Page 42 of Embers of Midnight
“Obsession is not a plan.”
“Neither is pretending you don’t need an escort,” he says, cheerful, and steers me out with the gentlest pressure between my shoulder blades. Our breath ghosts in the hallway air. I let him set the pace and don’t mention that my pulse already did.
The main building is busier than Friday. Students move like they belong; doors part for anchors with a soft chime I feel in my teeth. The sky through the high windows is wrong in the same restful way it was all weekend. I spent two days not throwing myself at four men and calling it character growth. Ten out of ten, no notes.
The orientation room is a lecture theater that gave up trying to be intimidating. A woman with a bob and a stack of laminated cards smiles like she’s seen every version of panic and survived. Name tag: Priya, Student Affairs.
“Seraphina?” she asks.
“Sera,” I correct before my brain catches up. The name lands a little easier today.
“Welcome.” She taps a tablet and nods at Ash without looking surprised he’s with me. “You’re set for a light track. Campus basics, safety pathways, who to call. No exams.”
From the aisle, Ash gives me a look that translates to see, painless. He takes the seat beside mine and sprawls in an I’m-not-leaving arrangement that should be irritating and somehow isn’t.
Priya does not drown us in information. She points. “Blue plates are warded doors; your anchor will answer them until your dorm remembers you. Medbay’s third floor—if you’re dizzy, go. Report strange activity to any Faculty or to Umbra dispatch on the campus app. Curfew is suggested, not punitive; if you break it, text someone who cares so we don’t file a missing persons report and then roast you for it later.”
“Roast kindly,” Ash stage-whispers.
“We only roast with love,” Priya deadpans. “Restricted Library requires faculty co-sign. Greenhouse hours are posted; do not harvest anything glowing without supervision.” A beat. “This sounds obvious, but: don’t try to open gates you didn’t close.”
A guy in the back raises a hand. “What if they open for us?”
“Then you leave and call Draven,” Priya answers, eyeing him like he knows better. No one says the dimension’s name. My brain flinches at the gap and then lets it be.
She wraps in under twenty minutes. “Questions?”
Ash lifts two fingers. “Coffee as protected right?”
Priya points at the map. “Ground floor café. Tell Theo I sent you. He’ll overfill your cup.”
When we stand, Ash’s arm finds my shoulders like it has coordinates. Warmth, weight, the steady line of him. I should shrug him off. I don’t. My body does the traitorous thing where it leans the exact centimeter he offers.Gravity is a bully.
“First class,” he says. “Ethics and History. You’re going to love it or argue with it.”
“Why not both.”
He walks me there like we’re a rumor people are already telling. He peels off at the door, palm dragging a quick, friendly line down my arm like he’s reminding my skin who else it belongs to. I pretend my lungs remember how air works without his proximity.
Supernatural Ethics & History occupies a sunlit room with walls full of maps that disagree with each other. The professor is a wiry man in his fifties with the steady gaze of someone who has watched a lot of people make bad choices and kept teaching anyway.
“I’m Professor Ilyon,” he says. “Ethics are the rules we make when power is uneven. History is the proof that we didn’t always make them soon enough.” He gestures at the seats. “If you’re here for easy answers, transfer to Botany; their plants lie less.”
A laugh ripples through. I slide into a middle row. My notebook opens itself like it’s trying to be helpful.
We do not define good. We define harm. We talk about who gets to decide what a monster is and how that definition moves when fear is at the wheel. A siren two rows down raises a question about self-defense when your voice is a weapon by design. Professor Ilyon doesn’t flinch. He outlines consent law and how they’re enforced on campus. He tells a story about a duel that wasn’t, because the smarter opponent refused to make a fight out of a man’s temper. I writerefusal is strategyand underline it twice.
Somewhere in the lecture, I realize my jaw isn’t clenched. The window shows that familiar wrong slice of sky. Every time my attention fractures, I drag it back and find four landmarks in my head like a compass: Ash’s heat, Ronan’s steadiness, Caelum’s quiet maps, Darian’s hard edges that still hold.
When the hour ends, I step into the hall and run straight into an Ash-shaped proximity event.
“Review?” he asks.
“Less boring than church,” I say, and he looks like I saidmarry mewhich is genuinely embarrassing for both of us.
He slings his arm over my shoulders again as we head outside. The contact sets my skin to a low, unhelpful hum. People glance. Some smile. One girl narrows her eyes like she’s building a case file.
“Greenhouse next,” he says. “Runic fundamentals with the plants. You get Laz again—he’s contracted to do safety oversight this block.”
