"Listen," the third man said, breath fogging now in front of his mouth as the temperature sank. "We can—we can drop the weapons. We can—"

"You can die quiet," Alexei told him.

He opened his fingers and pushed his hand through the air like he was smoothing a sheet.

A clear blade formed as his palm moved. Thin. Clean. The kind of ice so dense nothing would be able to break it. It grew from nothing to wrist-length in a breath. It turned his hand into a knife.

The third man stared at it like it broke his head to look.

Alexei stepped in and put it under the man’s jaw.

He did not flick his wrist. He did not hack at the soldier.

He simply pressed up. The blade slid in as if the skin had been waiting to part.

Blood came hot and bright and then slowed when the cold took that away, too. The man made a wet, lost sound and went slack against his own frozen arms. His weight did not pull him down. The ice held him up.

The fourth man tried to scream. Alexei moved the other way and gave him the same mercy, quick and neat. Two bodies hung there, eyes open, mouths open, spilling steam instead of breath.

The first two were still alive. They stared at Alexei like he was the part of winter that kills the old first.

"No," one whispered, head shaking as much as the ice bands let it. "Please—"

Alexei’s mouth twitched. "You came for our backs," he said. He sounded almost bored. "If you want to kill us, the least you can do is face us."

He set his hand flat on the man’s chest.

Cold blew through cloth and into skin.

The man’s breath stopped like a hand had pressed over his mouth inside his lungs. Frost grew in a spiderweb under the shirt. It climbed over heart and ribs and made them all one piece. The man’s eyes went glassy as his own blood turned against him.

Alexei took his hand away. The man stayed upright, a statue in a dirty uniform, white from collar to belt.

The last of the four shook hard. He had not pissed himself. Pride kept that last small thing. He clenched his jaw until the muscle in it jumped.

"What are you?" he asked. It scraped out of him, quiet and honest.

"Hungry," Alexei replied, the smirk on his face only getting bigger.

He reached up and touched the man’s eyelids with two fingers.

Frost bloomed there like thin flowers. The man’s eyes iced over. He swallowed a sound.

Alexei dragged his hand down, slow, and the frost drew a line over the man’s face: brow, nose, lips, throat. Skin split where cold bit too deep.

The man’s breath came fast, then stopped when the line reached his chest. He went still. The ice held him where it had built him.

Alexei stepped back, wiped his palm on his pants, and looked over his shoulder into the room again.

Zubair had not moved far.

He had pulled Noah back up by the hair and propped him against the wall so he would have to look at the mess Alexei had made.

The man’s mouth worked, but barely. No sound came out. Blood ran into the collar of his shirt and kept going.

"Done?" Alexei asked.

"Almost," Zubair said.

He set the knife point in the hollow just above Noah’s breastbone, pressed, and leaned in.

The blade sank with a slow, thick sound. Bone gave. Cartilage tore.

Zubair’s knuckles went white and then red as blood climbed his fingers. Noah’s hands fluttered at Zubair’s wrists like he could push what was happening back into the past if he tried hard enough.

Zubair turned the blade a little to the left and dragged it down.

His sternum split. The chest opened a hand’s width. Heat hit the air, wet and steaming. Noah’s eyes rolled white. Zubair reached in, found what he wanted, and tightened his grip.

Alexei watched the tendons in Zubair’s forearm stand out.

He watched Noah go still a second time. But this time, there was no chance to come back from it.

Zubair pulled his hand free and let what he held drop to the floor next to the mess of ribs and shirt.

He wiped his palm on Noah’s chest without looking at the stain he left. He let the body slide sideways to the tile.

Silence came back. Not clean. Heavy. A blanket pulled over a fight that would not be getting up again.

Alexei stepped into the room and toed a chair upright. He did not sit. He looked at Zubair’s face, at the calm there that did not mean peace.

"You good?" Alexei asked.

Zubair lifted his eyes and met his. "Better."

A low rumble padded down the hall from behind them. Soft claws, heavy breath. Luci slid into the doorway, muzzle wet, fur along his shoulders spiked with drying blood.

He looked at Zubair first, then Alexei, then the four figures frozen to the wall. He sniffed their cold and sneezed once, unimpressed.

"Yeah, yeah," Alexei told the wolf. "You missed it."

The dire wolf huffed and drifted to Zubair, pushing a large head into his thigh. Zubair’s hand dropped and scratched behind one ear without his eyes leaving Alexei’s.

"Where’s Sera?" Zubair asked.

"I’m guessing up," Alexei said. "Finishing whatever she needs to finish."

Zubair nodded once. He stepped over Noah and the opened chest and walked to the door. Luci stayed on his hip like a shadow with teeth.

Alexei followed them into the hall. He held his palm out as he passed the frozen soldiers and closed his fingers.

The ice let go. Two bodies crumpled and hit the tile with dull, final sounds. The statue with the white chest cracked down the middle and folded in half. The last one slid off the wall like old meat.

They moved toward the stairwell. The corridor was a mess of dead and broken things. Their boots made small noises. Luci’s nails clicked and dragged and clicked again.

On the landing, new sounds rose—fast steps above them, too many, the slap of palms against rails as men used their hands to pull themselves downward faster. Voices, low and fast, broke apart into fear as they neared the dark below.

Alexei glanced up and then at Zubair. "More of them."

Zubair flexed his fingers, blood drying in the lines. "Good."