The ache was closer to his heart today. He had come to this palace of ice and snow, leaving behind the memories of war and destruction. She had given him the peace he had needed. Her quiet serenity soothed him, and he loved her for it. No longer forced to kneel, he sat at her feet gladly. He was a man of few words, but he strived to show her with every gentle caress and embrace how devoted he was to her.
They had fallen asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms for warmth and comfort. In the chill of the night, his consciousness slowly returned to her murmured whispers. "I know you say that you love me, Antonin. That you will never leave me. That I’m your snowy fox, your peceus. That your heart, soul, and body are mine for eternity. But you will leave me. They always leave me. I know it. I survived them but I cannot survive you. You have possessed every corner of my being, and if you go, I will shatter. So you won’t. I won’t let you." He felt her shift in his arms, placing her palm over the center of his chest. Suddenly, his eyes flew open. A sharp pain of arctic cold lanced through his entire body as she whispered an incantation too low for him to hear. His eyes fluttered shut as the blackness overtook his vision.
She never explained what she did and waved away his questions when he asked. At first, nothing was different. It started so slowly, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when. Initially, the tips of his fingers and toes couldn’t seem to ever get warm. Unsurprising in an ice castle, but still noticeable. Then, it stopped being noticeable. The chill crept throughout his body until he forgot what it ever had felt like to be warm. Icy cold became his constant companion until the day came and he looked down at his hands and it took him a few moments to separate his fingers from the snow he was shaping into flowers for his beloved. Naturally pale all his life, his skin had faded to the blue tinged white of the ice statues in the alcoves of the castle. Running for a mirror, he gazed in horror at the frosted countenance he saw reflected back at him. Faintly, he heard the mocking laughter of his dreams just beyond his comprehension as he ran in search of answers.
Scouring throughout the rooms, he found her reclining in the library. She smiled up at him, oblivious to his anger.
"What have you done to me?” His quiet rage filled the room.
Her smile was unchanged as she rose to meet his approach. "I made you mine forever. I tied your life and soul to the ice and snow, and we both know that everything winter is my domain. You will be by my side forever."
"I was already yours forever, precious peceus! My love, my all, everything! I came to you a broken husk, a shell of a man hollowed out in service to a madman. I was lucky to escape with my life, and you healed me. You gave me a reason to wake in the morning and to smile as I fell asleep at night. Never would I leave this, but now. Now, all I feel is the aching emptiness of an ice fissure where I once felt the warm glow of my love for you." He gently caressed her cheek, moving his hands to cup her neck where it met her shoulders. "The voices of my nightmares were finally quiet after years of the dementors echoing their whispers during every waking moment. I again hear their cries reverberating through the icy halls my mind has become! They laugh at my pain until it turns to the tortured cries they made as I ended their lives!"
Antonin’s words became more desperate and unhinged as he tightened his grip around her throat. Her eyes widened, and she tried in vain to grip his fingers as they dug in, cutting off her breath. In her panic, her magic lashed out at him, raising a cold wind that tore at his hair, knocked books from their shelves, and spun the furniture of the room around them in a slow vortex.
He spun her around, bringing his arm up to pin her to his body as his arm choked off her ability to breathe. "Shush, krasavitsa, let it go. Let it go, peceus. Just let it go, my darling Yeliza." Her struggles became more frantic, but his hands and arms were unyielding ice which her fingers could only slide uselessly across.
He felt the last warm shard of his soul shatter as the light left her eyes. Sighing, he lowered her slowly to the ground. Gazing around the room at the destruction they wrought, his eyes fell on his black hat. He picked it up, remembering when she had given it to him at Christmas. Her eyes had danced at his confusion because he would not consider himself a top hat kind of person, but she had insisted it suited him. He brushed the debris from the dull black silk, suddenly overwhelmed with horrified pain as he realized the magnitude of his actions. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he gathered all his pain and love and wrapped it around that last soul shard her magic had left him. With a gasp, he pushed it into the hat in his hands, willing it to house all the feelings that were too much for him to bear. The rush of his magic answering his call left him dizzy.
He had no idea how long he sat, eyes unfocused and staring at nothing. He had to leave this place. Too many memories, too much pain. He gathered her body and brought her to their bed. He laid her out, seeming as tho she had only fallen asleep moments before. He straightened her dress and hair. Pressing one last soft kiss to her lips, he left their chamber.
He wanders the lands now, following the cold and chill icy winds. The sun doesn’t bother him, but he had learned to avoid anything above freezing. He found out that the warmth brought him increasing pain. If he ever got to the point where his frosty limbs warmed beyond tolerance, he would melt, dripping drops of water that would fall to the ground with a splash of the blood that no longer flowed through his veins. Even then, he could not die. In a swirl of snow and magic, the return of the cold would give him form again, his ubiquitous silk hat perched at a jaunty angle upon his head.
His feelings and passions frozen in the depths of his soul, he vowed to harm none as his anger had killed the last one he would ever love. Even so, the laughter of the children in the towns he came across echoed particularly in the halls of his cold heart. In honor of the children he would never know with his lost love, he would dance and play with them in their parks and squares. He would put on magic shows and create puppets of snow to twirl to their songs before moving on to the next town, always leaving them with the promise of his return. Never giving them his name, the children laughed and called him Frosty, the man of snow. His name lost to time along with his beloved Yeliza, he was content.