Page 15 of Embers of Midnight
“Exactly. Ping me if you get eyes on a living shifter. If it’s feral, leave it to the ground team. If it’s sapient and scared, you know the drill. Good hunting.”
He blinks out. The room goes back to quiet hum and map glow.
Caelum gives me a sideways look. “No souvenirs,” he mimics in Draven’s tone.
“Rude,” I say. “My trophies are tasteful.”
Ronan clears his throat. The room refocuses. “Packing,” he says. “Cold gear. No silver. No bells.” He gives Darian a look for that last part. Darian holds his palms up like: do I look like a choir.
Upstairs is muscle memory. My room hydrates the dark on entry. Obsidian tiles, matte surfaces, soft hush. I pull the winter bag from the shelf. Layer up: base, thermal, combat shell. Gloves, skullcap, scarf, goggles. Spare knives go in the inner vest. Lockpicks. Chalk. Rations never to be eaten. I check the shadow ink at my wrist; Morrow pulses once against the skin like a steady breath. Silks tastes the air along my forearm, an almost-tickle. Vex hops from door frame to closet rod, commentary in his eyes and his silence. I rub a thumb over his head. He tolerates me. That’s love.
Downstairs, Ronan’s already rigged a compact kit on the cart: med pack, thermal sheets, rope, climbing irons, water, the standard box with things no one wants to admit we’ve needed—zip ties, flares, a tarp that lies to cameras. Darian has Vigil sheathed clean and a coil of reflective thread tucked at his belt. Caelum looks like a catalog page for “winter fairy who lies when it matters for a good cause.” He hands me a heat pack.
“You’re adorable,” I say.
“I’m devastating,” he says. “Hold still.” He tucks the heat pack against the back of my neck under the collar like I’m a child and I let him because it feels good.
The portal room is a circle of fitted stone and glass. The ring over the platform breathes light when Ronan feeds it. He lays a hand to the hub and the sigils light root to rim, red down to gold, then calm. The gate stands up in the air like clean water, no drama.
“Northern Alaska,” Darian says. “Nearest Academy node is sixty clicks east; we’ll walk the last stretch.”
“Love a winter stroll,” I mutter. “My toes were due for a lesson.”
“Stop flirting,” Caelum says. He steps first. The gate takes him like a door. No show.
We go. The move through isn’t fire, it isn’t ice, it isn’t anything big. It’s a pressure change that resets your ears and a shimmer in the spine. Then cold. Clean, hard cold that bites any skin you forgot to cover. Dark trees. Snow underfoot. A sky likehammered iron with no moon in it. The world is quiet in that specific way deep snow makes.
I pull my scarf higher. “We camp,” Ronan says. “We move at first light.”
We choose a stand of fir with a wind break. Five moves and we have a nest. Ronan lays a heat-lens under the ground pad so the snow doesn’t melt into soup. Darian pulls a soft Aegis around the perimeter that peels the worst of the air off and makes breathing easier. Caelum notches the light down by a shade so the site doesn’t shout up at low clouds. I cut a low seam in the shade behind us so we have an exit if anyone walks in bright and loud. Vex makes a circuit overhead—silent, efficient—and drops into the sloped branch above me when he’s done.
The fire is small by design. Ronan runs it like a stove, not a bonfire. Pot hisses. Coffee smells like a decision. I sit and let the cold find the edges of me and then stop. My knees remember rocks; my back remembers walls; my hands remember a thousand knives. This is the quiet that doesn’t itch.
Caelum passes me a tin with something allegedly cookie-adjacent. I take one. It tastes like lemon and smug satisfaction. “You bake now?” I ask him.
“I bribe,” he says. “Different art, same goal.”
Darian pours hot water over tea and hands me a cup of nothing but heat, no flavor. I drink anyway. Ronan eats like a man who respects food and time. We talk low and dumb on purpose. Abad joke about the arena. A complaint about the bells by the west gate because they’re tuned for angels and not for heads. Caelum tells a story about a first-year who tried to glamour the vending machine into thinking he was a faculty snack card. I laugh at the part where the machine ate his sleeve.
By the third pass around the pot, the house-ache fades. I feel my edges settle. The wind drops. The snow nearest the fire crusts and holds.
Caelum leans against my shoulder and watches the steam. “What’s in your head,” he asks, soft.
“Debt,” I admit into the quiet. “And whether I can pay it off with one big dramatic gesture or if I’m stuck doing the boring right thing for another century.”
“Both,” Darian answers from five feet away, not even looking up. “Start boring. End dramatic only if forced.”
“Buzzkill.” I mutter it, because I hate that he’s right.
“Alive,” he returns, flat as a verdict.
Ronan tips the lid, checks the simmer, sets it back. “We bring in whoever made that heat if they’re breathing,” he decides. “Or we make it boring for everyone else if they’re not.”
“Boring is a love language,” Caelum drawls, toasting me with his mug. “I have twenty words for boring in Sylvan.”
“I have one.” I point at him without smiling. “You.”
He leans harder into my shoulder in fake offense. I let him. I treat his hair like a cat and smooth it with my palm. He makes a pleased noise and then pretends he didn’t.
