Page 35 of Embers of Midnight
I give it to him. The quilt rim glows a hairline gold, the light crawls, memorizes, fades. The ward nodes in the corners dim like satisfied embers.
Caelum writes something quick with his fingertip along the door’s inner seam—letters that sink and vanish. “Calibration saved. Your word cancels it; our keys don’t override. You’re safe here on your terms.”
“My terms,” I echo, too soft, then clear my throat. “Okay. Cool. Illegal interior design. Love that for me.”
Ash rubs his hands together. “We can leave you to breathe or do the Morphsigil first and celebrate your continued ownership of pants.”
“Room first. Then pants insurance,” I decide. “Give me five.”
They take five like professionals. No hovering. No pity. Ronan turns the bed down like that’s just a thing he does in life. Caelum aligns a glass of water with the exact center of the nightstand because symmetry calms him. Darian checks the latch once, then steps back. Ash deposits a wrapped chocolate on the pillow like we’re at a hotel and salutes when I arch a brow.
“House policy,” he chirps. “Bribery works.”
They let me stand in my new shape of quiet until my breath stops clawing at my ribs. The room feels… not mine, not yet. But willing.
I brush the quilt with my fingertips and almost—almost—cry. I don’t. I square my shoulders and turn.
“All right,” I tell the chaos committee. “Brand me. I prefer hip. And no, I don’t need a hand to hold.” I cut a glance at Ronan. “Unless you’re offering.”
Ash chokes on absolutely nothing; Caelum’s smile goes fox-soft; Darian finds a very interesting knot in the floor. Ronan’s ears, traitorous, flush a shade warmer than the rest of him. “I’ll stand close,” he says.
Ash lights up like he’s been given a present that bites. “Kitchen. Best light. Least weird.”
He sets up fast and neat — gloves, wipes, a small sterile packet, a brass stamp the size of a coin engraved with knotwork that makes the back of my neck feel seen. He doesn’t reach for me. He waits.
I hook thumbs into the waistband of the jeans and bare the spot just inside my left hip. “No ceremony?”
“Just breath,” he suggests, softer than he usually is. He warms the stamp in his hands like a barista with a cup, presses it to my skin. “Heat, not a cut.”
“Story of my life.”
The burn blooms sharp and honest. Thirty seconds of pepper that pushes behind my eyes and then relents. My knee wants to flinch; I don’t let it. When he pulls the stamp away, a fine-lined knot sits under my skin, ink that isn’t ink, a low hum that threads bone and breath without being rude about it.
“It’ll glow when it catches,” Ash explains. “Keep it dry for an hour, then forget it exists. Rules: no open flame mid-switch, give yourself two heartbeats to stabilize before sprinting, don’t change while tangled in anything you want to keep. Linking’s simple — fabric to sigil for five seconds. It remembers.”
Caelum sets a folded bundle where my hand will go. “Start with what you wear most.”
“Dignity,” I inform him dryly, and press hoodie, tee, jeans, underwear, socks to the mark in turn. The hum greets each, then settles.
Ronan lingers a pace back, presence like a wall I can lean on without touching it. Darian leans his uninjured shoulder against the counter and watches for problems that aren’t here yet. Ash’s attention sits on my pulse like he’ll catch it if it falls.
Caelum presses a glass of water into my hand. “Sip. Portals and shifts can make people lightheaded.”
I do, because my legs have opinions. Darian tries to push off the counter and loses a small argument with his shoulder; Ash kicks a chair out with the heel of his boot without looking.
“Sit,” Ash orders, for once without a joke attached.
Darian gives him the long-suffering priest look and sits anyway. Caelum appears with another jar like a magician producing a coin; Ronan sets a cold pack on the table, already open. They work around each other quiet and precise. It doesn’t feel like performance. It feels like ritual, the kind useful people make when they mean to keep living.
“Tomorrow it will be healed,” Darian repeats, a promise to us both.
“Good,” I say, because I don’t know how to say be careful in a way that doesn’t sound like an oath.
We pack the kit away. The kitchen becomes a kitchen again. Somewhere in the house, the vents shift cadence. The floor under me feels more like something I can claim with a step.
Ronan tips his chin toward the stairs. “Room is yours. If you need anything, knock. If you don’t, don’t.”
Normally I’d make a joke about boundaries. The line lands too clean to touch. “Goodnight,” I tell them instead, which is almost an apology for meaning it.
