"Holly?" Sierra gently knocked on my door. 

"Leave me alone!" I snapped, burrowing even deeper under the covers. My bed on the ship was smaller than I was accustomed to, and didn't provide the familiar comfort that my bed at home did, but it was enough at least to block out Sierra's incessant attempts to get me out of my room. 

"Come on, Holly, you can't stay in there forever!" 

"Yes, I can!" I yelled, ferociously wiping a tear off my cheek. 

Amanda was gone...Dad was gone...Thorel was on Earth...and Mom was a rebel. That was worse than being dead. 

Everyone was gone. I was all alone. 

"Holly...please?" Sierra asked, her voice filled with concern. "Holing yourself up in that room all day is just going to make you feel worse. And, besides, it isn't good for you to sit still for long periods of time while you're in space. The artificial gravity works pretty well, but you still have to move around quite a bit if you don't want your muscles to atrophy."

"Okay, Doctor," I rolled my eyes, grudgingly pulling away the many Aural locks I had placed on the edges of my door. 

The door slowly creaked open and I watched as Sierra gingerly entered my room. At least she was trying not to further upset me, as if I wasn't quite upset already. 

"Hey," she smiled softly, sitting down beside me on my bed. "Are you okay?" 

"Does it look like I'm okay?" I spat, gesturing to my smeared makeup and usually perfect hair, that now hung from the back of my head in a messy ponytail. 

"I didn't mean it like th-" 

"It's fine," I sighed.

"No, it's not!" Sierra said angrily. "Trust me, I'm just as mad as you are! What happened to your father is completely unacceptable...another faulty Iceheart Surgery? King Fenorel was understandable, mistakes in the Serum and the Surgery do happen once in a while, but the same huge mistake twice? Someone in the Iceheart Department either sympathizes with the Flame or is just a really big idiot. I can't wait to see what the Council does to them when they find out who it is. It'll surely be quite entertaining," she grinned cruelly. 

"Their deaths weren't made possible by a mistake in the Surgery, Sierra," I said coldly. 

"W-what do you mean?" Sierra bit her lip, her eyes widening. 

"Isn't it obvious?" I shrugged. "Neither King Fenorel's assassin nor my father's was ever caught. Both killings happened in places that we automatically associate with groups that would have valid reasons to kill an Iceheart. King Fenorel was killed near Earth, so we just assumed it was the humans. My father was killed on Rhena, so we said it was the Flames. Neither case was deeply investigated, because we thought it was obvious who did it. It was almost as if the real killer chose those locations on purpose, to frame known enemies of the Icehearts!" 

"What are you saying?" Sierra gasped. 

"I'm saying that Icehearts aren't immortal after all," I shook my head. "There is a very specific way to kill us, and someone knows what it is. And, I don't think that person is a human or a Flame." 

"Then...who are they?" 

"I have no idea," I exhaled sharply. "That's why I'm so afraid. There's someone out there who can kill us, and it could literally be anyone." 

"We have to tell Queen Saralee about this," Sierra asserted. "She'll know what to do." 

"No!" I gasped. "Smart, amazing, and perfect as she is, Queen Saralee is a public figure. Especially with gossip factory Prince Airel around, nothing she knows could ever stay a secret. This killer, whoever they are, is very smart. They'd dispose of all possible evidence and flee to a moon the moment they figured out we were onto them." 

"Then, what do you think we should do?" 

"We should wait," I said softly. "This is not the time to try to take them down, whoever they are. We must wait until they show their face, they can't stay hidden forever."

"Wait a second..." Sierra narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Who's helping you?" 

"What do you mean?" 

"Unless you're my mother or Queen Saralee, there's no possible way you could've figured all of that out by yourself." 

"Or, maybe, I'm not who I say I am at all," I grinned, pulling a tiny vial filled with red liquid out of my pocket. 

"What is that?" Sierra put an Aural shield up between us. 

"This is the secret. You wanted to know, didn't you? This is how you kill an Iceheart." 

I channeled my Aura into a long, wicked looking icicle before uncorking the vial, letting a few drops of the red liquid fall onto the tip of the icicle before driving it forward. The icicle, coated in one of the most dangerous compounds in the universe- or Gore Cocktail, as we liked to refer to it- easily penetrated her hastily made Aural shield. 

"Oh, Sierra, I'm afraid you had a faulty Iceheart Surgery," I smirked as she fell to her knees, choking on her own blood, before falling face first onto the floor. 

Pocketing the precious vial, I turned my attention away from my dead friend as a projection materialized on the wall. 

"Did you get her, Holly?" The unruly Flame boy asked. 

"Yes, Teren," I smiled. "I'd never fail you." 

"Good," he smiled. "That's one more down, I can't believe how easy this is getting!"

"That was very clever of me, don't you think?" I giggled. "Telling her all about us and then killing her." 

"It was, but you shouldn't take so much pride in your rebellious accomplishments," Teren frowned. "We can't allow ourselves to get carried away. We can't become like the Flames, too self absorbed to see what's really best for this Empire. They want to get rid of a corrupt Arystenn ruler...just to put another Arystenn on the throne! How dumb is that? Hasn't that family killed, starved, beaten, tortured, and imprisoned enough of us to knock some sense into those so called 'rebels'?" 

"But we aren't like the Flame. We can stop them!" I said enthusiastically. 

"That's right!" Teren beamed triumphantly. "We're going to bring down the Icehearts and the Flames. What's your precious Princess Viviana going to do about that, huh, Aron?" 

"Your brother and his FAWD will be powerless against us, as will the Princess. When the time is right, we will set things straight. It is time for a new royal family." 

................................

Hehehe, bet you weren't expecting that, were you? 

All I'm going to say is, when it seems like the story has come down to the final battle of good vs. evil, there is almost always a random third party ;)

-Queen Saralee

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