The final bell of Eclipsend doesn’t so much ring as shiver through the halls—long, metallic, cold enough to slice straight through bone.

For a second I swear it vibrates in my teeth.

Doors slam open. Boots scatter across tile. Laughter ricochets off the lockers—bright, brittle, fleeting as sparks. The kind of noise that should mean safety.

For a moment, it almost does.

Cassie bumps my shoulder as we merge into the tide of bodies, her breath misting silver in the chill. “Last class of the term and no one tried to curse us, stab us, or start a prophecy. I’m counting that as personal growth.”

Her voice cuts clean through the noise. I feel my chest loosen half an inch.

Kael doesn’t look up from scanning the flow of students, eyes flicking toward every sudden motion. “Or it’s just the calm before whatever you attract next.”

“Optimist,” Cassie teases.

Rori, beside her, gives a theatrical shiver and pulls her coat tighter. “Eclipsend was invented by sadists. The air hurts my skin.”

“At least you look cute when you’re freezing,” Cassie fires back without missing a step.

“I’d rather look warm.” She stomps once for emphasis, breath fogging thick in front of her. “You’d think frostbite would come with a medal.”

Their banter curls through the gray air, normal enough that my heart forgets how to brace. Almost normal. It makes something ache deep under my ribs—the kind of ache that comes when you realize you’ve been clenching for months.

We push through the main doors into the courtyard, and the world outside swallows the noise whole. Everything feels muffled, like a blanket of snow without the mercy of snow. The wind slides through the empty branches, sharp as glass, tasting faintly of iron. The sky’s a sheet of pewter; even the light looks tired.

I rub my gloved hands together. Heat refuses to answer. My magic limps when the season turns—each spark sluggish, syrup-thick. Honey freezing in its jar. Every heartbeat a dull ache instead of a flare.

“Summer blood never did like Eclipsend,” I mutter, exhaling a puff of steam that smells faintly of ozone and burnt cedar.

Kael and Rori answer in the same breath, automatic and weary: “No, it doesn’t.”

Rori’s sigh frosts the air; Kael just nods once, shoulders squared against the wind. We share a look—three solar creatures surviving on borrowed winter. The sympathy of heat addicts.

Cassie laughs softly, the sound warm enough to melt a little of the air between us. “You all act like the weather’s personally offending you.”

“It is,” Rori insists. “It knows.”

Her voice makes me smile despite myself. I tap my thumb against my index finger—three-beat rhythm, my favorite quiet stim—trying to keep the spark moving under my skin. My scent sharpens: wildfire smoke under marshmallow.

For a second I let my eyes drift to the skyline—Dominveil blurred by fog, glass towers smudged like charcoal lines. Peaceful. Wrong. The quiet after Veilwake still hasn’t settled right; it presses against my ribs, waiting for something to break the silence again.

Cassie’s gloved hand finds mine. Pressure, leather to wool. Her grounding scent—frosted citrus and camellia—cuts through the metallic air.

“C’mon,” she says, voice light. “Let’s go before the wind decides to kill us out of spite.”

I squeeze once before letting go. “Rude of it not to try sooner.”

We start down the steps together, Rori still muttering about “weather vengeance,” Kael trailing a pace behind—ever the shadow, eyes mapping exits. The laughter, the frost, the exhaustion—all of it blurs into something almost human.

Almost safe.

The courtyard hums with that strange end-of-term energy—louder voices, lighter steps, everyone halfway gone already. Breath clouds drift like half-formed ghosts. My senses buzz from the contrast: chatter too bright, air too cold, light too flat. Mask back up, Quinveil—smile, nod, pass.

Cassie waves to a pair of chemistry classmates who call her name, her smile easy in a way mine never learned to be. I manage the polite version of a grin, nodding when one thanks me for helping on a group project I barely remember finishing. Words skate past like frost on glass—bright, harmless, already melting.

Kael keeps a pace just behind us, deliberate distance that still feels like armor. Her gaze never stops moving—doorways, corners, lines of sight. Calculating, cataloguing. It’s the rhythm of safety now, and I’ve learned to move inside it.

Rori is mid-rant about hot chocolate and central heating when her boot hits a slick patch of melted snow. She flails, catches Cassie’s arm, barely manages to stay upright.

“Graceful,” Cassie says, laughter bubbling out before she can help it.

Rori glares, cheeks flushed pink from cold and humiliation. “I meant to do that. Testing surface friction.”

“Scientific masterpiece,” I deadpan, and Kael’s mouth twitches—almost a smile.

The sound of our laughter hangs there, small and warm, cutting through the thin air like sunlight through ice. For a heartbeat, the weight in my chest eases. The faint scent of toasted marshmallow and frost mingles between us, soft and impossible.

Maybe this is what normal is supposed to feel like—brief, borrowed, and gone before you can hold it.

The wind picks up again, catching the last note of our laughter and scattering it across the courtyard. Only the crunch of boots on frost remains, the faint echo of our breath swallowed by stillness. I flex my fingers in my gloves—three-beat tap, the rhythm steadying me against the sudden quiet.

The courtyard feels hollow once the buses pull away—just the hiss of engines fading into the cold and the slam of distant doors. Wind knifes across the flagstones, carrying a scatter of dry snow that never seems to land anywhere. The air smells of metal and ozone, sharp enough to sting.

Rori and I stand beneath the bare oak near the front walk. The bark bites cold through my gloves, grounding me in something solid. She’s muttering about frostbite again, tugging her scarf tighter while Cassie finishes a phone call a few paces away. I can hear every word—humans think they know privacy, but to Fae ears it’s a polite illusion. I try to tune her out anyway, eyes following the breath that curls from her lips like pale smoke.

The quiet stretches until the crunch of approaching boots breaks it. I glance up. Ashlynn Dannon, shoulders hunched, breath coming fast, clutching something in her mittened hand like it might turn on her.

She stops a few feet away. “Mira… you knew my cousin Lydia, right?”

The name lands heavy, dragging a cold knot into my stomach. “Yeah,” I say slowly. “I did.”

Ashlynn swallows, steps forward, and presses something into my palm. A small silver pendant—chain twisted, stone cracked clean through. The metal burns with cold, and faint rust-brown flakes cling to the clasp. Blood. Old. Human.

“I found it by the north fence,” she blurts. “It wasn’t there before—when we checked after she disappeared. Someone wanted me to find it, but I didn’t know who else to tell.”

The pendant hums faintly under the chill, steady and wrong. A low vibration that shouldn’t exist. My own magic stirs like a pulse answering back, light pressing against the inside of my ribs.

Rori’s voice drops, soldier-flat. “Why bring it here?”

Ashlynn shakes her head, eyes wide. “Because it—buzzed. Like it was alive.”

Before I can ask anything else, she backs away, almost tripping over the curb. “I just thought you should know,” she says, and then she’s gone—boots skidding over frost, running until she vanishes into the parking lot fog.

I look down at the pendant still resting in my hand. The wind howls once through the empty quad, and for a heartbeat, I could swear the stone hums back. A faint crimson shimmer ghosts through the crack, reflected in my eyes before fading.

We don’t speak until the last bus disappears down the hill. The silence that follows isn’t peaceful—it’s listening.

I unwrap the pendant from the crumpled tissue Ashlynn left it in. Even through my gloves, the metal bites. It’s a cold that feels aware, like it’s waiting for contact. The fractured stone gleams faintly in the pale light, a thin line of red shimmer running through the break.

Veil-residue. Crimson, like the flare from corrupted wards. Old, but still alive. The smell of iron ghosts through the air, metallic and wrong.

Rori leans closer, her breath fogging white. “That color wasn’t there before.”

I nod once. “No. It wasn’t.”

For a long moment I just stare at the pendant resting in my palm. The hum beneath it syncs faintly with my heartbeat—off-tempo, discordant, like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me. The kind of magic that doesn’t just happen.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” The words scrape out of me before I can stop them.

Rori’s answer is quiet but sure. “Maybe not. But that thing’s a trail, not an end.”

The words hang between us, mist and promise. My pulse answers the hum, a shared rhythm of dread and determination. I fold the pendant back into its cloth and slip it into my coat pocket. The metal’s weight lingers against my thigh like a heartbeat I can’t ignore.

“Then I’ll follow it,” I say. “Whatever it means, I’ll find out. I swear it.”

Rori studies me for a moment, then nods once—wordless agreement that feels heavier than sound. Something in the set of her shoulders says she’s already decided what lines she’ll cross if I don’t come back.

Across the quad, Cassie ends her call and waves us over, Kael already falling into step beside her. The winter air thickens, full of things unsaid—like the world’s holding its breath and hasn’t decided whether to exhale.

Cassie meets my eyes and smiles faintly. “We’ve got a few hours before we head home,” she says. “Figured we could all split up, get some things done.”

Her voice is calm, steady, but the way she tucks a stray curl behind her ear betrays nerves. I step closer, the frost crunching under my boots. “That works,” I say, but my attention’s already gone—caught on the pink tint in her cheeks, the faint vanilla-sweet note of her perfume beneath the cold.

Rori moves closer, automatically shifting into her protective stance. “Wherever you go, I’m coming.”

Cassie glances at Kael. “Same deal.”

It’s decided without another word. Two pairs, two separate errands. We’ll meet again at Starveil Manor by six—family dinner first, Frostfire Revel after. Ordinary words pretending to mean safety.

I take a step toward Cassie before she can turn away. Her breath ghosts in the cold air as I slide my gloved fingers into hers. “Firebreak,” I whisper, the nickname soft as a secret.

Her eyes warm immediately, frost-blue softening to crystal. “Firefly,” she murmurs back.

The world narrows to that one word, the way it sounds in her voice. I reach up, thumb brushing the line of her jaw through my glove, and she leans into the touch before I even realize I’ve moved closer. The kiss is slow, chapped lips and frozen air, the taste of winter and heat colliding. My magic stirs like a spark under my skin, lighting a brief flare of warmth between us that smells faintly of citrus and smoke.

When we break apart, her smile trembles at the edges. “I love you,” she says quietly, like she’s afraid the wind might steal it.

I press my forehead against hers, breathing her in—citrus and camellia, the scent that has become home. “I love you too,” I whisper. “Always.”

For a second, the world feels whole.

Then the wind catches again, colder, sharper, scattering what’s left of the moment. We drift apart, Cassie turning with Kael toward the main street, Rori falling back to my side. The hum of the pendant echoes faintly in my pocket, like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me.

The last bus grinds at the curb, coughing exhaust that curls into the falling snow. Rori’s voice murmurs beside me, low and steady, but the words blur into the hush that follows dismissal. The courtyard empties itself of sound, of warmth, of everything but cold.

Across the walkway, Bree Halden stands near the stop. Coat collar high. Hands jammed in her pockets. Her eyes lock on me—wide, hollow, too bright.

No shimmer of glamour this time. No crown, no curated glow. Just fear.

I lift my head, and she flinches. Turns away like the look burned. Pretends to adjust her bag strap, movements too sharp, too rehearsed. Nate says something from the street, his voice thin through the snow, but she doesn’t answer.

The air goes heavy, muffled, a kind of silence that hums against my skin. Even Rori’s footsteps fade until there’s only the wind—and the slow, steady thud of my heartbeat.

I touch my coat pocket. The pendant is there, alive beneath my hand. Cold metal. Faint tremor. Its pulse keeping perfect time with mine.