Page 67 of Embers of Midnight
Ronan’s hoard is not a dragon cliché. It’s a chamber cut clean, walls smooth, the ceiling opening to the sky in an oval that frames blue. A low ring holds a banked cedar fire, throwing quiet heat. A wide, circular nest sits near it—woven leather belts, wool throws, soft layers that look engineered for rest, not show. Shelves along the far wall hold objects arranged with the kind of attention that turns keeping into meaning: a row of dog-eared field journals wrapped in twine; three knives, each with adifferent story in the wear of the handle; a jar of river stones, not fancy, just smooth; a shadowbox of old coins strung on fine copper wire; a carved box with a lid that fits exactly; a coil of rope that has been mended, not replaced; four lengths of colored cord braided together and hung like a flag at the shelf edge. The room sits like a breath that went all the way down.
He watches my face come apart and back together. “Home,” he offers, as if I might decide to argue with the word.
“It fits you,” I tell him, and it’s not flattery. It’s observation.
He sets our pack by the nest and crosses to a high shelf, reaching for something wrapped in soft cloth. He takes time with the folds, not milking it—just careful because careful is his default. When he opens his hands, a bracelet rests against the fabric: a narrow band the color of sun-browned wheat, edged with shallow-cut scale pattern, a single sunstone set flush in the center, not flashy, a quiet ember caught in metal.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe before I can stop myself. The word lands low and true. No one has ever handed me something this clean, this meant.
He doesn’t shift his weight, doesn’t fill the silence with a sales pitch. He simply holds it out. “For you,” he tells me. “If you’ll wear it.” His gaze drops to the stone like he’s seeing two times at once. “It was my mother’s,” he adds, softer. “The last thing of hers I kept.”
My heart trips and then finds a new rhythm. Heat rises behind my eyes in a way I don’t like admitting to. “Ronan… I can’t take that,” I manage. “It’s too valuable. It’s yours.”
“Please.”
Just that. No argument. No charm. It hits harder than a speech. He’s not giving me metal. He’s offering a piece of gravity to live by.
Words fail for a second. When they return, they bring honesty instead of armor. “Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll wear it. I won’t take it off.”
He takes my wrist—the one with the thread—turns it palm-up. His fingers are warm. The band settles against my skin with a small, decisive weight. It fits like it was made with a measurement no one else had.
“It suits you,” he murmurs, almost to himself.
I look down at my wrist: thread and metal, plan and promise. Something that used to be empty space fills and stays. “It’s still beautiful,” I tell him, steadier now. “And I swear I’ll never remove it. Not for classes. Not for sleep. Not for anything.” The vow tastes like iron and sunlight.
He exhales, a sound that eases something I didn’t notice was tight. His thumb skims once over the edge of the band, then leaves it be, like he’s trusting it—and me—to hold. I swallow around the sting and laugh under my breath because crying herewould be ridiculous and also possible. The bracelet warms to my skin. The room feels different with it on, like the map just got a north I can keep.
He gestures toward the shelves the way some people gesture to photo albums. “If you want to look.”
I want. He follows a step behind while I move along the wall, letting the room introduce him. He touches objects as he speaks, like touch is part of remembering. A knife with an old nick: “My father carved the handle. Badly. He refused to let anyone sand it smooth.” The shadowbox of coins: “Night-market on Umbros. People hang luck on strings so they don’t forget to carry it.” Thecarved box: “My mother kept combs and hairpins here. I keep letters. She would approve of the upgrade and pretend not to.”
He stops at the braided cords. The colors are muted. The strands are worn where fingers have handled them a hundred times. “First team that felt like family,” he says. The past sits in his voice without apology. “We cut the cords on a ferry crossing when we scattered. I kept ours.”
I lean a shoulder to the shelf, look at him, and don’t bother to soften the words. “You lose a lot,” I state.
“Enough,” he answers, quiet. “Parents. Sister. A friend who dragged me sideways into better trouble than I deserved.” He tries to smile and it doesn’t cooperate. He lets it go. “I learned distance because it felt like armor.”
“How’d that work out?” I ask, gentle as I can make blunt.
“It kept everything light,” he admits. “Light breaks easier than heavy.” His hand finds the back of his neck, rubs once, drops. “And you?”
“I was never chosen,” I give him. Not tragic. Not a script. Just fact. “Not by parents. Not by the families that toured the halls and picked smaller, quieter versions of me. The matron said my eyes looked like trouble and nobody wants to adopt trouble.” My mouth twists. “She wasn’t wrong about the trouble. She was wrong about the wanting. I wanted a door that stayed open and a bed that was mine both mornings of the weekend.” I tap the band. “This lands like both.”
He doesn’t try to fix it. He doesn’t turn my past into a ladder. He steps in close enough that our arms brush and the heat from the cedar catches along my skin.
We sit in thenestbecause it’s built for this: two bodies, warm, not swallowed. I fold one knee, he stretches his legs, ankles crossed. The fire sends up a pop and a ribbon of scent. The skylight frames a slice of blue with a thin ribbon of cloud.
His hand finds mine, not cautious, not staking ground. My knuckles fit hard against his palm for a breath and then loosen. We trade air the way people do when neither of them is pretending they aren’t starving.
“Kissing you feels overdue,” he muses, low.
“That’s because it is,” I answer, and the nerve that carried that sentence surprises us both.
His mouth ghosts my cheek first, a slow line toward the corner. Heat pools low. I tip in. The kiss lands warm and sure, unhurried, emphatically real. No power play. No script. The kind that resets your shoulders and makes your breath behave.
When we part, the room looks the same. My body doesn’t.
“Again,” I mutter, already leaning. He laughs into my mouth and gives me what I asked for with interest, then leans back like he knows how to keep a day intact, not burn it down at noon.
