Page 62 of Embers of Midnight
“Brat,” Ash said, fond.
“Tomorrow,” Darian said, which was as close as he got to goodnight.
Caelum touched two fingers to the edge of the mug before I took it, a little ritual we had not named.
I went upstairs with Morrow’s nails ticking on the wood behind me and Vex arguing softly with a bowl of apples like the apples were wrong. Silks slid back into Ash’s sleeve as he turned offlights. The house settled into its usual sounds: the heater’s low breath, footsteps, a door closing with care.
I closed mine and leaned on it for a second. My heart beat slow and heavy in a way that felt earned. In the quiet, the memory of the bell tower pressed at the edges of my thoughts, not loud, just insistent. Almost a kiss. Almost a lot of things. I smiled into the dark, which was new.
When I slid under the blanket, my body did not fight the rest. My hands were steady. The basalt chip sat on the nightstand where I could reach it if the old panic came back. I stared at the ceiling and let the day file itself.
The last thought was practical and sharp enough to count as a hook: Hunters had walked closer than our decoy, and Vex had taken a piece of them like a calling card. Training tomorrow would not be optional. It would be the difference between being ready and being lucky.
I chose ready.
Breath Before Blades
Seraphina
The training room is cold enough to make my ankles honest. Bare feet on varnished wood, palms open, shoulders down. Darian stands a step away, sleeves rolled, voice low enough to sit under my pulse.
“Four in,” he says. His fingers tap once against the inside of my wrist. “Six out.”
I match the count. The heat under my skin answers like a muscle I finally know how to flex without tearing it. I keep it under my hands, not everywhere. No flare. No pretty tricks. Just steady warmth that spreads the way a blanket spreads when someone who loves you tucks it in.
“One tap means I’m anchoring you,” he reminds, and gives it: a single touch at my sleeve, brief and precise.
The heat steadies. It wants to climb my throat; I send it back to my palms and the floor in front of me, a narrow path that doesn’t ask for applause. My jaw loosens. Sweat crawls between my shoulder blades, not from effort, from concentration.
“Thirty seconds,” he says. His voice never rises. It doesn’t have to. “Keep the edge round.”
The old version of me loved edges. This one likes control more.
At forty-five seconds my lungs want to sprint to the end. I don’t let them. I stay with the count and the heat and his calm. At sixty, my hands are steady and my head is not a storm.
He nods once, the kind of approval that doesn’t require a speech. “That was a minute without drift.”
“That felt like an hour,” I say. My voice comes out warm and rough, the way the rest of me feels.
He hands me water and waits until I actually drink. “Log any moments that spike panic,” he says. “Not to examine it to death. To design around it.” He knots a thin thread around my wrist, light as air. “Metronome. Ignore it if it annoys you.”
“It won’t,” I say. The faint pressure sits against my skin like a promise that isn’t heavy.
He hesitates. “If you want a check-in after classes—”
“I want,” I say too fast, then breathe. “I want.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. He presses two fingers to my pulse—one tap, a reminder—then steps back and lets me put my shoes on without fussing. That, more than anything, makes something in me unclench.
***
Supernatural Ethics & History with Professor Rell is a room full of maps that argue with each other. Rell writes CONTAINMENT ≠ CONSENT on the board and doesn’t bother underlining.
“Policy is power,” he says. “If you don’t know it, you’re handing yours away.”
He doesn’t sermonize. He lists statutes and dates, case studies where “protection” became control. A girl from Cassandra’s orbit raises her hand with a sweet expression and a loaded hypothetical about “unregistered combustives endangering the public.” I breathe and stare at my notes and don’t take the bait.
Rell doesn’t blink. He rattles off precedent and the academy’s charter clause that recognizes inborn resonance as identity, not weapon, then says, “We frame people as people in this class,” in a voice that could file paperwork.
