Page 34 of Embers of Midnight
“Try not to break anything expensive tonight,” the man adds, dry as dust. The screen fades to a mirror that is worse than the one in the bathroom.
“Headmaster Draven,” Darian supplies, for me, as he powers the console down.
“Cool,” I reply, because it’s either that or something earnest and we are not doing that.
Back upstairs, the house stops feeling like a set and starts acting like a place that knows our names.
Second flight, quiet hall, five doors. Brass plates with neat lettering: Ronan — Ash — (blank) — Darian — Caelum. Ronan stops at the blank one.
“This is yours,” he tells me. Not tonight. Always. If I want.
The handle is cool under my palm. The room isn’t big or fancy. Bed with a heavy quilt. A maple presses leaves against the window like a nosy neighbor. Shelf. Desk. A hook on the back of the door that immediately steals Ronan’s coat because apparently that’s a thing I do now.
My chest does something I’m not talking about. I flatten it with tone. “The room looks at me like it expects me to stay. Rude.”
Ronan’s mouth tips, a quick heat-flash. “It wants you warm.”
Caelum steps in, gaze running over corners like he’s reading lines in the air. “Before you claim it, we calibrate.”
I blink. “To what, my terrible personality?”
“To you,” Darian answers, mild. He taps a faint sigil plate at the jamb; it warms to his touch. “We tune the ward grid andtemperature zones to your baseline so the room absorbs what it should, resists what it must, and never traps you.”
Ash flaps a hand. “Translation: we make sure the bed doesn’t catch fire when you have a nightmare and the desk doesn’t melt when you stretch.”
“That happened?” I ask.
He grins. “Different century. Different girl. We learn.”
Caelum points to a square he’s just traced with his thumb—lines surface from the floor like graphite waking up, marking a 4×4 meter bay in front of the window. “Shift-bay. Clear zone. Ceiling’s reinforced to four-two meters over this footprint. Everything else goes on rails.” He nudges the shelf; it glides back two inches, then locks. “Furniture remembers where to hide.”
Ronan crosses to the wall and flips a discreet brass tab. The bed glows at the edges for a heartbeat; the air above it goes gently warm. “Sleep zone stays ‘comfortable,’” he says. He gestures at the bay. “Training zone tolerates high heat.” A third gesture toward the desk. “Desk remains neutral, always.”
Ash squats by the baseboard and raps a knuckle along a shallow channel I hadn’t noticed. “Heat runnels.If you flare, the room drinks it and bleeds it out through the stone. No alarms. No sprinklers. Nobody wakes up to sirens because you breathed wrong.”
I stand in the middle because that’s apparently where I live now. “And privacy? Because I will light something on purpose if doors do tricks.”
“Simple,” Darian says. He indicates the handle. “Manual lock if you want it. Ward lock if you don’t—say ‘no’ and the door won’t open to anyone but you. We knock. Always.”
“Three-knocks rule,” Ash adds, solemn for once. “We don’t enter unless you answer.”
Caelum lifts a coin-thin anchor from his pocket—silver with hairline runes—presses it to the jamb, and the room hums like a deep breath. “All right. Baselines. Let’s ask it to learn you.”
Ronan positions me in the center of the bay, big body angled so I can use him as a wall if I need it. “Quarter-turn,” he says, quiet. “Not more.”
My mouth goes dry. I hate that panic nips at the edges; I hate more that it fades when he steadies me with a look. I pull air in, slow. Open the valve the smallest amount. Heat slicks under my skin, that red-gold prickle at the edge of sight. The room answers: seams wake, ward lines lace faint light across the plaster, and the floor warms around my feet without complaining.
Caelum watches like a conductor, palm up, feeling the pulse. “Good. Hold. Now bleed it off.” I let the heat fall. The hum drops with it.
He moves to the desk zone, toggles a tiny switch; a barely-there breeze brushes my shins. “Neutral laminar flow. Won’t carry scent or heat signatures.”
Darian sets his palm on the wall and closes his eyes. “Aegis grid acknowledges you,” he murmurs, almost to the room. “No pushback.”
Ash sniffs theatrically. “We can also set a soft scent-diffuser if you want the place to smell like… I don’t know, victory and roasted marshmallow.”
“Pass,” I mutter. My throat tightens anyway. Nobody has ever tuned a room to me. Ever. I stare at the glow runnels, the done-ness of it, and my eyes threaten to do something I do not authorize.
Ronan notices and pretends he doesn’t. “One more,” he says, voice sanded low. “Tiny flare so the bed learns your edges.”
