Page 20 of Embers of Midnight
“Good,” the gold-eyed one says, and the word lands like a palm at the base of my neck. “Now pull the heat down your spine to your center. Let the edges cool. Horn last.”
I drag it like a weighted blanket from the wrong direction. It hurts in a deep-muscle way that promises reward later. My breath wants to stutter. I keep it honest because he’s doing the count and I’m petty enough to match out of spite if nothing else.
“Last piece,” he says, voice near and easy. “Think hands. Remember them.”
The word opens a drawer I didn’t label. Fingers on cool ceramic. Keys biting a palm. Paper rasping under a nail I keep too short. Mug handles warming the web between thumb and forefinger. The stove door slides most of the way down. Something in my back zips, not pain—alignment.
Everything happens at once and in order.
Weight redistributes. Tendon shortens with a ripple I feel like a shiver turned inside out. The horn pressure unhooks from my skull, reluctant and then relieved, and pulls itself into a bright ache behind my brow. The long geometry of my legs remembers a shorter math. Elbows come back like old friends I didn’t appreciate. Knees make a rude sound and then agree to exist.
The mane becomes hair. Heavy. Wet. Ridiculous. Fur gives up heat and leaves nerve endings raw in wind. I drop through the last narrow and hit person. It’s not a clean landing. There is no clean tonight. But it’s done.
Cold socks me. Honest cold, without river teeth. I am on my knees on crusted snow in air that doesn’t care how dramatic I am. Steam lifts off my bare shoulders and pretends to be helpful. It isn’t. My hands exist and they shake.
The jacket arrives before shame does. He’s moving as it happens, the coat already in his hands, that same deliberate pace. He wraps it around me without touching skin he doesn’t have to. It’s warm in a lived-in way—cinnamon, steel, a trace of smoke. The weight says stop fighting gravity for a second. I do.
“Don’t look around yet,” he says, close but not crowding. His breath is heat without push. “Head down. Keep breathing. You did it.”
I breathe because I like that better than the alternative. The world is too big for one heartbeat, too small for the next. The jacket holds me to a version of now where I’m not boiling rivers.
The silver-eyed man lets his shadow climb his forearm and vanish under his sleeve, like ink meeting home. He looks at my face, then away, manners tidy. The storm-blue positions himself to block wind, body turned so I can read his hands. The green-eyed one tips his head as if listening to a joke that decided to be a secret.
“Water,” the storm-blue says, practical and careful. He doesn’t step closer. He gestures to a flask the silver-eyed one unclips and sets on the snow within reach. “Small sips.”
For a bad second I imagine the comedy of boiling a kindness. I take the flask anyway. The metal kisses my skin cold. I drink small. It lands and stays. My throat thanks it without getting sentimental.
“Names,” the gold-eyed one says. He offers his like it costs him nothing. “Ronan.”
The silver-eyed one’s mouth curves. Less smile, more invitation to consider humor. “Ash.” He points at a bird on a nearby branch "And that's Vex."
The storm-blue gives me a nod that reads like a promise he’ll keep. “Darian.”
The green-eyed one’s voice is warmth in a different register. “Caelum.”
They don’t ask mine like a demand. They set theirs down and make space beside them. My name sits behind my teeth and decides honesty is cheaper than the kind of lie I’d have to maintain. Also, names are anchors. I could use one.
“Seraphina,” I say. It scrapes. It’s mine.
Everything tilts, blood pressure turning into a rumor. The jacket tries to argue with physics. Physics doesn’t listen. My head goes light and the ground moves a fraction left. I’m already pitching forward when Ronan’s hand finds the collar and steadies me without grabbing skin. The motion is practiced. Gentle. Infuriating only to the parts of me that don’t like needing anything.
“Hey,” Ash says, voice soft enough to qualify as a thought. “Let it happen, pretty flame.”
I don’t have the energy to bristle at the nickname. My knees agree to be unreliable. The world narrows to jacket, heat, breath. Ronan shifts so his chest takes my weight and the coat stays between us, dignity’s bare minimum.
“Don’t worry,” he says at the rim of my ear, steady as weather. “I’ve got you.”
I drop fast and clean into the dark and—for once—it doesn’t feel like a loss.
Bonds Unspoken
Ronan
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’ve got you.”
Her weight settles against my chest in a way that tells me more than the numbers do. She is light under the jacket I wrapped around her, heat patchy through the fabric where her skin is trying to remember its own rules. I check the inside of her wrist with the back of my knuckles: warm enough, not hot enough to scare me. Breath shallow. Even. No shiver I don’t recognize.
I keep my eyes forward because looking down every step would make me clumsy, and I have no intention of tripping while carrying the most dangerous thing I’ve ever picked up. The snowpack gives under my boots with the same sound every time. Darian clears the path ahead without talking, palm turned slightly outward so stray ice beads slide off an invisible edge instead of under my soles. Caelum ghosts our right, attention snagging on the places air gets weird around portals. Ash walksrear guard and hates every second of it, because his instincts want him beside my shoulder, not watching the tree line.
