She didn’t immediately look up. The glacial temperature in the room seemed to suddenly stagnate, the heavy, suffocating silence stretching out for a long, tense moment.

Slowly, Cassandra raised her head. Her piercing grey eyes locked onto Killian, the dismissive annoyance from a moment ago entirely replaced by a sharp, dangerous focus.

"...What?" she asked, her voice dropping to a dangerously quiet whisper.

Killian’s confident smirk twisted into a dark, ugly scowl.

He leaned forward, planting his hands on the very edge of her desk.

"My father told me that he came to our estate over the break. Saying he wanted to meet me... but, you know what your pathetic brother did. That fool took my favorite maid."

Killian’s dark eyes flared with genuine, possessive anger.

"She was mine, Cassandra. So, I want you to take responsibility and discipline that bastard for—"

CRACK!

Before the final word could even leave his mouth, the ambient moisture in the air violently condensed.

A jagged, razor-sharp projectile of ice manifested and shot across the desk faster than a blink.

WHOOSH!

It sliced through the space between them with a deadly hiss.

Killian violently jerked his head back, but he wasn’t fast enough.

A thin, stinging red line instantly bloomed across his cheekbone as the frostline projectile grazed his skin, flying past him to bury itself inches deep into the heavy oak door at the back of the office.

A single drop of blood welled up on Killian’s pale cheek.

The room went deathly silent.

Cassandra hadn’t even blinked. Her hands were still resting elegantly on the surface of her desk, her silver hair perfectly still.

"That is the last warning I am going to give you, Killian," Cassandra stated, her voice echoing with lethal, crushing authority.

"Watch how you speak about the Raith family in my presence."

Killian slowly raised a hand, his fingers brushing his cheek. He looked at the smear of red on his skin, his dark eyes narrowing into dangerous, hostile slits. The charming, aristocratic facade was entirely dead.

"Are you actually defending that thief?"

Killian hissed, his jaw clenching tightly.

"Don’t you understand what I am talking about, Cassandra? He stole my property from under my own roof!"

Though Cassandra’s expression remained perfectly, infuriatingly blank. She gracefully picked up her quill, idly twirling the feather between her fingers.

"Oh? So you are saying he just swept her out of your estate?" She asked, her tone dripping with frigid condescension.

"A boy you call a ’fool’ managed to infiltrate the heavily guarded Glimor manor and steal your favorite maid without anyone stopping him?"

Killian opened his mouth, a heated retort on his tongue, but Cassandra cut him off effortlessly.

"From what I know," she continued, her grey eyes locking onto him with absolute superiority, "he didn’t steal anything. He bought her contract rights outright. And your own father signed off on the transfer."

Cassandra leaned forward slightly, resting her elbows on the desk as she delivered the final, humiliating blow.

"If you are so incompetent that you couldn’t even convince your own patriarch to keep a simple maid for you, do not come into my office and demand that I discipline my brother for outmaneuvering you."

Cassandra set her quill down with deliberate, echoing finality. She didn’t break eye contact.

"Get out."

The sheer humiliation of being dismissed like a common servant finally shattered Killian’s aristocratic composure. His face flushed a dark, furious red, his hands balling into tight fists at his sides.

He took a threatening step forward, his jaw completely unhinged.

"You bit—"

CRACK!

But... Killian didn’t even have the chance to finish the curse. Before he could blink, massive, jagged pillars of ice violently erupted from the polished floorboards beneath his feet.

The frost didn’t just crawl; it violently exploded upward.

Thick, suffocating layers of glacial ice instantly encased his expensive leather boots, aggressively spiraling up his legs and locking his knees together.

In the same fraction of a second, the ice seized his wrists, forcefully slamming his arms against his torso and pinning them there in a freezing, unbreakable vise.

Killian gasped, his breath misting in the freezing air. He jerked his body violently, trying to channel his aura to break free, but the ice didn’t even splinter. It was too dense, infused with the crushing weight of Cassandra’s mana.

For the first time since he had stepped into her office, genuine, unadulterated fear flashed in Killian’s dark eyes.

He realized, with a sudden, sinking horror, that she wasn’t just posturing.

She was entirely serious.

"Nnngh—!"

A pained groan ripped from Killian’s throat as the ice violently contracted. The heavy, grinding sound of the frost tightening around his limbs echoed through the room, applying agonizing, bone-crushing pressure to his forearms and shins.

Cassandra slowly walked around the edge of the mahogany desk. The temperature in the room dropped so low that the very air felt brittle enough to snap.

She stopped right in front of him, looking down at his trapped, trembling form with absolute, glacial disgust.

"I warned you... didn’t I?"

Cassandra hissed, her voice a terrifying, quiet murmur that completely lacked any semblance of her usual administrative restraint.

"Just because I was merely tolerating your presence for the sake of our families’ politics, you really got ahead of yourself."

Killian’s eyes widened in sheer panic as the ice crept higher, painfully compressing his ribcage and making it impossible to draw a full breath.

"Hey, listen to me—" Killian choked out, his voice cracking as desperation completely overtook his pride.

SNAP!

Cassandra flicked her wrist.

The ice surged violently upward, instantly sealing over his jaw and clamping his mouth entirely shut. His plea was cut off into a muffled, terrified whimper beneath the thick layer of frost.

Simultaneously, the ice around his limbs tightened with a sickening, heavy creak.

The pressure increased exponentially, forcefully crushing his arms and legs until the fabric of his uniform tore and his joints were pushed to the absolute breaking point.

Killian’s eyes bulged, tears of sheer, blinding pain welling in the corners of his eyes as he stood there, completely helpless, completely silenced, and entirely at the mercy of the Ice Princess.