Page 113 of Embers of Midnight
Everything else follows.
The Part You Can’t Hold
Seraphina
White ceiling. Quiet machines. The clean that lives in hospitals and makes your skin feel like it should apologize. I surface fast because my body learned the trick years ago: wake, assess, decide. My throat is dry. My left shoulder burns in a steady line. My ribs ache in a dull circle that feels like a hand, not a fist. Air moves in and out. Two short in. One long out. No fireworks. Just function.
A familiar shadow leans into my light. Ash, eyes blown and tired and bright at once, hair a mess like he wrestled a storm and lost. He is already moving before I find words. His palm frames my face, careful of the bandage near my hairline, and he kisses me like relief found a mouth. It is warm and clean and not coy. When he pulls back, his voice breaks on the inhale. “Little flame.”
Heat climbs my face. I don’t ask if I’m alive. I ask the only thing that matters first. “Morrow.”
“He’s okay.” Ash says it without a joke, which is how I know it’s true. “He took the line meant for you, crashed to ink, and snapped home hard. I need to refresh the binding and add a stitch. He’s sleeping it off.” His mouth tilts for half a second. “He’ll complain about the taste of the new ink and then threaten to bite my barber. Routine.”
The sound I make is not pretty. It still counts. “Good.”
Ronan moves into view behind him, jaw tight and eyes taking inventory I can’t see. The tension in his neck eases a notch when I look back, which is a better painkiller than anything in the drip. “Water,” he says, but it isn’t a command. He holds the cup and straw steady while I sip. The sunstone at my wrist catches the light; the thread under the other pulse hums once like it recognizes the room, then goes quiet.
“How long,” I ask. My voice feels like sandpaper dragged over silk. Still working.
“Five hours,” Darian answers from the chair at my hip. His voice is the kind you sink into. Calm. Dry. Honest. “You scared us.” His hand is on the rail, but his fingers brush the thread once, the way someone might check a pulse without making it a scene.
Caelum stands at the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets. His eyes are the soft kind that still see everything. “Vitals are good. Shoulder is clean. Ribs are mad and will stop sulking in a day. I’d prefer if you didn’t sprint for six hours.”
“I’ll limit myself to five.” My mouth makes a smile that doesn’t feel stolen. “What did I miss.”
Silence changes shape. The men trade glances that live in a language I’m learning. Ronan shifts his weight. Ash’s thumb is at my cheekbone again, a little rough, as if he doesn’t trust his hand to stop shaking. Darian’s jaw flexes once. Caelum clears his throat like he’s volunteering to be the one who names the hard part.
“We confirmed it,” he says. “Draven authorized portal access for the Hunters. Encrypted logs, door runes, faculty lock imprints. The Conclave audit arrived through emergency channel after we flagged it. There’s no angle left where this is a misunderstanding.”
Everything inside me tightens and then decides to hold. “Losses?”
Darian doesn’t make me ask twice. “Three students injured. Two security wardens critical, stabilizing. Professor Voss—” He stops for a breath he shapes into something level. “—didn’t survive the clinic breach.”
I stare at the ceiling because I don’t trust the floor yet. Voss taught with a stick up his back and a hand open for anyone who needed it. Too loud, too blunt. He didn’t deserve a corridor and panic and cold steel. Most people don’t. The ache under my ribs says that truth like it paid for the privilege.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I didn’t like him and I still want him alive. “Did he—”
“Doing his job,” Ronan says quietly. His mouth goes hard, then soft again like weather rolling through. “He put himself between children and a door. He smiled about it the way he did everything else.” He looks like he wants something to hit and knows better.
Ash exhales a laugh that is not a laugh. “He hated my jokes,” he says, and for a second his face cracks. He knuckles his eyes like the old instinct to hide pain is getting in the way of air. “He’d have liked being called a stupid, good man, though. In that order.”
I reach for Ash’s wrist and curl my fingers over Silks’ resting spot. The skin there warms under my touch. He leans into it like the selfish part of me always hoped he would. Darian sets his knuckles against my ankle through the blanket, grounding me. Caelum moves his hand to the edge of the mattress like he’s ready to catch any thought that might fall off. The urge to cry passes, not because it should, but because my body decides to process in different ways.
“What about Umbra,” I ask. “Nyra, Kieran, the others?”
“Bruises and opinions,” Ash says, with a ghost of his usual grin. “They’re fine. They’ll be mad for the next month and eat us out of house and home at the wake. Which we’ll host, because Ronan volunteered without asking.”
“We will host it,” Ronan says. He pretends to scowl and fails. “We were always going to.”
“And you,” Caelum says, a gentle redirect back to the bed where I’m lying like a very poor puppet. “What do you remember.”
“All of it.” My mouth is dry again and not from thirst. I make myself organize. “He was in the portal hall, sending Hunters to ‘controlled egress.’ He said he picks battlefields and routes wolves through kitchens. He tried to recruit me. He locked the doors when I called him on it. He pushed through the floor sigils. He aimed for the throat on purpose.” I meet Ronan’s eyes when I say the next part. “Morrow saved me. He took the first spear across his shoulder.”
Ash’s hand tightens on mine. The skin over his knuckles goes white and then normal again. “He’s sleeping,” he repeats softly, like if he says it enough the world will keep agreeing.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep him on my side,” I tell Ash, over the lump in my throat. “If I’d been faster—”
“Stop.” His voice is careful, which is how he sounds when he’s close to breaking and refuses to. “You kept breathing and made it out. He’s proud. He’ll get to tell the story like the hero he is, with extra gore, because he knows I hate it when he talks about blood at breakfast.”
