Chapter 36: Chapter 36: Grandpa Sloane’s Investigation

Chapter 36: Grandpa Sloane’s Investigation

"The Frostborn really are a remarkable people."

"What makes them remarkable?" Audra asked.

Her grandfather’s voice carried through the phone with the bright, restless excitement he only used when research had swallowed him whole. Audra reached toward the shelf beside her desk and pulled down one of his books, a published rare-blood field guide he had spent years writing and revising.

The book had a clean cover, thick pages, and far too many notes in the margins, most of them written by Audra herself. She opened it without needing to check the table of contents. Warren Sloane’s work had filled her childhood more consistently than bedtime stories had.

"I have been tracking old Frostborn legends for some time," Warren said. "A while back, I had an accident while climbing in the mountains. Rather embarrassing, if I am being honest. It turned into a lucky accident, though. I was rescued by Frostborn and brought to one of their villages. I am staying there now."

Audra’s fingers paused on the page. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"You are living in one of their villages right now?"

"Yes, and I should correct myself before you do," Warren said. "The proper term is Frostborn. Most of them are women, and their appearance is unusually beautiful, so outsiders tend to collapse the whole group into old stories about snow women. That is where much of the confusion comes from."

"That makes sense," Audra said.

She turned a page in the book, but most of her attention stayed on his voice.

Warren kept talking, his words coming faster as his interest took over.

"At first glance, their daily habits are not so different from ours. They eat, read, argue, take care of children, maintain homes, and complain about chores like anyone else. Then you notice what their bodies can do, and the whole picture changes."

Audra sat at her desk and rested the open book beside her.

"Tell me one of the stranger details."

"For one thing, every child born among them is female," Warren said. "At least, that is what this village believes and what their records support. Then there is temperature control. They can lower the temperature within a limited area. More interestingly, the places where they live gradually shift into an environment that suits them. A Frostborn settlement does not merely exist in the cold. It makes cold around itself, slowly and persistently."

Audra took up a pen.

"That explains the mountain location."

"It explains quite a bit. They hate summer with a passion I can only describe as personal. Their body temperature also runs low, and they prefer cold foods, cold rooms, cold water, cold weather, and almost anything else that lets them avoid heat. If you ever visit, bring layers. I underestimated that on the first day and spent the evening regretting my confidence."

A small smile touched Audra’s mouth.

"From the way you describe them, they do not sound as interesting as bloodborn."

Warren laughed. "You say that only because you are young and enjoy dramatic species with fangs."

"That is a reasonable preference."

"Bloodborn are theatrical. Frostborn are subtle. That makes them harder to understand and, in my opinion, more valuable to study."

Audra set the phone on speaker, placed it near her notebook, and began drawing a snowflake in the corner of the page.

Warren continued, "There is more. According to the village elder, after reaching a certain age, Frostborn can shift between a childlike form and an adult form."

Audra’s pen stopped.

"They can change between both forms?"

"I had the same reaction," Warren said. "The change is not casual, and I have not seen it myself yet, so I am still treating it carefully. The elder spoke as if it were established fact, though. A mature Frostborn may move between those states under certain conditions."

"That is much stranger than lowering temperature," Audra said.

"It is fascinating, but their gifts come with a cost. Their reproductive situation is poor. Very poor, from what I can gather."

Audra frowned. "How poor are we talking?"

"Poor enough that their long-term future is uncertain. My current guess is that their constitution is part of the issue. The elder believes that, within roughly a century, this branch of the Frostborn may face a serious survival crisis."

Audra wrote the phrase survival crisis under the snowflake.

A species with power, beauty, and hidden villages could still be pushed toward disappearance by the simplest problem in the world: birth.

The thought left her quiet.

Warren’s voice softened. "The world has always been balanced in that way. Every advantage seems to carry its cost."

Audra had heard that idea from him many times. Outside of rare exceptions, the world did not hand any species a gift without attaching a price. Bloodborn had strength and longevity, but dependence followed them like a shadow. Glamourkin could manipulate minds and feed on vitality, but their appetites made them hunted. Firebird lines burned brighter than most, then paid for it in ways their old families preferred not to discuss.

Frostborn, apparently, were no different.

Warren paused, then added, "There is one more thing."

Audra lifted her pen again. "What did you find?"

"The elder mentioned another Frostborn village. Apparently, that village may have found some kind of hope. She would not explain what that hope was, and I was not foolish enough to push too hard while I am here as a guest."

"A hope for reproduction?"

"That is my guess," Warren said. "It may be wrong. These people guard their internal matters carefully, and for good reason."

Audra leaned back in her chair.

Her grandfather had shaped much of her curiosity about rare-bloods. When she was younger, his research had sounded like adventure. As she grew older, she began to understand the quieter danger under it. Rare-bloods were not simply beautiful entries in a field guide. They were people, families, bodies, appetites, fears, and private histories that outsiders loved to turn into theories.

The conversation went on for a while after that.

Warren described the village houses, the way frost gathered near window frames even when the sky was clear, the strangely calm women who had carried him down the mountain after his accident, and the children who treated the cold as if it were sunlight. Audra asked questions whenever the details became too vague. Warren answered some of them and admitted ignorance on others.

When the call began to slow, more than twenty minutes had passed.

"You finally remembered you have a granddaughter," Audra said, letting a little teasing into her voice. "I was starting to think a Frostborn had turned you into an ice sculpture."

Warren laughed with enough force that the phone speaker crackled. "I would never forget my favorite granddaughter."

"I am your only granddaughter."

"That makes the choice easier."

After they said goodbye, Audra left the phone on her desk and looked out the window.

The flower beds below had been trimmed into careful shapes, their colors softened by the last light of evening. The sun had not fully disappeared yet, and everything in the garden seemed covered in a thin gold veil.

Grayhaven’s day-to-night temperature shift was not dramatic, but at this hour, a faint coolness could still be felt through the glass.

For no clear reason, Audra thought of Room 405.

She remembered the brief chill during lunch tutoring, so faint that she had almost dismissed it before Cyrus stood up and opened the window.

Because she had just heard her grandfather describe Frostborn, her mind made an absurd connection.

Cyrus Calder, who looked like a sleepy shut-in hiding behind his hair, and the Frostborn.

Audra stared at the snowflake she had drawn.

Then she exhaled through her nose.

It was probably nothing more than a stray current of cooler air, one that had slipped through the shaded side of the building before the room warmed again. Besides, Warren had just told her that Frostborn children were all female.

Spending too much time tutoring a bad student was apparently making her less intelligent.

She closed the book and set the pen down.

Rather than imagining impossible things, she should think about a more practical question: how to make that gloomy back-row boy notice her charm.

At The Full Moon Lounge, Cyrus sneezed the moment he stepped into the changing area.

He lowered his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, and waited.

No feverish heaviness followed. His body did not feel unstable. His bones did not ache, and the air around him did not drop in a way that warned him of another transformation.

His condition seemed stable.

This was probably not the start of another cold.

Maybe a certain woman who still could not catch him was furious somewhere far away.

The image made his mood improve.

Isolde had always carried herself as if everything in the world could be held in her palm. Calm, certain, and impossible to shake. Cyrus had wanted to see her lose that composure for a long time.

People said "nine chances out of ten" because no one could control everything.

That last chance had been his.

If he could ever watch her panic from a safe distance, he would laugh. Quietly, maybe, and only from somewhere she could not reach, but he would still laugh.

Cyrus changed into his work clothes and went behind the bar.

The lounge gradually filled as the evening deepened. Familiar customers came in one after another, some settling at small tables, others choosing the bar. The regular woman who had started coming more often sat at her usual distance, close enough to watch him, far enough to pretend she was not doing it.

Cyrus made her drink and placed it in front of her with his usual calm.

She thanked him, then looked away when their eyes met.

Cyrus returned to his work.

That kind of reaction was much easier to handle. A person could be interested and still remain within a normal range. Compared with Rhea Maddox, who treated flirting like a profession and pressure like a hobby, an easily embarrassed customer was almost peaceful.

While he wiped down the counter and checked the garnish tray, his mind drifted toward tomorrow’s school activity.

A cooking event.

He still did not fully understand why a school would organize students into groups to cook together, but the idea sounded more interesting than sitting through another class he could not follow. If food was involved, the activity already had value.

The entrance bell rang.

Two women walked in one after the other, each striking enough to shift the room’s attention without trying.

Helena Baird and Detective Rhea Maddox.

They seemed to have arrived by coincidence. Neither looked surprised enough for it to have been planned, and neither looked pleased enough to pretend they had not noticed the other.

Neither of them spoke first.

They came to the bar with practiced ease and sat in front of Cyrus.

Rhea’s attention locked onto him immediately. Her expression warmed, and the intensity in her eyes was familiar enough that Cyrus did not need to guess what she wanted.

She ordered one of her usual drinks.

Helena only met Cyrus’s eyes and nodded.

Cyrus started with Rhea’s order. The movements were routine by now: glass, ice, measured pour, the quiet rhythm of the shaker, and the controlled finish. When the drink was placed in front of Rhea, her fingers lingered near the stem as if the glass had become less interesting than the person who handed it over.

Cyrus turned to prepare Helena’s coffee.

Behind him, Rhea’s good mood dimmed a little.

Helena noticed without commenting on it.

Instead, once Cyrus set the coffee before her, she asked, "I heard you are changing your work hours because of school."

Cyrus nodded. "I already discussed it with Malcolm."

Helena’s hand settled around the warm cup. "That sounds sensible. School should not be swallowed by work."

Rhea’s brows lifted. "What kind of change?"

"Normal weekends off," Cyrus said. "Earlier nights on school days."

Rhea relaxed a fraction. "That sounds manageable."

Her tone shifted almost immediately, turning more serious.

"Speaking of things that worry me," she said, "after what happened that night, have you recovered properly?"

"I rested enough."

Helena’s attention moved from Rhea to Cyrus.

The sentence sat between them with just enough ambiguity to sound wrong.

"You two sound like there is a story there."

Cyrus understood what she was likely hearing and chose the cleanest explanation.

"I learned more about that glamourkin afterward," he said. "It seems I really was in danger at the time."

Helena’s expression sharpened, but not dramatically. She had enough composure to keep concern from becoming spectacle.

Rhea, however, leaned in slightly, her posture steady and her voice entirely reliable.

"Protecting you is part of my duty."

It was the kind of thing a detective could say without fault.

Her eyes stayed on Cyrus, warm and intent, adding something far less official to every word.