Octis 23
The common room felt dimmer than usual, though the lanterns still burned and the hearth crackled quietly. The five of us had returned from the sealed chamber in silence, each step up from the tunnels heavier than the last. Myself, Garnexis, Rielle, Shara, and Aster entered without a word, trailing in like shadows across the threshold.
The chilling discovery of Halven’s frozen form clung to us like smoke. We barely had time to register our own shock before we were met with two sets of crossed arms and matching expressions of impatience.
Elio, his fiery auburn hair pulled back in a thick, loose braid over the shoulder of his academy robes, stood with Lo at his side. He was a solid presence of muscle and stone, and his warm amber eyes burned with impatience. Lo, slighter and with sharp, intelligent features, had her own quiet intensity. Her long, bluish-white hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her large, translucent wings, like those of a dragonfly, were folded neatly behind her, shimmering faintly over the dark fabric of her academy robes. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes were fixed on them with unwavering focus.
“What the hells is going on?” Elio’s voice was a low rumble, cutting through the quiet.
No one answered right away. The silence stretched until Elio raised a hand.
“Actually, never mind. We already know what you’re doing.” He looked directly at me, then Rielle, then Shara, then Garnexis. “Halven is our friend, too. He’s our quadmate. Why are we being left out of this?”
Lo shifted beside him, her gaze sliding past Rielle. “I know Halven and I haven’t been dating long, but I care about him. This isn’t just your fight.”
I moved toward the center of the room and gave them both a short nod. “You deserve to know.”
Before we could begin to explain the labyrinth of glyphs and visions, we quickly summarized what we’ve found, the words tumbling out in a rush of shared horror. We spoke of the secret passage, the glyph on the door, and the dual magic needed to open it. What we found waiting in the chamber. The block of ice. The truth.
Both Elio and Lo paled during the retelling, their faces a mask of shock at the revelation of Halven still alive, but frozen in a way none of us yet understood. Lo’s hand dropped from her arm to curl around her wrist instead, knuckles white.
Elio sank into the arm of a nearby chair and didn’t speak for a long moment, his mouth parted as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t decide what.
Then the door opened, and Orivian stepped into the room, pulling off his gloves with quick movements. His silver hair was slightly mussed, his usual composure offset by a glimmer of anxious curiosity.
“I came as soon as I could get away,” he said, his green-gold eyes sweeping over our shaken faces. “What did you find?”
We recounted everything we had found in the frozen chamber: Halven, alive but trapped and the magic in the chamber and the ice. Orivian listened intently, his brow furrowed as we explained the impossible scene. When we finished, a heavy silence fell over the room.
“So Halven’s alive,” Orivian finally managed, his voice rough. “But trapped. By Lady Isa.”
“And Veyn and Neir are somehow involved,” Garnexis added, her tone flat and sharp as steel.
My body burned with the need to do something.
Shara must have had the same restless energy because she began pacing the room. “I think we need to connect everything we know so far.”
She stopped pacing. “Halven’s notes said he heard voices and that he went to Wintermere. He wrote that something was wrong, but the part where he named who not to trust… that part was water damaged.”
Rielle’s voice came softly, eyes still on the hearth. “In my dream, he warned me not to follow. I didn’t understand it then. Maybe he knew what would happen to him. Or what could happen to us.”
Shara turned toward Rielle. “Lady Isa’s magic is keeping Halven a prisoner. And Professor Veyn’s magic is woven into the spell. Neir’s magic is in the lake along with Lady Isa’s. Every one of them is part of this.”
A heavy silence pressed into the space between them, and then voices rose.
My jaw tensed. This was bad. Like “every instinct I’ve ever had screaming danger” bad. But that didn’t mean we should blow it all up.
“Isa owes us the truth,” Garnexis said, fierce. She turned to me. “We should confront her. Don’t you agree?”
I wanted to. I wanted to storm down the corridor and demand answers. To channel every ounce of heat in my veins into forcing her to admit what she’d done.
But something held me back. Not fear. Just caution. The kind of survival instinct that fire needs to keep from consuming itself.
I took a breath. “If we go to her and she doesn’t freeze us like Halven, she’ll just shut us down again. Or worse, expel us. Then we can’t help him at all. Whatever we decide to do, it doesn’t leave this room.”
Shara shook her head. “No, I agree with Garnexis. She should answer for what she’s done.”
Rielle spoke, her voice hesitant. “I… don’t know. I think she should answer for what she’s done, but we don’t know what she might do if we push her. We don’t know the strength of her magic, or how it could be used against us.”
Orivian gave me a look and nodded. “Ardorion’s right. We don’t win this head-on. Not like this.”
Part of me wanted to smile if everything wasn’t so bad. Just to think, if Halven was here and we added Orivian to the mix with me and Elio, we would now be the Bro Squad Quad.
“If Professor Veyn is involved, you’re talking about one of the most powerful fae in Nythral.” Elio’s usual boisterous energy had been replaced by a grim seriousness. “Going up against him and the Grand Magister? It’s suicide.”
Lo had been mostly quiet until now, her wings trembling slightly behind her as she stepped forward. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. “So what? We just do nothing? She has Halven locked in a block of ice and we’re supposed to sit on our hands? I’m ready to confront her. I don’t care how powerful she is.”
Aster, who had been a silent, watchful presence, turned to Rielle. “Do you know the extent of Neir’s magic?”
Rielle shook her head. “I’ve only felt him use it once. It was powerful, but I don’t know enough to compare.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Orivian cut in, his voice calm and measured. He had the authority of someone who had seen more of the academy than we had. “As a fourth-year student, I’ve had more training than any of you, and I know for a fact that I couldn’t go up against Lady Isa and Professor Veyn. Even two quads of fourth-years would struggle. And we aren’t all full fae…”
His words hung there, a quiet insult, even if it wasn’t meant that way. I glanced at Garnexis and Rielle, the two hybrid fae who weren’t nearly as powerful as the rest of us. Rielle looked down, the color rushing to her cheeks. She didn’t argue. She didn’t need to. The truth hurt enough.
But Garnexis stood up fast, her boots hitting the rug with a thud. “Magic isn’t the only kind of power we can wield.”
Orivian didn’t flinch. “Then let’s find allies. We could confide in other faculty. Get them on our side and even out the scales.”
Yes, go Bro Squad Quad!
“Unless they’re part of it too,” Garnexis snapped. “We go to the wrong person and it’s over. Isa is involved. The others? We don’t know.”
My heart fell and immediately I searched for Aster’s gaze. I needed her reassurance that I wasn’t wrong. For some reason, just looking at her calmed me.
“I still think we should confront her,” she said, her voice clear and cold as ice. My heart fell some more. I had hoped she’d agree with me. “We can’t keep avoiding this. If she sealed Halven, then she knows how to unseal him.”
Very insightful. Even if she was wrong, but that was why I loved her. Well, not love. Probably not love. But it was close. She had guts. She was cold steel and purpose, wrapped in all that cool poise and quiet.
The room erupted. Voices layered on voices. Elio, Garnexis, Lo, Shara. Everyone had something to say and none of it matched. I argued with everything I had, Aster’s voice a cool counterpoint to my fire.
My fists curled against my legs. The fire in me churned, caught between fury and restraint. I wanted to agree with Aster, to take her hand and march down to Isa’s quarters right now. But I couldn’t. Something in me said we weren’t ready. That this would get worse before it got better if we pushed too fast.
Then all the lights went out.
One by one, every sconce and lantern blinked into shadow. We all fell silent, turning to Rielle. Shadows clung to her raised hands like a cloak. Resolve hardened in her misty eyes.
“We can’t pretend Isa shouldn’t be held accountable,” she said. “But if we rush into anything, we’ll lose Halven. We have to be smart about what we do next. Halven is what matters.”
The fire in me calmed again. Just enough to breathe.
We all nodded. She was right.
“So,” Rielle continued, the shadows receding as she spoke, “we find out how to free him. And while we do that, we get information. From Neir.” She looked at Shara. “And from Professor Veyn.”
Shara nodded, but the pain in her eyes was almost too much to witness. It knocked the wind out of me. Her voice when it came was tight.
“While Rielle and I get more information, the rest of you should focus on learning anything about magical containment, especially involving Water and Wood magic. That’s what we felt in the ice. Aster, maybe you can try some experiments with your magic. Just see if there’s anything familiar in the structure.”
Garnexis gave a small nod. “We should also keep watching them. Isa. Veyn. Neir. See what they’re doing, what they say to other students, what they’re involved in.”
“And go back through our notes,” Shara added. “Everything we’ve collected so far. Maybe there’s something we missed.”
Orivian looked thoughtful. “I just remembered something. It might not help, but it’s stuck in my head. Last year in history, we covered the old lore from Agondray, Lady Isa’s homeland. The continent fell under a curse. It’s a continent of ice now. And the one who spoke the curse, the Snow Princess, is trapped in ice there. Probably just like Halven.”
Garnexis narrowed her eyes. “Who trapped her?”
“Lady Isa’s cousins,” Orivian replied. “The last of the Ice Dragon Princes.”
Shara crossed her arms. “That just proves Isa knows how to do it. Unless there’s a record on how to undo it, I don’t know how it helps.”
Orivian shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t. But it started with a curse. Halven didn’t just stumble into that room. He heard voices. Something pulled him there. Like it’s happened before. That article from 639, the one about the students hearing voices? What if the same thing started again and Halven stopped it before it could spread?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “That’s a big leap. But it sounds like something Halven would do.”
“Then we have our tasks,” Shara said. “Everyone should work in pairs, though. If anything happens, no one should be alone.”
Rielle’s gaze lifted. “Except me. I want to talk to Neir alone. He might open up more if I go by myself.”
Shara nodded thoughtfully. “Same for me and Veyn.”
I couldn’t help myself. A smirk pulled at my lips. “Just make sure you stop kissing them long enough to ask your questions.”
Garnexis slapped me on the back of my shoulder. Not hard, but definitely not gentle either. “Do you really think they’ll be kissing the guys who might be responsible for Halven being frozen solid?”
I winced, clutching my arm dramatically. “Ow.”
Then my eyes found Aster’s, and a real, goofy grin spread across my face. “I guess I’m already kissing the enemy.”
She rolled her eyes, but then she smiled. It caught me off guard. A real, rare smile.
She almost never smiled. And when she did, it felt like something had gone right with the world. I couldn’t wait to kiss her again. With those thoughts, warmth flooded me, brighter than any fire I could summon.
When she slipped her hand into mine, the tension in my chest faded. She understood I didn’t want to confront Isa, and she’d support me. With Aster beside me, her steady calm anchored the fire inside me.
We had a plan. And I had her.
