Page 69 of Embers of Midnight
I hold still and watch the mirror, not the air. A pale filament of frost reaches for the surface. It isn’t dramatic. It’s skilled. It looks like something you practice when you like getting away with things.
A line of chalk whispers to my right. Caelum appears beside my reflection, expression quiet enough to slow blood. He raises two fingers and flicks. The frost thread turns brittle and snaps with a pinched sound I feel in my teeth. He traps the broken piece on a square of white cloth, eyes on the sheen along the edge, and seals it into a clear sleeve without commentary.
Only then does he turn his head. Cassandra is three seats down, her posture perfect, her face composed to the edge of empty. She has two girls shadowing her today, both already trained in synchronized fawning.
“Unauthorized anchor,” Caelum says. His voice could rub out a stain. “Cassandra. Essay. Ethics, two pages. When does recall become theft. Due tomorrow.”
A few people exhale like they forgot how. Cassandra’s mouth curves three degrees. “It was a demonstration,” she offers, sweet enough to rot fruit.
He doesn’t blink. “Then demonstrate on your own mind.” He leaves it there, turns back to us, and picks up the chalk. “Reset. One frame only. If you feel interference, step back and breathe. The breath is not decoration.”
I reset. The mirror shows my face, calm enough to lie to a stranger. I choose my anchor word first, then the image. It comes clean on the third beat: the way the light folded through the skylight in Ronan’s hoard, a bright oval that made sense without talking. I set it down. I do not reach for what isn’t mine.
When he dismisses us, the scrape of chairs sounds louder than it should. Cassandra leaves with a smile like a sticker. I let her slide past without donating my attention. Caelum drifts to my station last. He checks the mirror with a strip of treated paper, watches the paper fail to frost, and nods.
His fingers rest for a heartbeat against my wrist, just above the thread. Two quick taps, one long. He does it without looking like a ritual. “Two short, one long,” he murmurs. “Anchor word first. Mirror second. Your shield held. That matters.” He peels a small ward tab from his sleeve and lays it on my notebook spine, barely visible runes humming against paper. “It will blunt frost pulls. It is not a wall. It buys you time.”
“It’s enough,” I answer.
He doesn’t smile in the obvious way. His eyes do. He slides the evidence sleeve into a folder and locks it, a small click that sounds like someone’s future paperwork getting ready to bite them.
The hallway is busy. Darian fuses with the flow long enough to tap the inside of my wrist, same pattern Caelum used. Two short. One long. “Breathe. Two short, one long.” he says, almost under his breath, and keeps walking because that’s how he does reassurance: precise, economical, exactly where it needs to land.
We hit the admin board on the way to the commons. New paper, neat serif letters, the kind of notice that pretends to be neutral.
PERFORMANCE VERIFICATION — Combat Proving
Candidate: Seraphina Grace
Date: Next Thursday
Venue: East Ring
Supervising Faculty: Voss
The word Verification reads like someone got bored of implying. Two first-years whisper about shortcuts; I catch the tail end and let it slide off. My jaw tries to lock—then Darian angles his shoulder into mine and the tension finds somewhere else to live.
“Don’t borrow trouble,” he murmurs. “We’ll train the rest of the week—mornings and after dinner. You’re going to walk into that ring bored of being good at it.” His fingers tap the thread at my wrist. “Breathe. Two short, one long.”
I match the count. “Okay.” It lands steadier than I expect. “I can do this.”
“You will,” he says, no flourish. “We’ve got you.”
I read the notice a second time so I don’t dream it into more teeth than it has—just a date, a venue, a name that’s mine and not a verdict. Ronan drifts up on the last line of text like he owns time. Someone behind us mutters “favoritism,” and he doesn’t even turn.
“Favoritism is when I bend the rules for her,” he says, dry as winter. “Today I explained them for you.”
It isn’t a threat. It is colder than a threat. The murmur breaks against it and scatters like gravel. He tilts his head toward the commons. I follow, because we are not giving the board a shrine.
Lunch settles my insides faster than conversation. I sit between Darian and Ronan. Taya arrives with a salad that would shame a farm, drops a kiss on my hair, and says nothing until I take a bite. Laz spreads his evidence kit like a magician revealing doves. He has nothing to bag yet. He polishes the tweezers anyway because anxiety enjoys props.
Ash leans over his plate, voice lower than usual. He has that look he gets when he refuses to give fear a stage. “We collect receipts, Little Flame. Paper cuts kill empires.”
I manage a laugh that doesn’t wobble. “We’re going to papercut someone to death? Metal.”
“Stationery-based justice,” he replies. “Very trendy. Wards, witnesses, time stamps. People drown in details when truth is boring.”
Caelum drops into the empty chair only after he checks the edges of the room. He drinks water like a man who learned the hard way. “The frost signature was consistent,” he notes, not to the table, to the day. “I logged it.”
