7 Chapter 6
Alice
When I woke up, I saw him. His touch had been warm and different from the last time I remembered touching a human, skin to skin.
My heart beat fast and the copper-haired boy got scared the moment he saw I had instantly opened my and was now looking at him intently and surprised. Quickly, as if he had touched fire, he removed the hand with which so much sweetness had touched my cheek. But I could not stop looking at him. He had touched me, the rare and cold girl. And he had done it by his own free will.
He did not seem to look away either and could not seem more petrified and surprised.
"Alice! I'm glad to see that you have already woken up." I overheard a serious, masculine and unexpected voice from the door of the room.
I then realised where I was. That place was not the Earth and I had come there through a huge ring. I remembered the feeling of falling into emptiness, the lack of air, also the incredible sensation of speed. Would I have dreamed it?
I turned my gaze away from the boy's to direct it to the man who was right next to the edge of the door. Where was I? Should not that be my world? Did not they all have to be the same as me? Cold. Under no circumstances did I expect to feel a touch as warm as the boy's one. I looked back at him and saw that his head was downcast, as if was thinking of something important.
"Welcome back, Alice." said the older man, whose crown shone on his head and imposed respect.
I sighed and the mere fact that I knew correctly to say my name, strengthened me in one way or another.
"Actually, we did not expect you to come... so early." continued speaking the man I identified as the king.
"Why not?" I asked as I sat in the bed, and that made the boy get a little nervous seeing that I moved naturally.
The king seemed to overthink his answer. The young man, on the other hand, was still gone, immersed in his own thoughts.
"There are many things we must explain to you, dear" finally said with a sigh at the end of the sentence.
I frowned. I was fed up with so much secrecy.
I watched the boy carefully. His fists had closed and were trembling. I sensed that it would not take him long to scream. His face, which had previously been tanned by the sun, was now flushed with fury.
"You lied to me!" he suddenly yelled at the older man, who I assumed would be his father, since they looked too much in the features so as not to be father and son.
The king turned in surprise at the reaction of his son.
"I have not lied to you." he replied much more relaxed than the young boy was.
"She's cold! Should not I have frozen?" the boy asked furiously, addressing his father as if I were not present. The king looked at us both.
"Yes, she looks like that." he answered wisely.
The way the young man pronounced the word "cold" hurt me. Did that mean he had not felt it? His touch had been for me like finding water in the desert. Breathing for the first time.
"Alice, I beg your pardon. I have to talk to my son." told me the king and I nodded.
The look of hatred that the boy gave me was as someone sticking needles in my chest. I was wrong. That would not be different. I was destined to be hated.
I waited until the two of them had left, leaving me alone in the room. Then, I could not resist it anymore and tears ran down my cheeks like never before.
***
Skay
I was furious. I did not know what it was that I had felt, but I could distinguish a painful feeling from a pleasant one.
My father had been explaining to me all his life that the touch of a cold was fatal, that a simple touch could paralyze a warm for a few seconds. That did not coincide in anything. Nor could I forget the phrase my father had told the cold: "Alice, I beg your pardon." The verb to beg was not in my father's vocabulary. He was the king!
When we had left the room, my father addressed me with a sympathetic look. Apparently, he did not understand why I felt confused.
"Son... when I explained to you how I came to the throne I did not explain everything to you." he started telling me as if he were ashamed.
"What do you mean? I know you won a bloody war and that made the people elect you king after the death of queen Opal, the last queen of ancestral and divine blood." I answered without understanding the reason for his question.
"It is true. But I never told you how we run out of an heir to the throne." I rolled my eyes as I understood where he wanted to go. He could not be serious.
"Alice is the heiress, Skay. Not you."
And then I felt that my whole life was collapsing. My hard workouts, the supposed proposal of marriage with Diana, the division between the cold and warm... Nothing made sense, all the life they had planned for me stopped making sense the moment I heard those words spoken slowly in my father's mouth, the king.
"A cold cannot reign in warm territory!" I screamed uncontrollably and with anger in my voice, so strong that made even tremble the walls of the palace.
"That's what they said. That's why they hid her on Earth for fifteen years since her birth. But she was born here and left the belly of Queen Opal, who was warm."
"But that's impossible." I replied and my head burned with confusion "I've been thinking all my life that I would be king... it's my destiny. Not hers!"
"I thought I had raised you to be more understanding, but I see that the thirst for power blinds you. Perhaps it is best for everyone that Alice reigns, as she deserves by birth." answered my father after sighing.
His words hurt me as any others could never have. However, he was already used to his lack of pride towards me. Maybe he was right, but it pissed me off that I had directed my whole life to a stony path that I could not go through.
"No one will allow Alice to reign, she's cold. She could have been born here, but she's still pure ice." I tried to defend my position.
"Are you sure about that?" my father asked enigmatically before turning around and going to his room.
Was I sure that Alice was ice, like those who corrupted my world?
No. Alice was much more.
