I unpacked slowly when I arrived to our quad in the Goldspire. Not because I had much to put away—I never do—but because there was something about returning that made everything feel thinner, like the world had worn itself out over break and had not fully sewn its seams back together.

The others talked around me, voices carrying through the quad’s common room as they settled in. In the room across from mine, Ardorion flopped dramatically onto his bed like he was staging a fire-themed performance piece. Shara moved with calm purpose, always neat, always intentional. Garnexis had already tossed her bag against the wall and was looking around like she’d lost something.

I smoothed the corner of my blanket. The threads there were frayed in the shape of a leaf I’d dreamt about two nights before. A sign, maybe. Or nothing at all.

Ardorion stood and tossed his cloak onto his bed and said, “We should check on Aster. Maybe her face will finally crack if we ask the right question.”

Shara gave him a look, one that said tone it down, but even she seemed to agree. The air around us still carried the silence of Halven’s absence. It had followed us back like fog on our boots.

Even though Halven and I dated, each of my quadmates had their own relationship with the Air Fae. He was truly remarkable, born of resilience during the Galestone Wars before he found peace here. It wasn’t fair if he’d made it all this way, just to have something terrible happen to him.

“Maybe we should go,” Shara said gently. Halven had been her best friend. She turned to me. “Rielle, would you want to? I mean, you and Halven were close once.”

As close as one could be without living in another’s skin.

I still remembered all of his sweet kisses. So soft from a boy who’d live through a war.

I hadn’t told them the full truth yet, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. Not about how it ended, not about what I’d seen in my dreams during the weeks we’d been separated after the break. Some things stay quieter when buried.

“I’m not sure.” My voice felt like a memory.

But I went.

Goldspire Tower held all the second-years, and Halven’s quad was just across the hall. The same stone arches, the same high ceilings and carved door frames. Aster was already there. She stood near the window, motionless and cold, framed in pale light like a figure inside a painting. Her skin shimmered faintly in the morning air, and her pale blue hair clung to her shoulders like frost clings to glass but it moved like running water. Her eyes, deep violet pools, watched us with something unreadable.

She didn’t stop us from entering; she said nothing at all.

After Garnexis and Shara, Ardorion crossed the threshold like a flame looking for dry tinder. He stopped in the doorframe to lean against it, with me out in the hall still, looking at his black silk shirt. But I waited patiently for his posturing to end.

“Well, look who decided to keep the icicle throne warm while the rest of us were actually worried,” he said.

“And look who decided to speak without thinking. Again.” Aster’s voice floated to me in the hallway.

Ardorion’s back tensed. “You know, for someone who’s supposed to be calm and collected, you’re awfully quick with the frostbite.”

“Forgive me if I’m not impressed by theatrics in leather and flame.” A chill hung in the air with Aster’s words.

Sighing, I pushed Ardorion from behind. Not that I really had the strength to move him. Being part human and also part Moon Fae, the smallest of the fae, I’d have to use magic to actually move the Fire Fae male, but my push alerted him to the fact that I was stuck behind him, and he finally moved inside the quad’s main room.

“Oh, come on,” Ardorion said. “Just admit you missed me.”

Aster rolled her eyes. “I missed the silence more.”

“Forgive me if I thought maybe you’d stopped pretending you didn’t care.”

“I care,” she said evenly. “I just don’t shout about it like a Summer Fae with something to prove.”

Their voices rose, sarcasm layered over tension, over something even older than that. Heat and frost colliding as they always did. The words didn’t matter as much as the weight behind them.

While they argued, Shara drifted toward Halven’s room. She moved softly, reverently, like she didn’t want to wake something.

My gaze followed her while I stayed near the door. She stopped. Bent down. Picked up a scrap of water-warped paper from beneath the bed.

“Guys,” she said, holding it up. “I found something.”

Everyone gathered around, and Shara read the smeared ink aloud. The words were panicked, fragmented. Something about an Emberglyph. Something about voices. And then the line that stopped my breath: “Do not trust—” followed by a wash of water damage.

The silence that followed felt heavier than any argument.

“We should copy this,” Garnexis said. “Create one for all of us.”

Before anyone could reply, someone new entered the quad and with a booming voice, yelled, “Ardorion!”

“Elio!” Ardorion shouted.

I turned as the Stone Dragon burst through the room like a gust of summer wind, warm and confident and loud. His orange-red hair curled wild as always, his smile blinding. He slapped Ardorion’s shoulder with the kind of affection that made the whole room shift.

“Hey, strangers,” he said, looking around at the rest of us.

Elio was one of Halven and Aster’s quadmates.

Ardorion and Elio caught up fast, too fast. The energy in the room crackled now, not just with tension but with life. It was overwhelming. I took a step back and let their voices wash over me.

Elio told us Lo, their last quadmate, had gone to the Spring Quadrant to speak with Halven’s adoptive parents. Still no word. Still no sign of anything.

Aster finally spoke again, low and tight. “I’ve brought this to Lady Isa. Told her it’s not natural, this disappearance. She brushed me off.”

Our eyes met for only a moment, but I saw it. The edge of something breaking. The fear she would never admit.

I watched her, and I missed him. Halven. The way he used to place his hand on my back without needing a reason. The way he used to whisper into my dreams.

I pressed my fingertips into my palm. I didn’t want to remember.

When we left the quad, I didn’t follow the others right away.

The room had felt frozen in a way that wasn’t just time. Something about it had sunk its weight behind my ribs.

Whatever had happened to Halven... it hadn’t started when he disappeared.

It had started before.

I couldn’t say how I knew. But I knew.

That night, sleep came softly, like fog curling in from the lake. I didn’t fight it. I never do. Dreams have always come to me easily. Too easily, some say for me being only half Moon Fae.

In the first, Wintermere met me.

Halven stood at the edge of the lake, barefoot on the ice. The lake was frozen in perfect stillness, reflecting stars that looked wrong, too many, too close, as if they had slipped through some crack in the sky.

He had his back to me, shoulders stiff. I called his name. He didn’t turn. Fog drifted in tendrils around his ankles. He was speaking but I couldn’t catch the words in the wind.

When I reached him, the air grew colder, sharp enough to sting. He finally looked over his shoulder, and his eyes were blank. Not empty, but echoing. Like something else had taken root behind them. His mouth opened, and I could barely hear him.

“You should not follow.”

His voice was soft, but the sound cracked like ice underfoot. Before I could speak, the lake around us shattered.

I woke gasping, tears streaking down my face, the corner of my pillow rimmed in frost.

I wiped it away with the sleeve of my sleep shirt and curled beneath my blanket again.

Sleep found me fast. It always does, when it wants to. When it makes me Moon Walk.

The second dream felt different. Heavier.

I was back in Halven’s arms, but younger, the way it had been our first year at the academy. We were laughing, breathless, pressed together beneath my blankets in my dorm. His lips found mine like they used to, tender, then greedy. The way only someone who knows your secrets can kiss you.

But it didn’t last.

His skin paled. The rhythm of his breath changed. His hair darkened but a wash of blue shimmered along his strands. His arms grew stronger. Broader. I blinked, and he was no longer Halven.

I didn’t know who he was.

But I did.

I’d dreamed about him before.

Our limbs entwined just as they had when he was still Halven. I moved to pull away, but his large hands found my hips and drew me back down onto him. In the darkness under the blanket, I caught the barest hint of a smile, the rest of his face in shadow.

The faint scent of leather filled my senses as I collapsed onto his chest. I kissed him, pulled by a yearning I’d never known. One hand tangled in my hair, the other pressing me as close as humanly possible.

Then the scene changed.

We stood by the lake again. Wintermere.

I felt drawn to him even though I still could not clearly see his face, but I knew his voice before he spoke.

“You pulled me into your dream again,” he said, tilting his head. “You’re persistent.”

I stepped back, startled by the depth of his tone, low, smooth, with a strange warmth under the chill.

He turned away and knelt by the frozen earth, dragging a fingertip across the frost to draw a sigil. I gasped.

I recognized it.

The same one from Halven’s torn journal page.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“An Emberglyph.” He said nothing more.

Even with his face still hidden in shadows, I knew that he looked up at me, almost curious. Then he dragged his foot across the glyph, erasing it completely.

He stood slowly and stepped forward, close enough that I felt the cold leave him in waves.

“You shouldn’t be dreaming about me like this,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Not when you’re the one who started it.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but I couldn’t. His fingers brushed mine, and my whole body felt like it was melting through the snow.

He leaned forward, close enough to kiss me.

“I want to finish what you started,” he murmured.

And then I woke up.

Not in my bed.

In the kitchen.

And my mouth was full with the last bite of something sweet. I blinked at the empty teacup in my hand. The light from the wall sconce glowed a soft gold. My hand trembled slightly as I set the cup down.

Sleepwalking. Again.

The dream still clung to me like mist to skin.

I remembered the glyph the stranger had drawn. The one he also erased.

I found a crumpled parchment and a smudged chalk pen someone had left near the spice jars. I began sketching the Emberglyph from memory, quickly before it could dissolve.

Just as I finished, my elbow knocked over a half-full mug of warmed cider.

It spilled straight across the parchment.

The ink bled instantly. The glyph blurred. A familiar theme.

Still, I had written enough to remember.

I folded the damp note and tucked it into my robe.

Something told me I was going to need it.