Page 44 of Embers of Midnight
“Adults are busy,” Laz adds. “We will be louder.”
Class becomes work. My strokes clean up under Taya’s patient corrections. When we finally infuse the anchor knot with a thumb-print of heat, the lines hold. No flare. No snap. Professor Hyssop peers down his nose and grunts, which I think is praise in rosemary.
By the end, my fingers tremble with the amount of not messing up I demanded from them. Taya notices, doesn’t comment, just bumps her shoulder against mine. “Lunch?”
“I’m starving.”
“Then we fix it.”
The cafeteria is better than it has any right to be. Light, chatter, the smell of food that wasn’t cooked out of a can. Taya acquires a salad that might still be photosynthesizing. I get a bowl of something with noodles and known vegetables. Laz carries a tray with exactly two things that could be candy or medicine.
We find a table by a window because I’m in a phase where I like the wrong sky. I’m three bites in when a shadow falls over the tray and resolves into Caelum. Fox-soft smile, clean lines, a plate that looks like balance.
“Seat taken?” he asks the air in that polite way that pretends it’s giving me a choice.
“Yes,” I say, then shove my bag off the bench with my foot. He sits.
“Caelum,” Taya sings, already in possession of his social security number, medical history, and secrets. “Your girl is thriving.”
“Taya,” he says, entirely unsurprised. His gaze flicks to my face, catalogues and releases. “How’s the anchor behaving?”
“It hums at doors like a happy bee.”
“Good.” He eats and Laz asks him a question about anti-illusion layering and Caelum draws a diagram on a napkin with a pen he didn’t pull out of anywhere, which is a magic trick I approve of.
“Combat after this,” he says to me when the plates are mostly empty. “I’ll walk you.”
“You volunteering to get sweat on?”
“Part of the charm,” he says, unruffled, and yeah, fine, I think, I like him.
Combat & Weapon Handling does not pretend to be delicate. The training hall hums with the kind of heat that means work. Ronan stands at the front in a plain black tee, forearms bare, mouth set in a line that looks likefocusfrom far away andfondup close.
He doesn’t play favorites. He doesn’t look at me longer than anyone else. He sees me. The difference is a small earthquake.
“Stance first,” he says. “You don’t need a weapon to be dangerous; you need your feet.” He demonstrates. The entire room tries to copy. Half of us do a passable impression of baby deer. He crosses between lines, nudges ankles, taps knees, shifts people into balance. When he reaches me, he doesn’t touch until I nod. Then two fingers at my hip, a press at my knee, a low, “Breathe into the floor.”
I do. The ground holds me like a promise.
“Partner drills,” he says. “Slow. No glory. If you bruise each other, you apologize and learn.”
Caelum ghosts up to the rail with a casualness that would fool anyone who hasn’t seen him take apart a threat in six moves. He’s not hovering; he’s… present, a map of exits in a handsome body.
I get a staff because blades feel like a decision I don’t want to make yet. The staff and I decide not to be enemies. My partner is a tall girl with shoulders that could serve soup on them. She’s kind. She lets me miss and doesn’t make a face when I correct. The cadence catches in my hands faster than pride wants to admit. I watch the better pairs at the edge, copy an elbow angle, tuck my chin at the exact moment the real fighters do, and my body says ohthisand just—does it.
Ronan’s gaze lands on me when I redirect a strike in the third exchange instead of eating it. He doesn’t smile. His eyes warm one degree.
We rotate partners. I stop waiting to be embarrassed. When a boy with too much wrist gets sloppy, I see the gap and step into it with a calm I didn’t pack this morning. Everyone else is sweating and swearing and alive. I’m sweating and swearing and something else—something likerememberinga thing I was never taught.
Ronan calls a halt, then pairs me with someone better on purpose. It should feel like exposure. It feels like being trusted to rise. I do. Not by winning—I do not win—but by not making the same mistake twice. Three passes and I’m adjusting my guard before his shoulders announce the feint. Four passes and my staff meets his at a new angle that surprises both of us.
“Again,” Ronan says, soft, like praise.
We finish with footwork ladders that make my calves cry. When he dismisses us, my shirt is glued to my back and my hair is a thesis on humidity. Caelum passes me a towel and a bottleof water that tastes like someone remembered where I left my dignity.
“You learn like a thief,” he says in that mild tone that tries to hide warmth.
“Is that a compliment?”
