The Voice of Frost

001Chapter One: One Hundred Million

Lisborne was deep in the grip of autumn—frost-bitten mornings, dew that turned to silver by nightfall.

Especially at night.

The News Center building, a monument of minimalist design, stood stark against the darkness. Moonlight poured down like white silk, sliding off its edges in cold, clean arcs. Only the grid of glass windows flickered with light.

In the makeup room.

Elara Vance had just gone off air. She sat before the vanity mirror, studying the flawlessly made-up face reflected back at her. With slender, pale fingers, she lifted a cleansing wipe and carefully erased the heavy polish of the broadcast—slowly, layer by layer—

Until the woman beneath emerged: a beauty almost too delicate, like a white camellia bud on the verge of opening, its petals dampened by dew, trembling with the faintest blush of pink.

Just then, the door swung open and her intern assistant, Dorian Whitlock, rushed in, breathless.

“M-Miss Vance.”

He was panting hard.

Elara’s damp lashes fluttered faintly. Her voice, when it came, was soft as water.

“Take your time.”

She rose and walked unhurriedly toward the washroom, tossing the used wipe toward the bin—it traced a perfect half-arc under the lights and dropped in.

“Tonight was your first midnight broadcast, and half the internet was watching—but—” Dorian was famous around the station as Elara’s personal herald of good news. Now, however, he trailed after her, face flushed with indignation, sputtering his complaint: “I heard Serena Lockwood went to the program director. She suggested they stop giving you camera time. Voice only, she said.”

Over the soft rush of running water, Elara caught the name. A note of puzzlement entered her tone.

“Serena Lockwood?”

The woman in question was the station’s crown jewel, the one who held the prime-time evening news in an iron grip.

By all rights, a newcomer like Elara should never have crossed her. But ever since Elara had been hired, her breathtaking beauty and that heaven-gifted voice—heralded ever since a single live broadcast of *Morning Bulletin* went viral—had earned her a devoted following online. They called her an untouchable fairy, untouched by the mundane world.

Privately, everyone assumed she would shake Serena’s position sooner or later. That she’d become the station’s new pillar.

No one had expected the newly appointed director, Konrad Steele, to reshuffle every position upon arrival—and Elara to be quietly banished to the graveyard slot of midnight broadcasting.

Dorian tilted his head slightly, catching her profile in his line of sight—the soft curve of her lowered lashes, so clearly visible, as if she were genuinely pondering the matter.

He seized his chance.

“Serena’s obviously jealous of your voice. She’s never tolerated talented newcomers—she’s always been like that—so she’s trying to smother you before you outshine her…”

After all, everyone in broadcasting circles knew the crown jewel’s voice was, frankly, mediocre. She’d clawed her way to the anchor desk through sheer years of grinding persistence.

Dorian watched her dab the last beads of water from her fingertips with a tissue. The corner of her lips curved into a faint, shallow smile.

“I see.”

Seeing that she clearly hadn’t taken any of it to heart, Dorian faltered.

When he’d first interned here, he’d pinned his hopes on the famous beauty. But time had taught him that Elara Vance never fought for anything, never competed—she carried herself like someone with no ambition at all. It drove him mad.

“Miss Vance! If you don’t develop some survival instinct, Serena is going to edit you out of existence—”

“Hush.”

The word floated through the air like a wisp of otherworldly sound, cool and crystalline.

Dorian fell silent instinctively.

Elara turned back toward the vanity. Her phone chimed—*ding*—and she picked it up. On the screen: Julian Thorne.

She swiped it open. A new message:

*[The Lunaria Auction House, 585 Silverwood Lane…]*

*[The osmanthus blooms with autumn’s arrival—the night air is fragrant. Take care of your asthma when you go out.]*

A moment later.

Elara paused, lifted her face, and gazed out the window at the night sky, dense as ink. She didn’t know how long she stood there—only that the ink gradually thinned, and a pale wash of light crept up at the horizon.

Dawn was coming.

At first light, Elara hailed a cab from the curb. It drove her straight through the gates of the old villa district that bordered the auction house.

The moment she moved to step out, the heavy sweetness of osmanthus blossoms struck her full in the face.

A wash of faint rouge bloomed instantly at the corners of her eyes.

She shrank back instinctively, lashes trembling. Only after a long moment did she slowly open her eyes.

Through the cab’s window, an ancient osmanthus tree—its gnarled trunk a labyrinth of veins—rose beside the rock garden and filled her gaze. Understanding dawned.

She glanced slightly sideways. A weathered plaque met her eyes, its once-crimson letters faded and peeling: Lunaria. Tiny orange-gold blossoms drifted down, settling seemingly by accident upon the wooden eaves—an air of antique grace, effortless and true.

Half a minute later, Elara pressed a white handkerchief to her nose and mouth, and finally stepped out of the cab.

Her footsteps were whisper-light as she climbed the steps. Before she could even knock, the villa’s great doors opened from within.

A receptionist in a tailored black dress peeked out. At the sight of Elara, she looked as though she’d glimpsed a saint, and bowed with deep reverence.

“Miss Vance. Mr. Thorne said you’d arrive before the auction. He was right to the minute.”

“The auction begins in fifteen minutes.”

Elara tucked away her handkerchief and spoke with quiet precision, following the girl around a quiet corner of the atrium and up the staircase. “Take me to the changing room first.”

She had come because Julian Thorne—the most celebrated antique appraiser in the trade—was detained by urgent business and had asked her to stand in for him, to auction off a single piece on his behalf.

The receptionist led her into the changing room and held out a gown that had been laid ready. “Mr. Thorne said you wouldn’t care for our usual attire. This one—he chose it for you himself.”

Elara accepted it and drew the dark green velvet curtain shut.

As the hem of her long dress slid down to her bare ankles, her soft voice drifted out from behind the curtain.

“The guest registry, please.”

The receptionist passed the booklet under the curtain, talking as she did. “The piece tonight is the *Twin Doves* pillow—a Renaissance reliquary piece. Only a dozen or so guests attending, all of them Lunaria’s most valued patrons…”

A moment passed.

The curtain was suddenly drawn aside by a slender, porcelain-pale hand, and Elara stepped out.

She wore a white satin gown, elegant as flowing water. The liquid-smooth fabric wrapped her exquisite figure, and the sl*t along one hip revealed delicate embroidery of winding vines—making her waist look impossibly small, as if a single hand could circle it. As she moved, glimpses of pale leg flashed through the opening, a beauty so soft it seemed made to be broken.

The receptionist’s words trailed off. She studied the news anchor again, truly studied her.

That face was made for the camera.

Beautiful the way a saint’s portrait is beautiful—pure on the surface, magnetic underneath. One look, and you couldn’t help but look again.

Elara had already finished scanning the auction catalog.

She turned next to the guest list, her lustrous fingertip gliding across the page—before coming to rest on a single name.

Konrad Steele.

Noting her expression, the receptionist ventured hesitantly, “Is—is something wrong?”

Elara closed the booklet. Her smile was clear as still water.

“Nothing at all.”

The hall. Every light blazed to life at once, flooding the auction room in brilliance.

Elara approached the glass display pedestal on the stage, her lashes lowered as her gaze swept—casually, involuntarily—across the VIP seats. Those invited tonight were nearly all titans of high society, names that carried weight in every drawing room in the country.

After a few seconds, she withdrew her gaze without a trace.

The man on the guest list—Konrad Steele, who had transferred to Lisborne’s News Center six months ago and privately lived in the antique auction circuit.

*Director Steele.*

Was not in the room.

Elara pressed her lips together faintly. Julian’s intelligence was never wrong.

Then, from the corner of her eye, she caught the clock on the antique mantel. She steadied herself, forced down the knot of doubt, and began the lot introduction in that clear, limpid voice.

The bidding opened.

She smiled out at the room. “The starting bid—ten million.”

“Twenty-five million!”

“Forty million!”

“…Sixty million!”

The room’s bidding climbed in rapid succession.

At sixty million, many of the collectors froze, their eyes snapping to the pedestal. There it rested: the *Twin Doves* pillow, carved from a single flawless block of pure white Carrara marble—snow-bright, translucent at the thinnest edges, its surface polished to a seamless silk. Its collecting value spoke for itself.

Sixty million was precisely the market ceiling. A penny more, and it was no longer worth it.

Elara repeated the number softly, then inclined her head toward paddle 089 at the center of the front row.

“Congratulations, sir. The *Twin Doves* pillow is yours.”

The next second—

As the gavel began to fall—

“One hundred million.”

A voice, faint and cold as frost on glass, rang through the auction hall—so silent that a pin’s drop would have thundered.

And those two words landed on Elara’s heart like a falling stone. She froze where she stood, and—almost against her will—turned toward the sound.

A man in an impeccably tailored suit appeared at the doorway, attended like a king. The crisp, elegant cut of the cloth made his frame look carved and coldly tall, burning bright against the crowd.

Perhaps sensing her gaze, he lifted his eyes from across the room.

Elara’s breath caught.

She met a pair of pale, expressionless irises. The warm light of the hall warmed them not at all—they were colder for it, glacial and clear, like a figure of the finest white porcelain, exquisite and utterly remote.

The hall held its breath for several seconds. Then someone murmured:

“The Frost heir. He came.”

In all of Society, who didn’t know the name? The newly installed head of the ancient, deep-rooted Frost dynasty—the man who held the lifeblood of the entire family empire in his hands. He moved through the world in near-total silence, appearing so rarely that not even the gossip columns had a single thread to pull.

Whatever he wished to buy, no one would dare bid against.

Every eye had abandoned the stage now, all of them discreetly studying the striking man settling into the shadowed front row.

Beside him, Chase Sinclair—himself a guest of honor, a young lord born to old money—narrowed his fox-like eyes and drawled, “I burn candles at every altar in the city praying for ten minutes of your time, and *today* you grace us with your presence? What brings you out of your monastery?”

Sebastian Frost sat in profile, still as jade. He lifted his tea at an unhurried pace, the long, finely boned fingers around the cup bone-white in the dim light.

“I heard there was a rare treasure at this auction,” he said, his tone mild and unhurried. “Naturally, I came hunting.”

*A rare treasure?*

The marble pillow? That?

Chase’s face scrunched in skepticism—until he caught, from the corner of his eye, the perfect curve of those water-cooled lips, adding a startling, almost cruel beauty to that face.

And then he caught something else: the trajectory of Sebastian’s gaze as it crossed the stage, landing on the female auctioneer in her white satin gown—slender and pale as a white camellia stem in a glass vase, fragile and luminous.

One second. No more. Sebastian’s eyes moved on, as lightly as they’d arrived.

At that moment, the director of the Lunaria Auction House approached, bowing with great deference.

“Mr. Frost—might I escort you to the private room? I shall deliver the piece to you personally.”

Sebastian set his teacup down at the edge of the table, the movement precise, his raven-dark lashes barely lifting as he indicated the stage with a glance.

“No need. *She’ll* bring it.”

After the auction, the guests dispersed into the night. Half the lights went dark.

Elara found the receptionist and asked for the guest registry once more.

Her lashes lowered as she read it through, name by name, line by line, searching for his.

There was no *Frost* anywhere.

Her fingers tightened silently on the dark cover of the booklet. She thought of that fleeting, impossible face from years ago—

A chance meeting. Nothing more. They hadn’t crossed paths in all the years since.

He probably didn’t remember her at all.

“Miss Vance.”

A gentle voice broke into her thoughts. She turned sharply to find the auction house’s director, all smiles and entreaty. “Might I trouble you with one small task? Deliver the pillow to the gentleman’s room.”

Elara’s dark eyes widened slightly. *He wanted her*—a stand-in, an outsider— to deliver it?

The director sighed inwardly. He knew perfectly well how close she was to Julian Thorne. But the Frost heir had named her by sight—and today they could have rolled her there on a gilded litter, but deliver her they would.

He was still casting about for the words to persuade her when Elara answered, her voice very soft:

“All right.”

Before the private room on the third floor, the director stopped. He knew his guest prized his quiet. He simply pushed open a carved wooden door—its surface a labyrinth of dark, ornate patterns—and gestured her through with a *please*.

Elara’s footsteps sank soundlessly into carpet thick as moss. She rounded a folding screen—and her eyes fell upon a classical oil painting hanging on the wall, its palette pale and cold. In the soft light, a white peacock perched high upon a snowy divine mountain, proud and unapproachable, its magnificent tail cascading down in a river of jeweled feathers, gazing down upon everything below.

Her gaze slid down along the painted feathers.

And came to rest on the opulent, ink-dark velvet sofa.

Sebastian Frost reclined there, languid, his raven lashes half-lowered. His handsome face was like the first snow of winter, the clean line of his jaw hidden beneath a small leather-bound book of psalms—giving him an air of unshakable, glacial calm.

*He should be sequestered somewhere,* Elara thought distantly. *A face like that, loose in the world, would cause riots.*

A secretary in an immaculate suit stepped forward. Her lashes dipping low, Elara passed over the certificate of sale with the gentlest of movements.

Then—she couldn’t help it—her eyes drifted once more toward the sofa.

And she was caught entirely off guard: Sebastian Frost had already lifted the book from his face, and was looking directly at her, his expression drowsy and unreadable.

“Mr. Frost.”

Her mind went white for an instant. Only after a long moment did she recover her voice.

“Please—sign here.”

His gaze slid away from her pale profile without a flicker of acknowledgment. With one long finger pressed to his brow, as if dispelling weariness, he reached out and took the thin sheet of paper.

Elara’s voice dropped to nearly nothing, as if afraid of disturbing him.

Up close, she suddenly realized—the cold air around him carried a thread of incense, faint as a memory. Frankincense, perhaps. Then it filled her every trembling breath, claiming it entirely.

But—

He glanced at the certificate without stopping, and passed it straight back.

Elara blinked, her clear spring-water eyes rising to his in silent confusion.

Her gaze froze.

From the loosened cuff of his snow-white shirt emerged half a length of slender wrist. The veins of his hand stood in sharp relief, and across the back of it, a pale-gold script glowed like something branded into the skin—letters of some ancient Latin benediction, inked in fire, setting his bloodless complexion further beyond human reach.

In the next instant, his voice reached her ear—cool, faintly rough, a single word:

“Read it.”

002Chapter Two: Read It Again

As Sebastian Frost’s words fell, the private room went still for an instant.

*Was this a Lunaria custom? Reading the certificate aloud to the buyer?*

Elara’s gaze snapped back from the mysterious pale-gold script on the back of his exquisite hand—and rose, instinctively, to his face.

But Sebastian had already closed his eyes. The ornate chandelier overhead cast a cold light across his handsome features, his contours glossed over with a frost-thin, almost unreal luminescence. He looked cold beyond all human measure.

Confusion flickered through her eyes. The secretary at his side respectfully took the certificate from Sebastian’s hand.

She passed it back to Elara.

Then she personally drew a chair over—placing it mere inches from the opulent, ink-dark velvet sofa—moving so soundlessly that not even the thick, dark-patterned carpet made a whisper beneath her.

Lowering her voice to a hush, the secretary said, “