He didn't wait for her to finish. He reached out and pulled her into his lap, wrapping his massive, fur-lined cloak around her and the pup until they were entirely encased in his shadow. The contrast was jarring; his armor was cold, but the man beneath it was a furnace.
"You are a terrible liar, Elissa," Alistair murmured, his voice a low vibration against her ear. He shifted her so her back was against his chest, his arms winding around her waist to pull her closer to his heat. "Your heart is beating like a trapped moth."
Elissa didn't protest this time. The cold was a predatory thing, and Alistair was the only fire in the world. She leaned her head back against his shoulder, her senses filled with the scent of cedar, ozone, and the faint, metallic tang of his power.
The pup, sensing the warmth, crawled up to rest its head on Alistair's forearm, letting out a small, contented sigh.
"Why did you do it?" Alistair asked after a long silence. His voice was quiet, stripped of the Crown Prince's arrogance. "You could have reached the cave. You stayed for a beast."
"He was alone," Elissa whispered, her voice steadying as the warmth began to seep into her limbs. "And I know what it feels like to be the smallest thing in a very big, very cold room."
Alistair's grip tightened around her—not enough to hurt, but enough to let her know he was listening. "You are not alone, Elissa. I told you that ."
"You told me I was a vessel," she reminded him softly.
Alistair remained silent for a long time, the only sound the distant scrape-scrape of Dante and Vane's shovels. Then, he leaned down, his cheek brushing against her frost-dusted hair.
"I have said many things to keep the world at a distance," he admitted, his voice a raw, jagged truth. "But no vessel has ever made me fear the mountain this much." ..."You are... a complication I didn't prepare for." He thought.
Elissa closed her eyes, feeling the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart. In the darkness of the cave, with the world buried under sapphire ice, the Prince of the Grave didn't feel like a monster. He felt like a hearth.
"Is that your version of a compliment, Alistair?" she teased weakly.
"It is the only one you are getting today," he replied, his luminous blue eyes watching the small hole in the ice where his brothers were slowly, surely, digging them back toward the light. "Now sleep. I will keep the cold away."
The silence of the cave was suddenly shattered by the sharp, rhythmic bite of metal against ice. From the other side of the sapphire wall, the muffled shouts of Dante and Vane grew clearer, fueled by a desperation that even the thick snow couldn't drown out.
"Careful, Vane! To the left!" Dante's voice roared from the outside.
A final, heavy blow echoed through the stone, and a jagged spiderweb of cracks erupted across the sapphire block. A section of the ice gave way, collapsing outward into the valley. Light—blinding, pale, and freezing—poured into the dark cavern.
Dante's massive silhouette appeared in the opening, his face streaked with soot and ice-dust. Behind him, Vane was doubled over, gasping for air, his hands bloodied from digging.
"Alistair!" Dante barked, reaching in.
Alistair didn't move for himself. He reached down and scooped Elissa up, pup and all, passing her through the narrow opening into Dante's waiting arms. Only when he saw her feet touch the snow outside did he vault through the gap.
For a heartbeat, Alistair stood in the center of the wreckage, his luminous blue eyes scanning the devastated valley. The Frozen Falls had been transformed into a jagged graveyard of blue glass. The relief that washed over him was so violent it felt like a physical blow; his heart, usually a steady, frozen rhythm, was thundering against his ribs. He looked at Elissa, who was shivering in the open air, clutching the white pup to her chest as if it were the only anchor left in the world.
"The horses," Alistair said, his voice raspy. "Are they lost?"
"Most of them," Vane wheezed, wiping sweat from his brow despite the sub-zero air. "We managed to whistle back the Shadow-Grey and my mare. The others... they're likely halfway to the southern border by now."
"We need to find the pack," Elissa said suddenly, her voice small . She looked at the pup in her arms. "He can't stay here alone. His mother... his siblings..."
Alistair looked at the massive wall of debris where the cliff had once been. He knew the odds. He knew the North didn't leave survivors when it moved the earth. But he looked at the pleading light in Elissa's mist-grey eyes and found he couldn't say no.
"You both—search the treeline," Alistair said to Dante and Vane. "I'll check the upper ridge."
They spent an hour in the grueling cold, picking through the shattered remains of the valley. They found nothing but buried dens and silent snow. The avalanche had been absolute. The white pup's family was gone, claimed by the very mountain that had tried to claim them.
The sun was beginning to dip behind the jagged peaks, turning the sapphire ice of the ruins into a bruised, haunting purple. The air was turning brittle again, a warning that the mountain's temporary silence was just that—temporary.
Elissa stood by the horses, her hands trembling as she smoothed the fur of the white pup. The small creature had stopped whimpering and was now tucked into the crook of her arm, watching the world with wide, violet eyes.
"There's nothing left, is there?" she asked softly as Alistair approached.