Page 68 of Embers of Midnight

“You asked about the dragon at the weekend,” he reminds me, eyes bright, voice rougher than before.

“I did,” I answer, and my grin is probably a problem.

We cross under the skylight. He steps back, lifts his chin. The shift is quick and right—bone and sinew, heat and angle. One moment: man. The next: dragon, large enough to make the chamber feel like a glove that fits and nothing like a cage. Scales take light without being flashy. His breath moves the air in a slow bellows. The eye he angles toward me is not human, but it knows me.

I reach for the ridge between muzzle and eye with the caution you use with a strong horse. Warm, yes. Slick, no. The texture under my palm is like stone that has been handled for years. He leans into the touch by a hair, then crouches, shoulder lowering to make a platform.

I climb. Knees tuck where plates meet and give purchase. My hands find the notch where neck becomes back. The rise when he stands pulls a small sound out of me I would deny under oath. He turns, lines up with the skylight, and launches.

The first lift is force. The second is promise. The air catches us and throws us higher. The sky outside the oval is colder and cleaner than it looked. I fold over his neck and let the heat off his body cut the wind to size. We take the long route home: over a chain of bare rock, across a river that throws shards of light, above a patch of trees where deer spook and scatter. He rolls just enough to make my stomach catch because he knows me well enough to aim for joy.

I laugh. It tears out of me and hangs in the wake. He rumbles, which I choose to believe is dragon for smug approval. The two hours back collapse into a handful of bright pieces I want to keep in my pocket: a hawk banking under us; sunlight strobing over scales when we cross gaps; the way my hands memorize the rhythm of his breathing and don’t want to give it back.

Near campus, he drops low, glides into the same meadow we used on the way out, and folds down until I can slide without falling. He shifts back into himself in a shiver of motion, hair a little wild, eyes still lit from the inside. I jump at him from behind and wrap my arms around his shoulders because stillness feels wrong after that much sky.

He catches my forearms, laughs outright, head tipping back against me. The sound fires straight through my stomach. I rest my cheek against the hinge of his jaw for a breath longer than Ishould, then hop down, breathless and annoying in a way I will not apologize for.

We walk the last stretch with the kind of silence that doesn’t chafe. Campus reassembles around us: paths, voices, the faint percussion of a practice class somewhere. The air holds the day’s last heat.

We round the corner of the main hall and there she is: Cassandra, as if she sprouted out of shadows and water. She leans by the hedge with a book open, eyes not on the page. Her gaze hits our linked hands, slides to the bracelet, flicks to my face, and cools. She doesn’t misstep. She doesn’t even blink. That smile—thin, practiced—arrives a breath later.

Ronan doesn’t break stride. I lace my fingers through his like I meant to do it since breakfast. My pulse ticks once, twice, then settles. We pass three yards from her. She says nothing. We offer her the same generosity.

Inside the house, warmth hits and holds. Ronan reaches for my wrist again, thumb brushing the band where it rests against the thread. He studies the fit like a craftsman checking his own work.

“You’ll keep it on,” he asks—not a test, not a leash, just a line thrown out because he wants to hear the answer in my voice.

“Try and stop me,” I answer, a little shaky and not ashamed.

He kisses me at the door, slower this time, like he’s memorizing. When he eases back, his forehead bumps mine. One breath, then he’s already stepping away, giving me room to stand on my own two legs, which I appreciate more than I can say without making this a therapy session.

“Dinner in twenty,” he mentions, practical again, steady anchor. “If stairs argue, I’ll bring a plate.”

“Stairs won’t dare,” I shoot back.

He huffs a laugh, heads down the hall. I lean on the door after it closes and feel the day climb into my bones and stay. The room smells like soap and cedar on my skin. I look at my wrist—thread and metal, plan and promise—and let my body replay the flight in small pulses until the need to run settles into the need to stretch.

I don’t check the window for watchers. I don’t put the bracelet on the nightstand in case I change my mind. I keep it on while I wash my face. I keep it on while I fix the stray hair that decided to riot in the wind. I keep it on when I walk back out for dinner, shoulders loose, mouth probably doing that dumb almost-smile again.

In the corridor, Vex swoops past low enough to ruffle my hair, drops a cherry stem onto my palm, and vanishes before I can scold him for theft. The stem is tied in a knot.

Show-off.

I pocket it like a secret nobody asked me to keep and head toward the noise of home. The bruise is gone. The ache is not. It’s the good kind. The kind that says air and heat and a long day added up to more than surviving. The kind I plan to chase until I don’t have to chase it anymore.

Paper Cuts Kill Empires

Seraphina

I reach Caelum’s classroom early because empty rooms make my lungs behave. Dream Magic and Mental Defense looks cleaner before everyone breathes on it: mirrors wiped, chalk lines crisp, a faint echo that settles when you stand still long enough. He’s already at the board, sleeves pushed, hair half-tamed, writing MIRROR RECALL — INCIDENTS, EDGES, EXIT in a hand that never wastes a stroke.

We take our places in a shallow arc. Today’s drill is simple to explain and hard to do: recall one clear frame from a past scene, set it down, step back. No rummaging. No reaching for anyone else. You keep your hands to yourself, and that includes your mind.

My mirror shows me and the room behind me. The thread on my wrist rests where pulse meets skin, Darian’s knot snug but not tight. I plant my feet and pick an anchor word. The good one, the one that sits under my tongue and tastes like safety withoutmaking me sleepy. The breath count slides in: two short inhales, one long exhale. The long one drops my shoulders half an inch.

First pass is fine. I pick the yellow-striped column from Ironbridge and the pressure of Ronan’s forearm when he hauled me behind it. I set it down in the mirror and step back. The image stays where I left it, as if it knows the rules.

Second pass, cold taps the edge of my hairline like a bad idea checking for a seam. It’s precise, thin as thread, and coming from behind my left shoulder. Not the room. Not me.