The physician felt like he was going to have a heart attack. The Duke was putting too much pressure on him, so he couldn’t think straight.

"Definitely not, Your Grace. You... you just have to make him warm until it passes," he said, his thoughts of keeping his neck dominating every other logic.

He knew a simple fireplace heat wouldn’t stop this cold, but he had no choice.

If he wanted to make it out of here alive, he had to come up with something, even if it was not scientifically smart.

"The fireplace—keep him as close as possible! Blankets, hot stones, anything! Just keep him warm so his temperature doesn’t fall more than it already has."

Alaric didn’t wait for another instruction. He scooped Julian up, blankets and all, and sat on the floor directly before the fireplace.

The magical fire roared, a bright, orange-gold flame that put out a steady heat, but as the minutes passed, Julian didn’t thaw. His skin kept getting paler, and breath still came out in faint, ghostly puffs of white, as if he were standing in a blizzard in the heart of a tropical capital.

"Why isn’t it working?" Alaric demanded, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low vibration. "The fire is hot. The room is stifling. Why is he still freezing?"

The physician fell to his knees, trembling.

"I... I don’t know, Your Grace! It isn’t a fever, and it isn’t the winter chill. There is no medical reason for a man to turn to ice in a room this warm. I am incompetent... I have no answer!"

"Get out!" Alaric yelled, the sound echoing off the stone walls. "Get out and bring hot water! A lot of it!"

As the physician scrambled away, Alaric pulled Julian tighter into his lap, wrapping his own massive frame around the scholar’s smaller one. He tucked the blankets around them both, his own body heat acting as a desperate shield.

The Capital had no winters. It was a humid, balmy night outside. So why was Julian shivering as if he were buried in a snowdrift?

Alaric tucked Julian’s head under his chin, whispering into his hair.

"Fight it, Julian. Don’t go where I can’t follow, please. Stay with me."

Above them, unseen by the Duke, the air rippled.

The System interface flickered in a sickly, glitching red, the text distorted as if struggling against a command.

> [OVERWRITE IN PROGRESS: 12% ... 15%]

> [SOUL FRAGMENT RECONSTITUTION: ACTIVE]

> [SYSTEM STABILIZATION: PENDING]

The room was very hot now. So hot it was enough to make Alaric’s own skin glisten with sweat, but as he lay Julian back onto the silk sheets, nothing changed.

"Bring the water!" Alaric roared, his voice cracking.

Kaelen and a few maids hurried in with steaming copper basins. Alaric didn’t wait for them to help.

He snatched a cloth, soaking it in the hot water. It was not enough to scald, but it was hot, and the Duke was putting himself through that just so he could bring Julian back from the brink of freezing to death.

He began to rub Julian’s arms and then his chest, taking off all of his clothes. He worked with a frantic, punishing intensity, trying to force the blood to move beneath that pale skin. He scrubbed until his own palms were raw and red, but the second the cloth moved away, the unnerving frost returned to Julian’s limbs.

It was as if the cold wasn’t coming from the air, but seeping out from his very marrow.

So whatever he did right now was useless.

"Dammit!" Alaric slapped the cloth onto the floor, hissing and cursing. "Get out," he whispered, his head bowed, and his hair damp against his forehead.

"Your Grace—"

"I said GET OUT!"

The roar shook the crystal decanters on the side table. Kaelen bowed once, his face grim, and ushered the servants out. Then, the door closed with a deafening thud.

The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the aggressive snap and hiss of the magical fire.

Alaric turned his head to look at Julian. Really look at him.

He had stripped him of everything but his thin undergarments. He looked like a fallen effigy.

"I won’t let you go," Alaric rasped, his voice thick with a terrifying, primal resolve. "I didn’t wait for you just to watch you turn to stone."

He stripped away his own damp shirt, his boots hitting the floor with heavy thuds.

He climbed onto the bed, pulling Julian’s limp, freezing body directly against his bare chest. The contact was a shock; it felt like embracing a winter gale.

Alaric winced, his teeth nearly chattering from the sudden dip in his own temperature, but he didn’t pull away. He wrapped the heavy blankets around them both, creating a dark, stifling cocoon.

He began to kiss Julian—not with the gentle reverence of a lover, but with the desperation of a man trying to perform a miracle.

He pressed his lips to Julian’s ice-cold mouth, breathing his own hot air into his lover’s lungs. He used his hands, his mouth, his entire body to create friction, moving against Julian.

He poured every ounce of his own life force, his own burning heat, into the act, desperate to jumpstart the heart that seemed to be slowing down.

"Stay with me, Julian," he groaned against the hollow of Julian’s neck, his sweat dripping onto the scholar’s frozen shoulder. "Feel me. Come back to the heat. Come back to me."

He pressed himself closer, closing every gap, his heart hammering against Julian’s ribs as if he could force Julian’s pulse to match his own.

Above them, the System interface glitched again, the red text fractured and bleeding across the dark like a broken neon sign.

> [HOST TEMPERATURE: 27.5°C ... CRITICAL]

> [ERROR: SOUL OCCUPANCY OVERLAP]

> [WARNING: SYSTEM TAKEOVER INITIATED BY ORIGINAL SOURCE]

It felt like nothing Alaric would do would be able to stop the freezing, but the Duke wasn’t going to give up that easily.

Not while Julian’s heart was still beating. Not after he had already experienced a miracle once, where Julian’s cold heart had begun to beat again.

There was something truly remarkable and unrealistic about Julian’s existence.

The way he solved problems, the circumstances that surrounded him, and these strange ’illnesses’ he had that were mentioned nowhere in any medical records.

It was like he was here, but not here at all.

But none of that. Alaric cared about none of that. What he cared about was the man in his arms, and his feelings...