Page 54 of Embers of Midnight
Lanterns on the Roof
Seraphina
I wake before my alarm, the room dim and silver with early light. My stomach is already doing flips. Tea with the headmaster. Normal people are nervous about exams or rent. I get anxious about drinking hot leaf water with the most powerful man on campus. Great.
Hot water helps, but not much. I scrub until my skin says enough and my brain accepts what’s to come. Clothes: soft black sweater, jeans that don’t pick a fight, boots for distance. I pull my hair into a ponytail I can pretend is strategic and not because my hands are shaking.
The hallway is quiet except for a faint note that threads through the air. Not a recorded song. Real. It leads me like a trail and I follow without trying, bare feet whispering against wood.
Caelum sits on a stool with a violin tucked under his chin, eyes half-lidded, bow moving slow. The melody starts small and turnsinto a long, aching line that lands right behind my sternum. It isn’t a performance. It’s a thought that forgot to hide. I stop in the doorway because movement feels rude.
Ronan works the stove with steady wrists. Ash leans against the counter narrating croissant physics. Darian sets mugs in too-neat rows and checks his shoulder like it’s a colleague he disagrees with. Vex sits on the pendant light, head cocked, the self-appointed supervisor of breakfast crimes.
Caelum takes the melody lower and does something to the vibrating air that tightens my throat. I cross the space without deciding to, slip an arm around his shoulders from the side. He goes still a beat, then sets the bow down and folds me in. Warm chest. Clean wool. Rosin and skin. My eyes prick. I breathe once into the collar of his sweater and step back before I do something like cry on a Friday morning in a kitchen.
“It’s beautiful,” I say into his shoulder. “You’re beautiful. The music. You know what I mean.”
Color climbs his cheekbones. He lets out a shaky laugh that sounds like relief wearing a thin coat of humor. “If you keep saying things like that, I’ll consider playing in front of people on purpose.”
“Reckless.” I lean back enough to look at him. “Are you okay?”
“Sometimes the dreams linger after dawn.” He glances down, mouth twitching. “Don’t worry. I won’t start reciting poetry. I’ll make tea and be insufferable in more normal ways.”
“Too late,” I say, and my smile comes easier than I expect. The violin still hums in my bones. I press my forehead to his for a second, short and sure, and feel him exhale warm against my lips. “Thank you for the song.”
“Anytime,” he says, soft enough I almost miss it.
“Eat,” Ronan tells me, sliding a plate over. Eggs, toast, a wedge of roasted tomato. It hits the table like a solution. I sit. My stomach remembers it has a job and growls with enthusiasm. Vex hop-hops down the light cord, lands on the back of my chair, and drops a sugar packet into my palm with ceremonial gravity.
“For your tea,” he croaks, then preens like he invented kindness.
Ash pushes a mug toward me. “Nerves blend. Hints of mango. I bullied the kettle into compliance.”
I wrap my hands around ceramic and breathe steam until my hands stop looking like strangers. The tea warms everything it touches. The anchor disc at my sternum hums once against the cup like it recognizes the ritual.
“Supernatural Ethics and History first,” Ronan says, sliding a second slice of toast onto my plate.
“Then tea,” Darian adds. “Eleven. I’ll walk you to the door.”
I nod. Manage a bite. Manage a second. By the time I finish eating, my hands have steadied. The caffeine threads into my blood and brings everything into focus. I check the clock, grabmy bag, and Ash’s fingers find mine under the table for one second, a quick squeeze. Then he steals the corner of my bread, gets a quiet kick from Caelum, and oofs like a martyr. Vex cackles, which is not helpful.
The hallway air is cooler than the kitchen; the wards under the floor send a low thrum up my bones I’m getting used to. Outside, the sky is the same wrong-right blue I’m learning to love.
Supernatural Ethics & History is a sunlit room with maps that don’t agree with each other. Professor Rell is already there and writes HUNTERS on the board and underlines once.
“Today,” he says, voice clear, “we cover the Hunters. Yes, the rumors are true. No, you don’t know everything. We will separate myth from function.”
Chairs creak as everyone shifts a little straighter. I take notes the way I learned to memorize orders and schedules—short, quick, brutal.
The professor starts with the basics: the Hunters are human. Not all humans. A coalition. Old money, old blood, old grudges. They call what they do “containment,” “purification,” “stability enforcement,” depending on the century and the PR budget. They learned early to build tools that cut through magic the way salt kills slugs. Charming.
He projects a schematic of a net that looks simple until you see the layered runes along the knots. “Null-weave,” he says. “Lightweight, conductive, charged with a mix of vacuum sigilsand iron filings. It interrupts resonance without needing to understand it. Elegant if you forget the ethics.” He taps a line. “Here—that’s where most of you would think to burn through. Do not. The fold collapses and takes your arm with it. If you have to get someone out, freeze the anchoring beads first. Then cut.”
My pen scratches faster. The weight in my chest changes shape. Fear and anger share a border.
“How did they get this kind of tech?” a student in the second row asks. He has the jawline of a carved statue and the attitude to match.
“They stole it,” the professor says without blinking. “They hired, threatened, seduced, and adopted the right minds through too many generations. They are not foolish. They recruit from talent. Some of their founders were once ours.” He lets that hang. “The line between ‘protect community’ and ‘control world’ is thin when you believe you are the only adult in the room.”
