Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The Snow Queen finally stopped laughing.

She slowly rose from the ice, her long hair dragging across the ground, emitting a string of faint, sobbing cries. I knew those sounds all too well-they were the children locked inside the boxes. She wasn’t some queen from a fairy tale sitting high above the clouds; she was more like a withered corpse frozen for centuries, draped in a woman’s skin, using the dreams and blood of the poor to nourish herself into a living thing.

“Zhichuan,” she said, looking at Yan Zhichuan with a tone that almost sounded like a real mother’s. “Are you going to defy me again for those worthless lives out there?”

Yan Zhichuan coughed up a mouthful of icy blood and raised his hand to support himself with his blade.

“In this life, I’ve owed them enough.”

The Snow Queen sneered. With a flick of her finger, the chains wrapped around the heart instantly tightened. Yan Zhichuan’s chest looked as if it were being violently torn open. He fell heavily to his knees, blood pouring incessantly from his lips. It turned out those locks didn’t just tether the matchboxes; they tethered him as well.

I finally understood why he said he was the lock.

“Yi Jiangxue.” He looked up at me, his voice so raspy it was nearly fading away. “The box at the very bottom… the one with your name on it… take it down.”

I followed his gaze and indeed saw a matchbox I had never noticed before, tucked away in the deepest part of the pile.

On the lid, my name was written.

My mind exploded with a roar.

The Snow Queen laughed. “Why do you think you can hear the fire speak? Because you were born to be the new Fire Seed Woman. Yi Yinchun didn’t protect you back then to save your life; she did it to save the fire for me.”

A chill ran through my body, but my hands grew steadier.

“What if I light it?”

“You will see what you desire most,” the Snow Queen said softly. “A warm house, a bed that doesn’t let the wind in, and everyone you want to keep by your side. And then, just like your mother, you will obediently hand the fire to me.”

Yan Zhichuan suddenly used his blade to haul himself up and lunged toward the heart. He threw his entire weight against it, and the chains immediately let out a piercing sound as they snapped. The Snow Queen let out a sharp shriek, and half the ice cavern shook. Seizing that moment, I lunged forward and snatched the matchbox with my name on it.

The box was hotter than any other.

Without hesitation, I struck the match.

The moment the light flared, I truly saw it.

It wasn’t a warm house or a bed.

I saw a spring without snow. Outside the city, the river had thawed. Children who sold matches no longer huddled under the bridge. Ming Yinxing was wearing a pair of brand-new sheepskin boots, splashing in the river. Grandmother was airing out quilts under the eaves. Mother walked through the door carrying firewood and turned to smile at me. Yan Zhichuan wasn’t sitting in the tomb-like Glimmersnow Palace; instead, he stood on a street that smelled of charcoal fires and bread, holding a matchbox that was as ordinary as could be.

The scene was so beautiful it made my chest ache.

And because it was so beautiful, I understood instantly.

This was a dream.

It was the dream a dying person is most loath to leave behind.

I bit the tip of my tongue, forced myself to swallow the blood, and raised my hand to press the flame against the chains binding the heart.

“In your dreams.”

The Dream Fire burned along the chains. In mid-air, countless matchboxes began to vibrate simultaneously. One, two, ten, a hundred-the lids popped open one after another. The aroma of bread, the steam of hot soup, the sweetness of roasted chestnuts, and the scent of sun-dried old cotton quilts flooded out all at once, nearly filling the entire ice cavern.

At the same time, the crying also erupted.

Ming Yinxing, Ah Qiao, Dongsheng, Xinger… the voices of countless children rushed out of the boxes, like people who had finally found someone to open the door. The Snow Queen let out a high-pitched scream as her skin cracked inch by inch in the firelight. What seeped from the cracks wasn’t blood, but ice.

“Yan Zhichuan!” I shouted. “What do I do for the final step?”

He was clinging to the pulsing heart, his face so pale it was almost transparent.

“Give the fire… back to the dead.”

I gripped Ming Yinxing’s matchbox and lit it too.

A small flicker of fire jumped up, and Ming Yinxing’s voice rang in my ear.

“Sister Jiangxue, I’m not cold anymore.”

My tears fell instantly.

In the next heartbeat, I shoved the entire matchbox into the gap between the Crimson Heart and the chains.

With a thunderous boom, the Crimson Heart exploded.