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"Vesper, what the hell happened to your arm?"

Lila was staring. Her cheerful expression had gone pale, her hand halfway to her mouth.

Vesper looked down at her exposed forearm. The mark was not just a handprint. It was crystalline frost spiraling up from her wrist, intricate as lace. Where each finger had touched, small constellations of ice crystals glittered beneath her skin.

Someone had painted her with winter itself.

"I do not know," Vesper said. Not quite a lie.

"We are going to the ER. Right now." Lila grabbed her coat. "That looks like severe frostbite. How did you..."

"I am fine." Vesper yanked her sleeve down. "It does not hurt."

"That is worse. That means nerve damage." Lila's worry was genuine, the kind that made Vesper's chest ache. "When is the last time you took a day off? You look exhausted."

Vesper opened her mouth and realized she could not remember. Days blurred together. Gray smears of filing and scanning and going home to empty silence. When had she last felt warm?

"I am fine," she repeated, but her voice cracked.

Lila squeezed her shoulder. "Promise me you will see a doctor if it gets worse."

"I promise."

The lie tasted bitter.

She waited until Lila left before locking herself in the bathroom. Under the fluorescent light, she pushed up her sleeve.

The mark was spreading. Thin tendrils of white creeping toward her elbow.

She turned on the hot water, let it run until steam rose. Then plunged her arm under the stream.

The mark spread faster.

Vesper gasped, yanking back. The frost patterns raced up her bicep, delicate and terrible, as if heat had woken something dormant. The cold was protecting itself.

She spun the tap to full cold.

The spreading stopped immediately. Relief made her sag against the sink.

The cold was not hurting her. The cold was protecting her.

From what?

She touched the mark gently, tracing the spiral. There. The phantom heartbeat, steady and strong.

Thud-thud. Thud-thud.

Eryx's heartbeat. Proof he was real. Proof the library was more than dreams.

The thought should have terrified her. Instead, it felt like hope.

That night, she pressed her thumb deliberately to the mark.

The heartbeat answered. Steady. Strong. Protective.

She closed her eyes, imagining Eryx in his library, safe and whole.

Then the heartbeat stuttered.

Skipped.

Raced.

Vesper's eyes snapped open. The mark flared cold, burning, and she knew with terrible certainty.

Somewhere, Eryx was in trouble.

She had to go to him. Now.

She lay down, squeezed her eyes shut, forced herself toward sleep. Her pulse hammered. Too fast. Too anxious. Sleep would not come when summoned like this.

The mark pulsed again. His heartbeat, racing. Afraid.

"Please," she whispered to the empty room. "Please let me through."

The darkness behind her eyelids shifted.

Cold air rushed over her skin.

The library materialized around her, but wrong. All wrong.