The classroom buzzed with magic and tension, every corner filled with fae trying not to blow something up. Fire crackled. Wind howled. Somewhere across the room, someone’s water spell soaked a ceiling beam and made it rot mid-air.

I grinned.

Our table was quieter, for now. Garnexis stood beside me, arms crossed as we stared at the test contraption in front of us. A floating mobile of metal rods and gears hovered in mid-air, designed to rotate with a steady application of elemental force. Fire for propulsion, metal for control.

We had to keep it turning long enough for the professor to sign off. And the moment either of us pulled back, it would all stop. That was fusion for you. Temporary, finicky, and a pain in the ass when one partner had control issues and the other preferred chaos.

“So,” I said, cracking my knuckles, “I give it the fire, you keep it from spinning out like a drunk gremlin?”

Garnexis didn’t look at me. “You need to maintain a consistent flame. No flare-ups. No heat spikes. If you warp the balance arm, I’m not fixing it.”

“Warping is a strong word. I call it improvising.”

She shot me a sideways glare. “Improvising is how you blew a hole in the workshop last week.”

“Correction,” I said, pointing, “I melted a shelf. Not a hole. Very different.”

She muttered something under her breath. Probably not complimentary.

Still, we had a goal. And if I was being honest, it was kind of fun. A test of real control. Not the kind where you held back, but the kind where you had to match someone else's rhythm without stepping all over them. Like sparring, but with magic instead of fists.

“I’ll anchor the structure,” she said. “You channel your fire through the central gear. No theatrics.”

“I don’t do theatrics.” That was a lie, but she let it slide. “Ready?” I asked.

Garnexis gave a short nod. “Keep your flame steady, and I’ll do the rest.”

I reached into myself, finding the ember that lived at my core. It was always there, waiting, my ancestors’ voices an incessant chatter. My magic flowed easily. I didn’t have to coax it or beg. I just thought flame, and it came alive.

A golden glow bloomed around my palms, heat curling up my arms. I held it low and even, not letting it climb like it wanted to. Garnexis stepped forward, lifting her hands as if pulling invisible wires. The metal structure above us vibrated, then hummed, like it was waking up.

I focused on the gear beneath the center beam. That was where my fire belonged. I fed it slowly, like adding coals to a forge. The gear lit with a soft orange glow, spinning slightly.

“Little more,” she said.

I added just a hair of heat. The mobile tilted, the arms dipping unevenly. Garnexis tightened her grip, and the frame steadied.

We did this, back and forth, correcting each other in tiny ways without needing to speak. I saw the tension in her shoulders ease. My flames found their rhythm.

Then it happened. The mobile moved. Smooth, balanced, humming like it had its own heartbeat.

Professor Aeshan, a Sun Fae with carrot orange skin, walked by and nodded once, his golden hair shimmering.

“Marked,” he said.

Yes! I threw up a quick, silent fist toward the sky.

I let out a slow breath and pulled my magic back. The moment I did, the gears slowed. The glow faded. Garnexis dropped her hands.

We stood in silence for a moment, the air warm and sharp between us.

“Not bad, gears,” I said, smiling hugely at her.

She raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t melt anything. I’m shocked.”

“I am capable of restraint.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it twice.”

I clapped my hands together. “Let’s do it again!”

That finally pulled a grin out of her. “Crazy fae.”

Garnexis wasn’t easy to please, but we made that work.

“Just admit it. We work good together. A Summer and Fall Fae. Who knew we could fuse our elements?”

She nodded thoughtfully, her dark red eyes open for just a moment before her walls went up again. “Good work, flamebrain.”

I’ll say! The way we had to move in sync, neither taking over, neither backing down. It was kind of like fighting with a partner who could actually keep up.

The fusion was gone now, like it had never been there. But for a minute, it had worked. Our magic didn’t cancel each other out. It held, just long enough.

It made me wonder if Aster and I could achieve similar results. I didn’t know if it was possible, but I was willing to try.

The thought excited me more than I thought I’d ever feel about a Winter Fae.

The classroom was a mess of reckless spells and glowing failures. Every other pair seemed determined to set something on fire, drown it, or freeze it solid. It was a miracle the walls were still standing.

I adjusted the cuffs of my bracers, keeping my eyes on the test construct floating in front of Ardorion and me. Polished metal rods suspended in a loose framework, fine gears in the center. Simple enough. Apply a steady fusion of two different magics. Maintain it. Done.

Or, in this case, try not to let Ardorion blow it up.

He was already bouncing on the balls of his feet, like this was a sparring match instead of a magical coordination exercise. I crossed my arms.

“So,” he said, voice just short of cocky while cracking his knuckles, “I give it the fire, you keep it from spinning out like a drunk gremlin?”

I didn’t bother looking at him. “You need to maintain a consistent flame. No flare-ups. No heat spikes. If you warp the balance arm, I’m not fixing it.”

“Warping is a strong word. I call it improvising.”

I did glance at him then. “Improvising is how you blew a hole in the workshop last week.”

“Correction,” he said, pointing with both hands like that helped, “I melted a shelf. Not a hole. Very different.”

I muttered, “Still needed repairs.”

He grinned like that was the point.

We couldn’t have been more different. Ardorion was heat and motion and the opposite of predictable. Not that I liked rules—well, others’ rules. I liked structure, planning, rules I could adapt to my advantage. That’s how I stayed alive.

But somehow, Ardorion and I had to coordinate our magic, hold the same spell together long enough for the professor to check it off. And the second either of us backed out or overpowered the other, it would all unravel.

“I’ll anchor the structure,” I said. “You channel your fire through the central gear. No theatrics.”

“I don’t do theatrics,” he said. That was a lie, but I let it slide. “Ready?”

I gave a short nod. “Keep your flame steady, and I’ll do the rest.”

We stood side by side, both focused on the hovering mechanism. I reached for my magic, delving deep inside myself to find my center where my ancestors resided in my soul, offering support for my power.

This was always a push and pull. And sometimes my ancestors didn’t answer, or couldn’t.

Perks of being half Metal Fae and half human. Human blood weakened the connection to our ancestors.

This time, the pull of metal was familiar, steady. My power flowed from me, and I could feel the construct’s composition almost like it was breathing in my palms, waiting to be shaped. My fingers curled slightly and the frame began to hum, responding to my touch.

Ardorion’s fire came next. I felt the heat before I saw it, slow and carefully controlled—for once. A soft orange glow curled from his hands, casting light across the gear I was holding in place. The metal began to shift, slowly at first, then with more confidence.

“Little more,” I murmured, watching the frame begin to turn.

He adjusted. The flame deepened. The mobile tilted, the arms dipping unevenly. I tightened my grip on my magic, and the frame steadied.

Then it happened. The mobile moved. Smooth, balanced, humming like it had its own heartbeat.

We moved together, not speaking, but somehow keeping in sync. His fire spun the gears. My magic guided the motion.

The mobile rotated. Smooth. Balanced. Alive.

Professor Aeshan, a Sun Fae with carrot orange skin, passed by. He watched for a long second before nodding once, his golden hair shimmering. “Marked.”

Ardorion threw up a quick, silent fist toward the sky.

Then he let out a breath like he’d been holding it for an hour and pulled back his flame. The metal construct slowed. I released my grip and let the structure still itself, satisfied.

We stood in the quiet left behind.

“Not bad, gears,” he said with his huge, silly grin.

I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t melt anything. I’m shocked.”

“I am capable of restraint.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it twice.”

He clapped his hands together. “Let’s do it again!”

That finally pulled a grin out of me. “Crazy fae.”

I know I wasn’t easy to please, and even harder to get to know. The only one who had ever really gotten me was Halven. But, Ardorion and I made this work.

Two opposing forces in harmony. Nothing lasting, but it didn’t need to be. The test wasn’t about permanence. It was about finding a way to work together.

We’d passed.

Instinctively, my head turned to the south wall. I saw without seeing anything, knowing Orivian was back in the Scriptorium, just across the courtyard beyond that south wall.

We were opposing forces but in a different way.

That damn magical bond drew us together, but it was the only thing that connected us. Otherwise I’d never give the stuffy lordling the time of day.

Yet even now I was drawn to him.

I still owed him a tour of the tunnels beneath the library. Perhaps I could interest him soon. The thought of being with him alone excited me more than I wanted to admit.

Professor Veyn’s voice carried across the room as he wrapped up the instructions for the assignment to include choosing a partner. I didn’t catch every word. His voice alone was enough to distract me. Low, smooth, the kind of voice that had once whispered things only for me. I could still hear it in the quiet of my memory. Still feel the weight of those late evenings, the softness of his hand on mine, the fire he once sparked with just a glance.

I shoved the thoughts aside before they could root. This wasn’t the time.

I turned toward Rielle. Of course my partner would be her. There was never another choice for me.

After losing Veyn two years ago, then Halven. Rielle was the one to keep me sane.

“Together?” I said.

She gave a single nod, already pulling her seat a little closer to mine.

“Let’s start with a young plant and see what we can do.” I eyed a baby flower sitting on the windowsill.

It was a small thing, pink-petaled and delicate, barely a bud, but perfect for this. I stood and reached for it, careful with the pot as I brought it back to our shared table.

“So,” Rielle said quietly, “what’s the plan?”

“I’ll coax the flower to grow. Simple growth spell.” I ran a finger along one of the leaves. “You’ll bend the sunlight around it. Wrap it in light. We focus on the same outcome. To make it grow faster.”

Her mouth twitched with the smallest hint of a smile. “I like it. So we concentrate on the same intent with coordinated steps.”

I nodded. “Right, just like Veyn said. Choreography.”

We settled in. The rest of the students faded as I turned inward. I closed my eyes and reached deep, down to the center of myself, where the memory of magic lived. Where my ancestors waited.

Their presence met me immediately, soft and warm like the rustle of wind through the forest, a gentle shushing of leaves. A few murmured in curiosity when I made my intentions clear.

What is this? one voice whispered. This is not just a Wood spell.

Another voice, more amused, added, We have never seen a binding of elements done before.

Good luck, child.

I smiled faintly, even as my focus sharpened. I didn’t need ancestral help for this spell. Coaxing a flower to grow was as basic as breathing, something every Wood Fae learned in early childhood. But I had wanted to hear them. To know what they thought.

I opened my eyes.

My hands glowed copper, veins of magic trailing like roots into the space between them and the flower. Across from me, Rielle’s hands shimmered with silvery white light, and her eyes were misted over with a pale fog.

We met each other’s gaze. A small nod. We were ready.

I whispered the spell, my voice little more than breath. I kept the intention of binding my magic to the natural element, the physical element itself, and to the magic signature of Rielle’s element.

The flower’s stem lengthened, the bud beginning to stretch. Slowly, steadily, the leaves widened, soaking in the first hints of warmth from the sunlight Rielle redirected.

I couldn’t see her spell. I could only feel the magic residue in the air, see the glow of her powers while she activated the spell.

Rielle’s directed sunlight curled fully around the flower.

It responded instantly.

The bloom burst open in a quick, elegant unfurling. The petals stretched outward like arms embracing the light. It glowed faintly, a shimmer of silver caught in its center.

We both leaned forward, breath held. My friend’s excitement spiked through the air like a pulse, and with it, the flower began to glow. Silver, bright, brilliant. For a heartbeat, it looked like something enchanted.

Then the glow flickered.

We both pulled back instinctively, releasing our magic. The flower dimmed, the silver light fading. But the bloom remained open, larger than it had been, its color more vibrant than before—more vibrant than the pink petals would normally be.

“You succeeded,” Veyn said, his voice close behind me.

I startled. I hadn’t heard him approach.

“You bound your magic. Two distinct elements. Shared intent. And the moment that intent shifted—” his eyes flicked to Rielle “—the spell collapsed.”

His presence at my shoulder spread heat through me. I didn’t have to look to know he was smiling. I felt it in my chest before I turned to see it.

Rielle ducked her head, clearly abashed. “I wanted to see what else it could do. I didn’t mean to shift the focus.”

He nodded. “But you did. And the outcome changed, briefly before disintegrating because Shara didn’t know this new intent. That is the nature of a binding. Intent is everything.”

I looked down at the flower again. It hadn’t reverted. It was still grown, still blooming. The change was real. Lasting.

“So the magic leaves its mark,” I said aloud, more to myself than to him.

Veyn’s gaze met mine. “Yes.”

The warmth in his eyes stirred something deep in my chest. Longing. Longing for everything we once shared. Longing to feel his arms around me. I missed him. Missed what we had before everything changed. Before the silence, before the distance, before The Seal.

The Seal.

The memory rose unbidden. The chamber beneath the library. The ice, Halven, the threads of magic we had each felt. Including Veyn’s.

Veyn’s magic existed in the prison that held Halven. Tangled in Lady Isa’s. I hadn’t understood it then, still didn’t fully. But now I knew what binding felt like.

And if that was what it had been, I couldn’t help the question that haunted me.

What was the intent?

I looked away, the warmth between us fraying at the edges. Something cold crept in. I didn’t want to believe he had a hand in that.

I looked back up at him, hiding my thoughts and feelings from him. Now my intent was to find out what he’d done to Halven, even if that meant seducing my once lover.

Professor Veyn’s voice carried through the room, smooth and composed as ever. Even though I tried to focus on his instructions, I felt the familiar prickle run down my arms. His presence did that sometimes. Not because of who he was to me—he wasn’t anything to me—but because of what he meant to Shara. I could feel her tense beside me, even before I turned to her.

Professor Veyn read the midterm practical instructions, mentioning we needed to pair up.

I looked at Shara. We didn’t need to say it. Of course we’d partner. She was my oak tree when I’d broken up with Halven.

“Together?” she said softly.

I gave a nod and slid my stool a little closer.

“Let’s start with a young plant and see what we can do.” She eyed a baby flower sitting on the windowsill.

My gaze drifted to the clay pot. Its petals hadn’t opened yet, the closed bloom still curled up against the light. It would do.

Shara stood and fetched it without a word. She set it down between us, her fingers brushing a leaf with practiced ease.

“So,” I asked, “what’s the plan?”

“I’ll coax the flower to grow. Simple growth spell,” she said, her eyes still on the plant. “You’ll bend the sunlight around it. Wrap it in light. We focus on the same outcome. To make it grow faster”

My mouth twitched with a small smile. “Same intent. Coordinated steps.”

She nodded. “Right, just like Veyn said. Choreography.”

The simplicity of it made me nervous. Not because the spell itself was difficult—I’d bent light before—but because it required us to be completely in sync. Not just in timing but in purpose. I wasn’t sure I was very good at that.

We sat in silence for a breath before closing our eyes.

I took a steadying inhale and pulled my awareness inward, into the space where my ancestors’ knowledge stirred like fog at the edges of thought. The light of my magic shimmered deep within my soul. The thrum of whispers and power pulsed, but sometime the beat was too faint to catch, too dim for me to draw on my magic or to draw on very much of it, too soft for me to hear the spells from my ancestors.

I was told it was because I was a hybrid, only half a Moon Fae. My human half suppressed my magic in many ways.

But this time it responded. It was gentle and cold like the winter sun. My people had always used light and shadows as both shield and weapon. But never quite like this.

When I opened my eyes, a copper glow shimmered over Shara. It wove around her fingers like vines, steady and warm. My own magic pooled in a soft silver mist, curling over my palms and drifting like low clouds. Light gathered behind me, carrying the pulse of my magic, and sunlight bent toward my fingertips.

Shara looked at me. We nodded once, together.

She began her spell first, whispering in that low, focused voice that never shook. The flower responded immediately, its stem stretching upward, the petals beginning to shift.

I eased the light forward. It touched the bloom delicately, then began to wrap around it in slow circles. The moment it fully enclosed the flower, something changed. The petals sprang open with a quiet rush. The whole bloom glowed faintly, the silver of my magic reflecting in its center.

We both leaned forward, breath held. My excitement spiked through the air, adding to the pulse of my magi, and with it, the flower began to glow. Silver, bright, brilliant. For a heartbeat, it looked like something enchanted.

But I didn’t mean to get so excited.

I wanted to see what more we could do. What else might happen if we let it keep going. That intention slipped into my magic like a spark into dry grass.

And the binding broke.

The silver light dimmed. The flower stopped glowing, the silver light fading. We both let go, pulling back instinctively. But the bloom remained open, larger than it had been, its color more vibrant than before.

“You succeeded,” came Veyn’s voice, startling me. I hadn’t realized how close he was.

He stepped beside us, his attention shifting between the flower and our hands. “You bound your magic. Two distinct elements. Shared intent. And the moment that intent shifted—” he looked at me “—the spell collapsed.”

My cheeks burned. “I wanted to see what else it could do. I didn’t mean to shift the focus.”

He nodded. “But you did. And the outcome changed. That is the nature of a binding. Intent is everything.”

I stared at the flower, surprised it hadn’t reverted to its earlier state. It was still fully grown, still blooming. The change was real. Lasting.

“So the magic leaves its mark,” Shara said quietly.

Veyn looked at Shara, heat in his gaze. “Yes.”

I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. She wasn’t looking at the flower. She was looking at him. Her expression was unreadable, too many things wrapped beneath the surface. But I knew that look. I’d seen it too many times. I knew what he meant to her.

And I knew how much it must have hurt to feel his magic in that ice.

My thoughts drifted to Neir, but I pushed them away.

Shara’s voice stayed soft, and I felt the weight behind it. She was always so composed, but right now, her quiet hurt was louder than any of us.

Whatever this binding was, it wasn’t just about magic.

It was about trust.

And that, more than anything, was what we were all starting to lose.

I just prayed that Neir was not involved with Halven’s imprisonment, even if I felt his magic in Wintermere.

With midterms nearly done, it was time I found Neir and talked to him face to face, and not in my dreams where words always fell away and our lips met for more kisses than questions.

Veyn’s office was warmer than I expected.

It smelled like peat and wild mint, like the inside of a greenhouse where no one else ever walked. Vines curled along the upper edges of the stone walls, trailing toward a central skylight veiled in moss. Light filtered through it in soft green and gold, falling across a low desk stacked with scrolls and a single, struggling wisteria vine in a ceramic pot, its leaves curled inward as if in pain.

Veyn stood at the desk, arranging scrolls with the absent precision of someone trying to stay busy.

I hovered just inside the threshold, one hand tightening on the strap of my satchel. My feet had led me here, slow and uncertain, until there was nowhere left to turn but inside. After discovering Halven frozen in The Seal, we’ve all been swamped with Midterms while still trying to find out more information before deciding what to do next.

It was my mission to find out Veyn’s role in all of this.

But looking at him now stirred that deep, aching longing I still had for him. My mind tried to remind me that this man was somehow responsible for what happened to Halven, but my body remembered something else: that he was also the source of an overwhelming love that had carried us from childhood innocence into the throes of adult passion and romance.

I missed him. I missed us.

Veyn finally looked up, sensing my presence.

His eyes flickered—surprise first, then a wave of something unreadable and achingly soft. On the corner of his desk, a faculty ID card glinted in the light. His gaze followed mine, subtle tension tightening his shoulders as he instinctively shifted, a fractional movement to obscure it from view.

“Shara.” My name in his voice still landed like a leaf on still water.

He gestured to the empty chair opposite his desk, but I didn’t move.

“I wasn’t sure you’d talk to me again after the Spiral Dance.” His voice was quiet, laced with a weary resignation that twisted something in my chest.

I stepped in and the heavy wooden door click shut behind me, sealing us in with the scent of earth and regret.

“It’s been a few weeks,” I said, more guarded than I meant to sound.

More like a month.

A small, sad smile ghosted across his lips. “I noticed.”

The silence that stretched wasn’t brittle. It held itself carefully between us, like a thread neither wanted to cut.

“I didn’t come here to talk about the dance,” I said, my voice steadier now. The sight of him, the familiar lines of his face shadowed by a new weariness, solidified my resolve. I had to know.

“Your midterm, then?”

The wariness in his brown eyes made me pause. Did he hope that’s all I really wanted from him, the accolades on the work in his class?

“You did very well. You and Rielle work well together. I can’t wait to see what you’ll achieve by the end of the semester.”

I stopped before his desk, my gaze flicking again to his ID card beneath his hand. “I came to tell you I’ve found the tunnels beneath the Library of Seasons, and I found Halven.”

I waited then, hoping he’d show a surprise that meant he hadn’t known, even though he had to know. Instead, his posture went rigid. The faint golden light in his brown eyes sharpened, his full attention locking onto me. He didn't ask how. He just waited.

“Your magic was there, wrapped around him.”

Halven’s fate echoed between us, in the room. The name of our friend before we crossed the threshold into adulthood.

The color drained from his face, and he gripped the edge of his desk, his knuckles white. The living vines woven into his hair and robes trembled, their leaves curling tight.

“Shara, don’t—” he started, his voice strained as if the words themselves were a physical effort.

I didn’t let him finish. I laid out the full truth of what we’d found at his feet, and now I would see what he would do with it. But his silence was telling. It revealed so much. Not just his inability to admit to anything but the fact that he knew I would find out.

The leaf he gave me.

The sigil on the back. He’d been leading me to this discovery the whole time. Whatever bound him hadn’t stopped him from trying to tell me something. From giving me just enough to find out what happened to Halven.

“You already knew we’d go, didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer.

“You wanted us to find it. You just couldn’t say it out loud.”

Still, he was silent.

My voice cracked as I stepped closer. “He’s alive. Frozen by your magic in some type of containment spell. I felt it. There in the ice. With him, like...” Then it hit me. All the lessons he taught us in his class, binding magic to nature. “Like you bound your magic to the ice to keep him trapped.”

That broke him.

He closed his eyes, a shudder running through him. The air in the room grew thick, tight, as if an invisible force was squeezing the space around him. When he opened them again, they were full of a raw, desperate anguish. He couldn’t deny it. But the words to explain were clearly caught behind a barrier I couldn’t see.

“I can’t tell you what happened,” he whispered. “Not because I won’t. Because I can’t.”

He reached across the desk, his hand stopping just short of mine. His voice was thick with unshed emotion, a ragged plea. “Veyshara, please. You have to trust me.”

My True Name was a key turning in a lock I’d thought rusted shut. It was a sound of home, of shared roots, of a time before he’d left. Tears pricked my eyes. Trust him? How could I when he was shrouded in secrets, when his magic was wrapped around our friend like a cage?

But the look on his face wasn’t deception. It was torment. He couldn’t give me words, so he was trying to give me the only truth he had left.

I should have left then.

Instead, I stepped around the desk, closing the final distance, because I recognized the emotion emanating from his whole body. His love for me.

The air grew thick, humming with the contained energy of his office, of him. His scent—peat and wild mint—wrapped around me, a memory made real.

“Then show me.” My trembling whisper was resolute. “Show me something I can believe in. I want something that’s real.”

His breath hitched. That was all the permission he needed.

---

The past can’t be rewritten, but tonight, it just might be forgiven. In the greenhouse hush of Veyn’s sanctuary, longing overcomes logic. Continue the story by choosing how much of their reunion you want to see:

Closed Door: A kiss, a confession, and the feeling of home, without crossing into private details.

Spicy: Their magic entwines as completely as their bodies. Come closer. Nothing is held back.

The silence in our quad was deafening. It had been like this for hours, ever since the others had left. Rielle and Shara had gone to the library, chasing another dead-end lead about magical containment. Garnexis was with Orivian in the Scriptorium, probably arguing about font choices or the structural integrity of parchment. They wouldn't be back for a while.

Which left me alone. With her.

Aster sat cross-legged on the couch, a book on her lap. She’d pulled her hair into a braid, the end tucked neatly behind one ear, but a few wisps had escaped. She hadn't said a word in ten minutes, but I could feel the tension radiating off her in cold waves. It was a familiar feeling, that icy pressure she carried, but today it felt sharper, laced with a frustration that mirrored my own. We’d spent the entire day chasing whispers and finding nothing.

No answers. No progress. Just circles—cautious meetings, cryptic clues, and too much silence. Halven’s frozen face kept slipping into his thoughts, blue-lipped and wide-eyed beneath the ice. It had been a week since we found him in the Docilis Vault and still, nothing. No new glyphs. No new leads. Just waiting.

I paced the length of the common room. Restless energy coiled in my gut, hot and tight. My magic simmered just under my skin, itching to be released. I wanted to hit something. To burn something. To break down a door and drag the answers out of whoever was hiding them. This quiet, careful waiting was a type of torture designed specifically for me.

We were getting nowhere.

“It’s useless,” I finally bit out, the words scraping my throat. I stopped pacing and slammed my fist against the stone mantelpiece. A flicker of orange heat flared from my knuckles, leaving a small, blackened scorch mark on the stone. “All of this. The notes, the theories. Halven is still in there, and we're out here playing scholar. Where has it gotten us? Nowhere.”

I expected a sharp retort. A cool, cutting remark about my lack of patience.

Instead, she looked up from her book, her violet eyes dark and serious. She didn’t look at the scorch mark. She looked at me.

“I know,” she said, her voice low and tight with an intensity that matched my own.

Her agreement did nothing to soothe the fire in my veins. It only stoked it higher. I started pacing again, running a hand through my hair, feeling the heat lick at my scalp. Over the past month, we had stolen kisses in hallways and empty classrooms. Brief, searing moments that only ever left me wanting more. Each time, just as the heat between us threatened to truly ignite, she would pull back, her control snapping back into place like a shield of ice.

I was sick of it. I was sick of the cold.

I wanted to do more than just kiss her.

“We have the place to ourselves. A couple hours, at least.” My own voice sounded parched.

She raised an eyebrow. “You planning to experiment with glyph combinations again?”

Not exactly.

My eyes dropped to where her fingers brushed her knee, to the sliver of skin above her neckline, to the slow rise and fall of her breath. She was too calm. It infuriated and aroused me in equal measure.

No. I wasn’t thinking about glyphs.

I was thinking about pushing her back onto the couch and tasting every inch of that cool, sharp mouth.

She kept talking, something about ley line convergence and water resonance, but the sound was fading. All I could focus on was the heat curling low in my spine and the vivid, uninvited image of her robes pooling at her feet on the floor of my chamber, the cool, pale skin of her back bare beneath my hands.

I wanted to see her breath catch when I kissed her neck, the sound she would make when my fire finally melted her frost. I wanted to hear her gasp my name when I found the spot just below her navel with my tongue. I wanted—

“Ardorion.”

Her voice, close now, cut through my thoughts. I turned, and she was right there, close enough that I could feel the chill radiating from her skin.

“You’re losing control,” she said softly. A glacier under pressure.

My magic flared in response to her proximity, flames licking up my arms, my hair crackling with uncontrolled heat. The air in the room had grown tight, shimmering. The page of notes pinned to the wall darkened at the corners, the ink starting to run.

“And what good has control gotten us?” I snarled, my voice rough with frustration and a desire I wasn’t trying to hide. “We’re no closer to helping him than we were the day we found him.”

She didn’t argue. She didn’t step back. Instead, she lifted her hands and placed them gently over mine.

Her touch was like diving into a frozen lake on the hottest day of summer. A shocking, all-consuming cold that didn’t extinguish my fire, but… contained it. My flames didn’t recoil. They coiled toward her like they recognized something in her pulse.

I exhaled hard through my nose, willing the heat back down.

She stepped in closer, hands still over mine, letting her magic rise in a fine, invisible mist. The raging inferno inside me quieted, leaving behind only the raw, aching heat of my feelings for her. Aster’s ice didn’t bite. It soothed. It was intentional. Focused. The same way she spoke, the way she fought. I had mocked it once. Now it anchored me.

My eyes locked with hers.

And for a moment, everything went still.

The tension between us wasn’t gone. It had just… changed. Condensed. The air didn’t crackle—it hummed, like something waiting to be touched.

My pulse thundered in my throat.

My voice came low. “You always do that. You calm the part of me no one else touches.”

She didn’t look away. Her violet eyes held mine, deep and searching. “Maybe that’s the part I trust.”

Something in my chest snapped loose at that. It wasn’t a choice. It was magnetism.

---

Things are heating up, and cooling, down between Ardorion and Aster. Continue the story by choosing how much of their connection you'd like to see:

Closed Door: Experience the romance, emotion, and intimacy without the details.

Spicy: Turn up the heat and step fully into the moment with a detailed scene of their physical and emotional connection.

The feather had looked like fire.

But that didn’t matter when I had a habit of pocketing small things—usually metal, but the feather looked like molten metal. And it wasn’t just painted with flame. It had been alive with it. A wisp of living combustion caught mid-bloom. I’d swiped it from Ardorion’s trunk when no one was looking, half-curious, half-opportunistic. It hadn’t burned my fingers. Wasn’t even warm. Just pulsing, quiet magic. I’d used it to open the library portal for us today. The portal ate it, the feather spent. But today wasn’t about fire.

It was about metal. And about being fae. And secrets. And Orivian.

The tunnels beneath the library were darker than I remembered. Quiet in a way that made you feel like you might be trespassing in time itself. He walked behind me, his usual grace still intact, though his silence had a weight to it.

We didn’t speak much. The tension between us had a different charge tonight. Like static before a storm.

I could feel his gaze on my back.

When we reached the narrow corridor that branched toward the Docilis Vault, I stopped and looked over my shoulder. “Almost there.”

He arched a brow. “So this is where you bring all your dates?”

I laughed softly. “Only the ones I’m trying to seduce.”

“You trying to seduce me, Whispermetal?”

I was of two minds with his response.

I took it for teasing, which is how I meant the conversation to go. But him calling me by my surname meant something else.

He might not have meant to call attention to it, but somehow, I doubt that was true where in the world of the Metal Fae, your surname was synonymous with your identity and social standing.

My surname wasn’t handed down through one of the Forged Guilds, the Mountain Citadels, the Crystal Cities, or one of the Gemstone Courts like Orivian himself. Hells, my name didn’t even come from one of the lesser Wandering Caravans.

My surname was my own. One I gave myself instead of taking my mother’s human family name.

I hated the naming rules the Metal Fae were fond of, so I made my own.

I was the Metal Fae all the others whispered about everywhere my mother and I ran from.

Part Metal, part whisper, but all my own.

What would Orivian think of that?

Whatever he thought, and his reasons for saying my surname, he continued to follow me without hesitation.

The tunnel air was cold and still, tasting of damp stone.

“This is the path Halven walked?” Orivian’s voice was a low murmur beside me.

“We believe so,” I said, my own voice tight.

The hum of the fated bond was a low, constant thrum between us, a wire pulled taut in the silence. It wasn’t a hostile presence anymore. In the weeks since the dance, we had settled into a fragile truce, exploring the connection between us in stolen moments in the Scriptorium, in quick, hungry kisses in empty corridors. He’d whispered promises against my neck of what he wanted to do when he finally got me alone, and my presence here was the answer to that unspoken dare.

As we walked, the pull became unbearable. I felt his gaze on me and stopped, turning to face him in the soft glow of the tunnel’s magic. He didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, his hands finding my waist and pulling me against him.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” he breathed, his mouth finding mine in a kiss that was all coiled tension and desperate need.

I answered him with equal fire, my hands sliding up his chest, my fingers tangling in the silver-steel strands of his short silver hair. It felt alive, shifting against my touch like fine, metallic filings. For a moment, the mission, Halven, all of it faded away, replaced by the solid, grounding presence of him.

We finally broke apart, breathless. My body hummed, wanting more.

Soon.

“The Docilis Vault is just ahead.” My voice was huskier than I intended. “Let’s see what secrets it’s willing to share with you.”

When we reached the vault door, Orivian pressed his palm to the handprint and the door slid open with a low hiss. Inside, the black mirror waited, seeming to absorb the light.

“It’s your turn,” I said, gesturing him forward.

He stepped up to the console, his back to me, and he keyed in his student ID. I watched as the mirror shimmered, but unlike when I had seen Halven, this time the surface remained blank for me.

Orivian, however, saw something. I couldn’t see his vision, but I saw its effect on him. His perfect posture went rigid. The bronze light of his magic flared erratically around him, and for a split second, the skin on the back of his neck shimmered, turning the color of polished platinum before returning to normal.

When it was over, he stumbled back, his face pale, his green-gold eyes wide with something I couldn’t read. Shock? Fear? Pain?

“Orivian? What did you see?” I asked, stepping toward him.

He shook his head, running a hand through his hair. He didn’t meet my eyes. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

A lie. A clean, sharp lie from a man who prided himself on honor. It stung more than I expected. My vision of Halven had been a clue we all shared. His was a secret he was already keeping.

“I thought we were partners in this,” I said quietly.

“We are,” he insisted, but his gaze wouldn’t meet mine.

I decided to push. “Let me use your ID card, then. Shara said it’s possible. All I have to do is to touch the fingerprint first, then key in your ID number, and I’ll see a new vision. Maybe I’ll see something to give us another clue about how to free Halven. You can use mine in return.”

He finally looked at me, and his expression was closed, shuttered. “No.”

The single word was a wall between us. The hurt was sharp, but my frustration was sharper. If he wouldn’t let me into his head, then I would find another way in.

I closed the distance between us, my hands coming up to his chest.

“Fine,” I whispered, my voice a low challenge. “Keep your secrets.”

I kissed him then, not with the hungry desperation of before, but with a demanding fire. It was a kiss that said, You can lock me out of your mind, but you can’t lock me out of this. He responded instantly, his control snapping. His arms wrapped around me, pulling me so tight I could barely breathe.

I loved that kind of pressure.

“Gods, Garnexis,” he groaned against my mouth. “I want to feel your skin against mine.”

An idea, reckless and thrilling, sparked in my mind. “What about now? Right here?”

He pulled back, a reluctant heat in his eyes as he glanced around the cold, sterile vault. “How often do people come down here?”

“Almost never,” I said, though I didn’t really know. The risk was part of the thrill. That’s when I remembered. One of the tunnels didn’t lead back to the library. It led out.

A slow, wicked grin spread across my face. I grabbed his hand, the cool, metallic feel of his skin sending a jolt through me. “I know a place.”

---

What begins as defiance becomes something else entirely. Something magnetic and irrevocable. On the frozen edge of Wintermere, Garnexis finally stops running. Choose how far you want to follow:

Closed Door: The kiss, the promise, the danger of belonging, without the explicit.

Spicy: Metal and magic collide. This is how bonds are forged. Follow them into the fire.

The snow had fallen softly throughout the night, blanketing the courtyard in silence. Past midnight, it glittered like spilled glass, but it didn’t melt beneath my boots. Cold clung to me like breath held too long. I didn’t know where I was going when I woke from my sleepwalking, and at first, disoriented, I didn’t return to my quad. I just walked. Restless.

The dreams hadn’t stopped.

They weren’t nightmares. Not exactly. But they left me flushed, disoriented, and craving something I couldn’t name. My dreams of late were a tangled mess of Halven’s frozen face and Neir’s golden eyes, the two images bleeding into one another until I no longer knew what was memory and what was a warning. Neir’s voice lingered longest. That low, steady cadence that could part silence like a blade. I didn’t trust him, not truly. But I couldn’t stay away either.

The pull to the cold, to the quiet of Wintermere, was an instinct I couldn't ignore.

When I reached the path that bordered the outside of the academy, my boots leaving shallow prints, I saw him.

The wolf.

Silver-blue fur, thick as moonlight, golden eyes glowing like embers under frost. He stood between the black-boned trees beyond the hedge line, half in shadow, half in snow. Watching me. Always watching.

He couldn’t be a creature of this world, not entirely with as beautiful as he was. His gaze found mine across the snowy expanse, and his eyes glowed with a soft, familiar gold.

He didn’t growl. Didn’t beckon. Just turned and walked.

No fear touched me. Only a deep, humming curiosity, a magnetic pull that felt as old as the moon itself. A part of me walking away, yet drawing me forward.

He turned his head, a silent invitation, and then padded gracefully back into the trees. I followed without hesitation.

Branches scraped the sky above us as I trailed his broad shape down the embankment, onto a winding, forgotten path that sloped toward the frozen lake. The air grew colder, sharper. He never looked back, as if he knew I would not stop. Until we came to the magnificent stone bridge that arched from Nivara Hall to the south, crossing Wintermere Lake.

The wolf stopped in a hollow shelter beneath the arch of the bridge. It was a secluded space, sheltered from the wind, the heavy stone arches creating a private grotto of snow and shadow.

I held my breath as he turned. His gaze met mine, steady and sure. The muted light from the snow-dusted sky cast him in shades of blue and gray. For a long moment, we just stood there, the only sound the soft whisper of falling snow. And then, like mist being pulled away from a mountain, the shift began.

It was seamless. His shape unraveled and reformed, silver fur peeling back like smoke until bare skin emerged. The man who stood in the snow was tall, lean, all sculpted muscle and quiet command. His blue-shot hair was wild, dusted with snowflakes that melted against its darkness. Steam rose from his warm skin to meet the cold air, swirling around him like a mystical shroud. And he was completely, devastatingly naked.

My breath caught.

It was just like our dreams. Every detail, down to the angle of his collarbone, the curve of his mouth. Every defined line down his body. Only now, it was real. Twice he’d been real in front of me, but not this version of him. This version that laid everything bare. The version that held me, kissed me. The line between my sleeping world and my waking one collapsed entirely. This was no longer a dream I could control or a vision I could dismiss.

My mind raced. I wanted to ask about Halven, about Lady Isa, about the magic I felt coiled in the ice of the lake. I wanted to demand the truth. My lips parted, the words forming on my tongue, but they never had the chance to escape.

He crossed the snow between us and kissed me.

The kiss was not cruel, not soft. But it was inevitable.

His mouth met mine with a quiet ferocity, as though the world had been waiting for this moment to exhale. I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t. All the questions, all the suspicions, they all dissolved under the raw, possessive pressure of his lips. My lips parted, and he deepened the kiss, hands bracing lightly at my hips, his thumbs dragging just slightly against my robes as if to say he had imagined this before, in a place beyond our dreams.

And gods help me, so had I.

When he pulled back, his voice was low and rough, still breathless, his golden eyes blazing down at me. “After that last dream, I couldn’t wait to give you everything you begged for.”

A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold ran down my spine. I remembered the dream vividly. Our naked bodies tangled on the dream-lake shore, my own voice whispering his name, pleading for him to take me, stopping just short of that final, irreversible step. He had heard. He had remembered. And now, he was here to finish what we had started.

My breath misted between us, a fragile cloud in the frigid air. I tried to find my footing, to anchor myself in the cold, hard reality of the moment, but his presence was a tide pulling me under. I needed to regain control.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to stop anything.

But I forced myself to speak. “I barely know you.”

A flimsy shield against the heat in his gaze.

He laughed, a low, soft sound that did nothing to cool the air. “Lust needs no knowledge, Little Moon.”

His hands slid from my hips to the small of my back, drawing me closer until our bodies were almost touching.

“You’re so old,” I tried again, my voice unsteady. The fact felt absurd, a desperate grasp for logic in a situation that defied it.

“Lust doesn’t care about age,” he murmured, his mouth hovering just above mine.

I tilted my head back, my heart hammering against my ribs. Was that all this was? A primal, thoughtless urge? The question clawed its way out of me, sharp and defensive. “So that’s all this is then? Lust?”

The question landed, and something in his expression shifted. The raw, predatory heat in his eyes softened, replaced by something deeper, more complex. He didn't pull away, but the passionate energy between us quieted, becoming something more intimate, more profound.

That silence almost hurt. But then he reached up, fingers brushing a loose strand of hair from my cheek.

“No. It is not just lust. Not for me.” He brushed a stray snowflake from my cheek, his touch gentle before returning his hand to my lower back. “I have been in your dreams, Rielle. I have listened while you spoke of your duty, of your fears for your people. I have seen the strength you carry, the weight of your lineage. I do not see it as a burden. I see it as a part of you.”

His honesty was disarming. He knew me. Not just the dreamer who pulled him into her fantasies, but the woman beneath. But did he also know the other part of what drove me to find him?

He leaned his forehead against mine, his eyes closing for a moment. His breath fogged between us in soft bursts. I should have stepped back. I should have drawn the line between dream and reality more firmly. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

His hands slid up my back, keeping me pressed to the heat of his bare chest. The contrast of warmth and cold made my head spin, and I closed my eyes.

I didn’t know what this was. And I knew I had to ask him about Halven, about his magic in the lake. But I wanted to know what came next.

“I would take all of you,” he whispered, the confession a raw, vulnerable thing as he cupped my cheek. “Your duty, your doubts, your heart. But I would take any part of you that you are willing to give me.”

It wasn’t a line. It wasn’t manipulation. It was quiet truth. The kind that offered no pressure, only permission. He was giving me all the control. And in that moment of surrender, a wild, desperate hope bloomed in my chest. Could this be more than lust?

Did I want more?

Did I even have a choice, because every time I thought of no longer seeing Neir in my dreams, it felt like I would lose a piece of myself, like I would no longer be whole. And in knowing that, I realized I had never been whole before.

I looked up into his gaze, his truth there for me.

“Do you believe in the Moon Fae concept of Soul Halves?” he asked.

I took a sharp breath, the air stalling in my lungs. Was he saying we were soul halves? A concept that a soul split before birth to experience different things, to live life separately, but if they found each other, there was no out running their other half.

I started to shake my head, not because I didn’t believe in soul halves, but because I was destined to marry one Moon Fae males back home.

Except...

A hope I hadn’t dared to entertain before something shifted inside me. “You told me you’re half Moon Fae.”

“Yes.”

He had been in my dreams. Heard my thoughts, spoken with me in that strange half-realm where longing and fear could mingle freely. He knew things about me no one else had bothered to learn. And when he kissed me, it wasn’t like I imagined it would be to kiss a stranger. It was like exhaling something I had been holding for far too long.

I looked up at him, at the solemn tilt of his head, the quiet ache in his eyes.

The pieces of an impossible puzzle clicked into place. “With you… it’s possible. To fulfill my duty.”

My sacred duty, to keep the Moon Fae alive. The one that now tethered me like a chain.

He could be the one. Not a temptation that would lead me from my path, but the path itself. And maybe my soul half.

His eyes didn’t waver. He didn’t confirm any of my words. But he didn’t deny it, either.

The truth was in his eyes, in the way he looked at me, as if he understood the monumental weight of what I was offering. And in his silence, I finally, completely, let go.

I rose on my toes and kissed him, and this time, it was my own choice, my own surrender.

---

The dream draws them together, and this time, neither one pulls away. The moonlight is sacred, the snow is silent, and desire is inevitable. Continue the story in the way that feels right for you:

Closed Door: A tender merging of souls beneath the bridge, felt, not described.

Spicy: Their bodies and magic entwine in the hush of night. Come deeper into the dream.