Falling With Ice Phoenix- -v1.00a- -f Project- Yu... -

The stars outside the porthole weren't stationary. They streaked past like white-hot needles, and a low, bone-deep groan echoed through the hull of the Frozen Hearth . The ship was tumbling into a gravity well.

And the Ice Phoenix did.

F Project Status: No longer a project. Now a beginning. Falling with Ice Phoenix- -v1.00a- -F Project- yu...

Fire licked the viewports. The Frozen Hearth screamed. But inside the maintenance shaft, there was only the slow, steady beat of a heart that had never been allowed to beat before.

Help me fall, or burn up alone.

Curled in the maintenance shaft directly above her pod was a woman. No—not a woman. A being sculpted from frosted glass and pale fire. Her hair was a cascade of ice crystals that chimed softly with every shudder of the ship. Her eyes were the deep, endless blue of a glacial crevasse. And wrapped around her shoulders, merging with her spine, were wings.

No, Lian thought fiercely into the link. Not a god. Not a tool. The stars outside the porthole weren't stationary

She slapped the emergency release. The lid hissed open, and the cold hit her like a physical blow. Not the sterile cold of a lab, but a living cold—the kind that breathed.

That’s when she saw it.

The Ice Phoenix looked at her hands—no longer bleeding, no longer cracking. Then she looked at Lian.

Ysandre folded her wings around both of them, creating a cocoon of crystalline silence. The heat of re-entry clashed with her cold, and for a terrible moment, Lian felt the Phoenix waver. And the Ice Phoenix did