Damian’s room, a terrifying spectacle unfolded. Cold blue spectral flames erupted from the floorboards around his bed, dancing and writhing like living things. They didn’t consume the furniture, but radiated an otherworldly frost.
The air shimmered with an icy heat. Damian lay motionless in the center, seemingly untouched by the spectral fire, yet the cold surrounding him was so intense it felt like his life was being sucked away.
I couldn’t leave him. Not like this.
“Stay here, Lily,” I signed, trying to keep my voice steady. But Lily, sensing the urgency, pulled away from me.
Before I could stop her, she walked straight into the room, directly towards the spectral flames. My heart seized in my chest.
The guards had fled in terror, but Lily, with her quiet courage, showed no fear. She walked through the blue fire, unharmed.
As she approached the bedside, her calm presence, her spiritual stillness, seemed to have an effect. The spectral flames, which had been reaching and clawing, bent away from the bed. They recoiled from her, as if pushed by an invisible force.
The intense cold around Damian’s body seemed to lessen, if only by a fraction. His pulse, which had been faltering, steadied slightly.
Lily placed her tiny hand on his forehead, a gesture of pure, innocent comfort. Damian, though still unconscious, let out a soft, almost imperceptible sigh.
She was keeping him alive, barely. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that she was the key to breaking this curse.
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