"Listen," the third man said, breath fogging now in front of his mouth as the temperature sank. "We can—we can drop the weapons. We can—"
"You can die quiet," Alexei told him.
He opened his fingers and pushed his hand through the air like he was smoothing a sheet.
A clear blade formed as his palm moved. Thin. Clean. The kind of ice so dense nothing would be able to break it. It grew from nothing to wrist-length in a breath. It turned his hand into a knife.
The third man stared at it like it broke his head to look.
Alexei stepped in and put it under the man's jaw.
He did not flick his wrist. He did not hack at the soldier.
He simply pressed up. The blade slid in as if the skin had been waiting to part.
Blood came hot and bright and then slowed when the cold took that away, too. The man made a wet, lost sound and went slack against his own frozen arms. His weight did not pull him down. The ice held him up.
