A S H R I E L

The mirrors haven’t stopped humming since last night. Even now, walking the narrow hall outside the seamstress wing, I can feel it, the echo of her fear still vibrating in the glass. My reflection drags half a breath behind me. It always does when the Rift wants to remind me who I belong to.

The frost hasn’t melted either. Pale frost coils along the wood where she’d been, shrinking back as my hand passes. It knows what I am. It retreats.

I shouldn’t have gone to her. I tell myself that every time. But the bond pulls like gravity, one heartbeat out of rhythm and the world bends. She thinks I appear by choice. I wish that were true.

A prefect crosses the hall, gives me a nervous nod. “You’re expected in Literature, Duskborne. Headmistress’s schedule.”
Of course. Draven’s way of keeping the Guardian visible, tame, part of the décor.

I glance once more at the frost mark ghosting the mirror, one perfect spiral, broken through the center like a cracked eye, then turn toward the classroom.

The Literature hall smells of ink and candle smoke. Windows fogged, desks crooked from centuries of students scratching secrets into them. I take the back row because it’s the farthest from her, though the bond doesn’t care about distance.

Elle sits two rows ahead, scarf wound tight, shoulders drawn in like she’s trying to hide the tremor still riding through her veins. Luke’s beside her, close enough that his arm brushes hers every time he shifts. He means to keep her steady. I almost believe he can.

Professor Vance clears his throat and announces today’s lesson, love poems. The word lands heavier than it should. Maybe because the air itself still aches from last night’s whisper: Choose.

Juniper Vale is first. She stands, notebook shaking a little, and reads about a lover waiting on the edge of a frozen lake for someone who never returns. Her voice cracks halfway through, but she keeps reading. The class is polite. They don’t notice the temperature drop until the last line.

A thin lace of frost flowers across her desk, delicate as breath on glass. Gasps rise.

Vance barely glances up. “Thank you, Miss Vale. Passion’s best left on the page.” He waves a hand, and the frost disappears like it was never there. Classic Ravenshade, see something strange, pretend you didn’t.

Juniper blushes crimson and sits down. I can feel Elle stiffen, watching the spot where the frost was. Her pulse beats through the bond, uneven.

Vance asks for another volunteer. Silence stretches too long. I should stay quiet. I know better, but the poem sitting folded in my pocket, the one I shouldn’t still carry, is older than any in their anthologies. The words aren’t mine, yet every time I read them I remember what I was made to do, what I’m forbidden to feel.

Before I can stop myself, I speak. “I’ll read.” Heads turn. Juniper’s eyes go wide, already scribbling notes; Luke stiffens. Elle doesn’t move.

Vance hesitates only a heartbeat before nodding. “Mr. Duskborne,” he says, voice tight around the name. “Very well.”

The room shifts. A few students glance at each other, whispering it under their breath like it tastes strange. First time anyone’s said it out loud here. I pretend it doesn’t matter, but it does.

I unfold the parchment. The ink’s almost gone, gray and ghosted by time, but I don’t need the words. They remember me.

“This isn’t from the syllabus,” I warn. “It’s… older.”

Vance gives a short nod. “Proceed.”

The first line burns on my tongue, low and rough, not quite human. The air answers instantly, lights flicker, mirrors tremble. Frost creeps along the edges of the desks like it’s listening.

Elle’s breath fogs the air. She doesn’t look back, but I feel her attention like a pulse against my ribs. I keep reading.

The first words leave me like breath against glass.  Old vowels, older promises. Language that once bound Guardians to Seers, written before either side remembered how to love without bleeding for it.

The parchment shakes faintly in my hand. The letters glow for a heartbeat, then fade, reappearing in the air between us, silver and cold. Each line hangs there, suspended, drifting like snowflakes that refuse to fall.

Around me the class stills. Juniper’s pen stops mid-scratch. Luke’s arm tenses where it rests on Elle’s desk. The only sound left is my voice, echoing against stone.

I will stand where the world splits open,
and I will not turn away.

The mirrors along the wall tremble. Frost climbs their edges in spirals, the same pattern that bloomed on her gown last night. The bond hums until my chest aches.

Elle’s head tilts slightly, as if she hears a note no one else can. Her pulse, hers, not mine, beats in my throat.

I force the next line out.

Let ruin come; let heaven fall..

A breath catches from somewhere in the room. Maybe hers. Maybe mine. The frost flares bright enough to paint every desk in blue light.

Still, I remain.

The last word shivers through the air, and the spirals answer, curling into perfect script before they begin to drift downward, tiny flakes of frozen ink.

Luke moves first. The scrape of his chair breaks the silence. He doesn’t speak, just reaches for Elle’s hand like he can pull her out of whatever has her trapped. But when his fingers brush hers, a shock of white frost blooms across the desk.

He jerks back with a hiss. The cold bites.  Elle startles, eyes wide, like she’s only just realized she’d been holding her breath.

“Elle,” he whispers. “Hey. Look at me.”

She can’t. She’s staring at the air where the poem still flickers, at the words melting away one by one. Her lashes are rimmed with frost, and the scarf around her throat glitters like it’s woven from ice.

Luke’s warmth hits the edge of the bond and stings. I feel it too, a burn under my skin, jealousy twisting like a blade I can’t pull free. He’s everything I’m not, living heat, steady heartbeat, human.

The boy wants to save her with touch.  I’ve already damned her by existing.

Professor Vance clears his throat sharply. “Mr. Hart, sit down.”
Luke’s jaw works, but he obeys.

I don’t stop reading. If I do, the frost will drop and shatter. If I keep going, maybe it will listen. Maybe she will.

The next line comes from nowhere,  not from my mouth, not from the parchment. A second voice threads through mine, soft and female, close enough that the hairs at the nape of my neck rise.

Not him.

The sound slides through the classroom like a draft under a door. Students flinch, eyes darting to the windows, but no one can tell where it came from.

Elle hears it. I feel the jolt tear through her. Her hand lifts halfway off the desk, caught between fight and surrender.

The frost reacts before I can, spirals twisting faster, forming a barrier around her chair, bright and alive. It’s not attacking. It’s shielding.

A protective ward.
From what? From me?

“Not him,” the whisper repeats, thinner now, dissolving into the crackle of freezing air.

The spirals tighten once, then collapse into silence. Every light in the room cuts out at the same time.

My vision swims with afterimages, her outline lit in faint blue, breath fogging the dark. The bond hums under my skin, sharper now, like it’s alive and angry.

The quiet stretches too long. Then Vance breaks it with a flick of his lighter. The tiny flame wobbles in his shaking hand. “That’s enough,” he says. “We’re finished.”

No one moves. Frost still clings to the walls, whispering against the stone like tiny, desperate wings.

Vance takes one look at the spirals encircling Elle’s desk, then lifts a silver bell from his lectern. One soft ring, clear as glass. The air compresses. Every trace of frost hisses out, erased as if it never happened.

Students blink, dazed. A few murmur that they must have imagined it. I know better. Elle does too, her fingers hover above the desk’s edge, trembling.

“Back to your seats,” Vance says. “We read for meaning, not for theatrics.” He glances at me, and something tightens behind his eyes. “And you, Mr. Duskborne, will please return the text to archives when we’re finished. Headmistress’s orders.”

There it is again, Draven’s control, tidy and absolute. I nod once, throat raw.

As Vance turns away, I catch the smallest reflection in the mirror behind him, Draven herself, standing in the hall’s threshold, eyes like cold coins. Watching.

She mouths one word I can’t mistake: Necessary.

The class exhales all at once. Juniper scribbles furiously, her pen scratching the rhythm the frost had made. “It matched the meter,” she mutters. “Like the poem was…alive.”

No one answers.

Luke stares straight ahead, jaw clenched, knuckles white around his pen. He hasn’t looked at me since the frost vanished. His anger burns so hot I can almost feel it through the bond.

Elle sits utterly still. Only the faint shimmer on her scarf moves, tiny crystals catching the candlelight. She lifts a hand to touch them, and I see the moment she realizes she can’t feel the warmth of her own skin. Her lips part in confusion. She rubs harder. Nothing.

The frost is inside her now, answering every flicker of emotion.
I’ve done this.

My chair creaks when I stand. Nobody dares breathe as I walk down the aisle between desks. I stop beside her, not close enough to touch, never that, but close enough for her to hear when I say, “It should fade.”

Her eyes find mine, wide and frightened. “Will it?”

“I don’t know.”

A heartbeat passes, hers, then mine, tangled. Then Vance’s voice snaps from the front: “Mr. Duskborne, you’ll finish the piece.”

I face the class again, though the room is already half in shadow. The parchment trembles once in my hand, then stills. The last stanza waits, as it always has.

I don’t look at anyone else when I speak.

Even if it breaks the world,
I will not turn away.

The words hit the air like struck bells. The mirrors ripple, light bending in slow waves. Frost petals fall from the ceiling, soft as snow, landing on her desk, her hair, her open hand.

No one breathes.

The spirals flare one last time, tracing a single sentence across the far wall before fading: The vow remembers.

My throat closes. I can feel her gaze on me, sharp as a blade drawn across glass. The bond hums until it hurts, until I can’t tell where I end and she begins.

I drop the parchment. It disintegrates before it hits the floor, ash, frost, nothing.

Professor Vance whispers something I don’t catch. Luke shoves back his chair.  Juniper’s pen snaps. And Elle.. Elle just sits there, eyes bright with unshed tears, frost blooming like stars along her scarf.

The final bell tolls.

She doesn’t move. Neither do I. The frost between us cracks once, thin as a heartbeat.

Then the mirror behind her fractures, a single hairline split running straight down the center.