L UK E

I don’t feel the rain until I stop moving, it’s pouring hard enough to sting, but my head’s louder than the storm. Every time I blink, I see them, her face tilted up, his shadow bent toward her, frost spreading under their feet like veins. Tied to you. The words keep looping. By the time I make it across the courtyard, I’m soaked through my hood dripping. Students hurry past with umbrellas and curfew excuses, the rest of the world keeps turning, like nobody else saw what I saw.

Inside the dorm wing, the lights hum too bright, flickering in a pattern that makes no sense. My shoes leave wet prints on the tile and I keep telling myself to just get to my room, to let her explain tomorrow, but I can’t. I can still hear the way she said his name, the way she looked at him like he was gravity.

She’s there when I round the corner, standing under one of the cracked hallway lamps near the east stairwell, hair damp, scarf loose, staring at nothing. Maybe she’s waiting for him, or maybe she’s waiting for me.

“Elle.”

She turns fast, eyes wide like I startled her, for a second we just stare at each other, the space between us buzzing. There’s a faint hum under the floor, the same sound I felt in the frost earlier.

I take a breath that burns going down. “We need to talk.”

Her voice is quiet. “Luke, not now..”

“No, now.” It comes out sharper than I mean, I step closer, every word scraping out of my chest. “How long have you known? about him, about this.”

“I don’t..”

“Don’t what?” My laugh’s bitter. “Don’t lie? don’t get caught?”

She flinches and the hallway light flickers once, then steadies again. She looks tired, smaller somehow, like the night wrung her dry. “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.” My voice cracks on the last word. “You’ve been hiding whatever that was, whatever he is since before Ravenshade, haven’t you?”

Her throat works. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?” I gesture down the hall toward where he stood hours ago. “Because what I saw didn’t look random, Elle, and it looked like you’ve been living a whole other life I never even got to touch.”

She shakes her head, eyes wet. “I never wanted you mixed up in this.”

“Mixed up? I was already in it, the second you let me care about you.”

Her breath shudders. “Luke..”

“No.” I step in close enough that our reflections blur in the cracked glass of the door beside us. “He said your mother tied you to him. Is that true?” She hesitates, and that’s all the answer I need.

“God.” I back up, dragging a hand over my face. “So it’s been him this whole time, since before I even..” My throat closes. “So he’s been in this your whole life?”

She reaches for me then, soft, pleading. “Luke, please..”

Her fingers brush my sleeve, and I flinch before I can stop myself. It’s instinct, like touching a live wire, and the air between us twists, it’s dense, sharp, carrying that raw, metallic tang of blood. The light overhead flickers once, twice and then holds, too bright, I can see my breath hanging in the air, hers tangled with it, thin curls of fog weaving together until I can’t tell whose is whose.

She whispers, “I didn’t choose this.”

“Didn’t you?” My voice drops, rough. “Because it sure looked like you did.”

Something like hurt flashes in her eyes. “You think I wanted to be tied to him? To any of this?”

“I think you let me believe I mattered when I didn’t.”

Her shoulders shake. “That’s not true.”

“Then tell me what is.”

She doesn’t, her hand lowers, trembling, and the cold sharpens, biting through my hoodie straight into my skin. For a second, I think the light’s dimming, but no, it’s frost crawling up the wall, glittering pale blue in the cracks.

“Elle…”

She stares at her hands, whispering like she’s afraid of her own breath. “It’s reacting, it always does when..”

“When you feel something,” I finish for her, and my pulse spikes. “When you’re angry or scared.”

Her eyes lift to mine, wide and glassy. “When I hurt people I care about.”

Something tightens in my chest, pulling hard enough to steal my air. The hum under the floor deepens, and my reflection in the cracked glass trembles like it’s shivering.

“I never meant to hurt you,” she says.

“Yeah,” I breathe, stepping back. “But you did.”

The frost between us spreads like a line drawn in ice, and the light overhead bursts with a pop. Glass sprinkles the floor like frost, and  for a second, the whole hallway drops into darkness. The backup lamps along the wall flicker to life, stuttering in and out, throwing her face in slices of gold and shadow. The vibration beneath the floor sharpens, slow, steady, almost breathing on its own. 

“Luke,” she whispers, stepping back. “It’s not me..”

But it is, I can see the frost crawling up her wrist, tracing veins like silver threads. Every time her heartbeat stutters, the lights pulse with it, and the whole place is responding to her. I press my hand to the wall to steady myself and jerk it back immediately. It’s freezing. “What the hell is happening?”

She shakes her head hard. “It’s reacting to you, to us.. to what we feel.”

That hits somewhere deep and ugly. “So what, every fight, every time we get too close, the whole school freezes over?”

She doesn’t answer, and the hum shifts higher, into something almost like a whisper, and I swear I hear my own name in it, and the sound curls under my ribs, warm and wrong. I take a step toward her even though every instinct says to run. “You said you didn’t choose this.”

Her breath fogs. “I didn’t.”

“Then who did?”

Her eyes flick toward the east end of the hall, where the corridor bends toward the old wing. The light there isn’t just flickering anymore, it’s pulsing, and steady like a heartbeat. I follow her stare, and for the first time I really see how the frost moves. It isn’t spreading randomly, it’s leading, where thin spirals curving east, pulling toward the sealed doors like a compass gone mad.

I remember every weird moment from the last few weeks, the frost in the library, the cold spot in the café window, the ice under our feet during practice and all of it pointed this way. I just didn’t want to see it.

I look back at her. “It’s been dragging you there the whole time, hasn’t it?” She doesn’t speak, but her silence is enough.

“Elle, you have to tell someone, maybe Draven,  Maelor. Anyone who knows what this is.”

“They already know,” she says softly. “They just pretend they don’t.”

My throat goes dry. “You mean they’re letting this happen?”

Her eyes find mine, desperate. “If they acknowledge it, it spreads faster but denial keeps it sleeping.”

“Sleeping?” I let out a shaky laugh. “This isn’t sleeping, Elle. It’s wide awake.”

The hum deepens again, for a moment it sounds like thunder, then like a heartbeat that isn’t ours. I can feel it under my shoes, under my skin, then she steps forward, close enough that the cold from her seeps through the air and into me. “Please, Luke, go back to your dorm.”

“No.” I shake my head. “You keep pushing me out, and I keep coming back, and maybe that’s on me, but I’m not walking away again.”

Her face crumples. “If you stay, it’ll use you.”

I almost laughed. “It already is.”

For half a second, the light steadies, in that brief calm, she looks like the girl I grew up with, hair damp, scarf falling loose, eyes full of something that could almost be hope. I want to reach for her again, but the air between us crackles, warning me off. A metallic groan cuts through the hallway before I can say anything else, where the sound rolls through the floor, heavy and final, like iron shifting in its sleep.

Then the bell goes off, not the regular curfew chime but the deep one, the emergency alarm that hasn’t rung in years. It hits so loud my bones vibrate with it. The walls shudder. Elle gasps and grabs my arm, fingers ice-cold, the frost on her wrist flares brighter, a pulse of blue light racing toward the east wing.

“Luke, run.”

I can’t move, my eyes lock on the far end of the corridor, to the double doors to the east wing, the ones every teacher says are sealed, chained, and forbidden, start to tremble. At first it’s just a shake, like from the bell’s vibration, but then the bolts slide free on their own, and one by one, the metal screams.

“Elle..”

The doors slam open, and a gust of air rushes out so cold it burns and the lamps explode in a shower of sparks. The floor cracks beneath us, frost bursting through the seams like veins, and in that chaos, I hear it again, her name whispered through the dark, the same word that chased me out of that corridor hours ago. Elowen.

Elle’s grip tightens, her eyes go white-bright, reflecting the frostlight pouring from the open doors, and then everything goes silent. The bell stops mid-ring, the air holds its breath and somewhere in the dark, something steps forward.