Page 99 of Embers of Midnight
Ronan looks back at us. “Work.” The room obeys. I do too. Elbows down. Meter green. Boring on purpose.
Station four: pressure spar. The map says three minutes with standardized blades, no magic, points for clips and disarms. My partner is taller, stronger, and sweating on minute one. I let her wear herself out on my guard. On minute two I step inside, catch her hilt with mine, roll, and send her blade skittering into the marked safe zone. It’s not pretty. It is correct. We bow because civilization is cheap and effective.
Caelum appears at the edge of my vision during the mental station, hands in pockets, not judging. The proctor reads a sequence of words at me that would’ve scrambled me last month. Anchor word first. Two short. One long. I tag the picture with a name and step out without leaving breadcrumbs. The proctor nods. Caelum’s mouth almost smiles. He doesn’t make it a thing. I am stupidly grateful.
Between stations, Ash leans against the barrier with a whistle that probably breaks three bylaws. He doesn’t say good job. He mouths eat. I shove a protein bar at the gap in my face and keep moving.
Last station: scenario. The prompt is ugly enough to count—civilian panic, heat in a crowded space, null interference at the edges. I hate it on sight. I breathe anyway. Then I do the small things first. Windows open. Crowd directed. Heat kept low and flat. When the null slides in, I step sideways and cut the interference with a boring little Aegis pattern Draven beat into my bones. It holds. Nobody dies. They ding me for not making a harder choice and then bump it back up because no one got burned. I’ll take it.
Ronan calls time with a clap. The room answers by shutting up.
“Notes,” he says. “Clean hands. Mostly. Sera—” his eyes cut to me “—you kept the meter where it belonged. Elbows down on entry three. Otherwise?” A beat. “Good work.”
There’s a line of heat under my skin that isn’t magic. It’s something like pride that doesn’t feel like a sin.
We’re done. I’m sweaty, my braid has opinions, and my stomach thinks it’s been abandoned on a ledge.
Darian intercepts me at the door with a towel and the small smile he uses when he wants to riot but chooses restraint. “Hydrate,” he says. I drink. He taps my wrist. Two quick. One long. My breath drops back to where it lives. Good.
Caelum slides a tab into my palm. “For the walk home,” he says. I don’t need it. I take it anyway. It’s not about need.
Ash falls into step, steals half my towel, and pretends he didn’t. “Triumph. Brief sarcastic comment. Home.”
“Triumph,” I echo. “You look very supportive for a criminal.”
“Don’t kink-shame me,” he answers, grinning.
Ronan opens the door with his shoulder and holds it with his foot because sometimes old-fashioned is the fastest way through.
We go home.
The house smells like garlic and butter and something green Ash refuses to name. My body recognizes it as safe and stops trying to exit out the back of my spine.
Dinner is a pile of food I didn’t know I wanted until it was in front of me: roasted chicken, bread that looks indecent, a salad that tastes like summer because Caelum has a grudge against suffering. We eat like people who plan on doing it again tomorrow.
Taya shoves a bowl of strawberries at me and points a fork like a threat. “You were so boring in Alchemy I almost cried,” she says. “It was beautiful.”
“Thank you for calling me dull,” I reply, mouth full.
“It’s a lifestyle,” Laz says, waving a spoon. “To boring excellence. May the rumor mill choke.”
“To midterms,” Ash adds. “And to the scandal of Sera Grace knowing what she’s doing.”
“Blasphemy,” I deadpan.
Ronan rests his forearm along the back of my chair, fingers brushing my shoulder. “You did well.”
I look down at my plate because eye contact is a sport. “I didn’t set anything on fire by accident.”
“That, too,” he says, mouth warm.
Caelum nudges a glass toward me, the one he knows I reach for when I’m done pretending I’m not thirsty. “Sunday will be worse,” he says, honest. “You’re allowed to be angry about that and still keep your hands clean.”
“I’ll keep my hands clean,” I say. “Anger stays where it belongs.”
Darian’s knee finds mine again under the table. He doesn’t say I’m brave. He doesn’t say I scare him. He just sits with me in the exact space where those two truths hold hands.
We clear the table with the choreography of people who chose each other. Ronan washes, Ash dries, Darian stacks, Caelum replaces the salt like it matters, because it does. Vex drags a strawberry top into a corner and behaves like he hunted it.
