E L L E

The sound hits first, like the whole ballroom inhales at once and then punches the air out of my lungs. I stumble backward, the frost under my shoes cracking so loud it echoes off the chandeliers. For a second I honestly think something exploded behind me. Then I look up.

Ashriel. Not the version I’ve been pretending is just a boy with quiet eyes and bad habits. Not the one who stands in shadows like he’s afraid of his own outline. This is, God, I don’t even have a word for it.

Wings. Actual wings, metallic and black and wrong in a way that makes my pulse skip, but beautiful in a way that cracks something open in my chest. They unfurl behind him like they were never meant to be hidden, like the whole room is too small to hold them.

My ears are ringing. My eyes burn. All I can think is:
He chose me. And this is what it cost him.

Someone screams. A sharp, panicked, throat-tearing sound that ricochets through the hall. Another person drops their drink; glass shatters across marble. The chandeliers are still swaying from the impact of his wings, metal clinking like they’re trying to warn us.

Bodies push back from us in a wave. Dresses dragging. Shoes skidding. I hear someone gasp, “Oh my god!” and then another voice, higher, breaking:

“He’s not human!”

The words slice straight through me. They’re not even directed at me but my stomach folds in on itself anyway. Teachers shout orders no one listens to. A group of first-years crush themselves against the wall, eyes locked on Ashriel like he’s something out of the Rift. Someone crosses themselves. Someone else whispers, “This is an omen,” and it feels like all of them are looking at me too, like I’m part of whatever horrible sign they think this is.

The frost around my feet pulses outward. I don’t mean for it to. Ashriel doesn’t look triumphant or powerful or anything you’d expect from someone who just… sprouted wings like a myth stepping out of a storybook.

He looks like he’s breaking. His shoulders shake under the weight of them, each breath ragged like the air’s too heavy. There are sigils across his back, burning black-silver, pulsing in time with the beat of his wings. Every pulse looks like it hurts. Like it steals something from him.

I don’t think anyone else notices. They’re too busy running or staring or being terrified. But I see it. I see all of it. The way his jaw clenches. The way he tries to stand taller like he’s fine, like this isn’t tearing him apart from the inside out.

My throat closes up. I want to reach for him so badly it’s stupid. My hand even twitches forward before I catch myself. God. He did this for me. And it’s killing him in pieces.

The Hollowed don’t scream like humans. Their heads jerk at angles no neck should survive, eyes glinting with something hungry and wrong. They stumble backward at first, away from Ashriel, away from the force of his wings but then their attention snaps back to me.

All of them. At once. It’s like a spotlight hits my chest. My sternum throbs, my pulse hammering way too loud in my own ears. The frost around me rises again, brittle and sharp. One Hollowed tilts its head and whispers, “Elle…”  Except it’s not just my name. It’s my mother’s cadence. That soft, fragile curl of sound I haven’t heard since I was a kid. Twisted now. Broken. Coming out of a throat that shouldn’t know how to shape it.

My knees nearly buckle. Another one reaches a shaking hand toward me, fingers trembling like it remembers me. Like it recognizes something in my blood. I don’t know what they see. I don’t want to know.

“Elle!”

Luke shoves through the panicked students, sliding across the frost-slick marble. His face is flushed, breath sharp like he sprinted here the second he heard screaming. For a moment, just a tiny, painful moment, I’m relieved. He looks at me like he always does, like I’m the only thing he cares about in the room.

Then he sees Ashriel. He sees the wings. He sees Ashriel standing between me and monsters like something ancient and terrifying. Luke reaches for me, but the frost reacts before he even touches me.

A wall of cold slams up between us, so fast he nearly falls backward. The frost doesn’t just block him. It shoves him away, like it knows him, like it’s choosing who can come close to me and who can’t.

His face cracks. He looks at his hand like it betrayed him.
“Elle… why.. what is happening?” I don’t have an answer. I’m not sure I could speak even if I did. The hum comes back all at once. Not faint like before. Not a warning under my skin. This time it’s a shock, like someone plugs a wire straight into my heartbeat.

I gasp and press both hands over my chest. It doesn’t help. The sound isn’t outside. It’s not the chandeliers, or the Hollowed, or even the Rift. It’s me. It’s in me.

Every beat of my heart sends another wave of cold through my ribs. My vision jolts, colors blurring at the edges. The ground dips beneath me like gravity isn’t sure what to do with me anymore.

My palm starts burning. Actually burning. Heat pushes through the glove like it’s made of paper. I try to hide my hand behind my dress, but the light is already bleeding through the fabric in thin, bright lines, blue-white, sharp, alive.

“Ash…” My voice breaks. I don’t even know what I’m asking. He turns toward me like he can feel it too. Like it’s hitting him through the air between us. He moves before I can make a sound, just one sweep of his arm and one massive wing folding down around me like a wall.

Not touching me. Just… enclosing me. Creating this shadowed space where the screams sound farther away and the cold feels sharper because it has nowhere else to go.

The wing shouldn’t feel warm, metal shouldn’t, but it does. A slow, steady heat radiates from it, like his body is fighting the cold pouring off mine. I press back instinctively, trying to stay upright, and my hand brushes the base of the wing.

Ashriel shudders. Not a small flinch. A full-body shake, like the touch went straight through bone. He drags in a breath, sharp and broken, as if he’s trying to keep himself anchored in this form.

“Ash… I’m sorry..” I start, but he shakes his head once, eyes locked on mine.

“Don’t,” he murmurs. Like the word costs him something. “Don’t apologize. I’m here. I’m not leaving you.” Something in my chest loosens and tightens at the same time. I don’t know how that’s possible. The hum spikes, then fractures.

A crack ripples through the air, sharp enough that the chandeliers sway again. Everyone in the hall freezes, like something presses down on all of us at once. My ears ring. My knees go weak. Then the voice hits. Not a normal voice. Not anything shaped by a human mouth.  It’s too layered, too old, the sound scraping along the inside of my skull.

“Guardian… bound…”

My stomach drops. The room wavers. The voice has that same almost-soft curl, the same cadence my mother used when she used to call my name through hallways. Except this one sounds like it’s being dragged through broken glass.

Ashriel staggers, wings jerking upward. His fingers dig into the marble like he needs the ground to stay real beneath him. The Hollowed collapse onto their knees, their faces twitching with something like worship. Or fear. Or both.

The word bound pulses again. In my bones. In my bloodstream. Like a chain hooking into both of us at once. The burning in my hand explodes.

I scream before I even know I’m doing it. My glove tears open like it’s been cut from the inside, and blue-white light bursts out in a violent, branching pattern. The sigil on my palm, something I’ve been pretending isn’t changing shifts under my skin, lines curling, fracturing, rearranging.

It’s like the light is trying to carve its way out of me. Frost detonates outward in a ring. It slams into the marble, races across the floor, climbs the legs of overturned tables. Students shriek and trip over each other trying to get away. Chairs freeze solid in an instant, coated in glassy white.

Ashriel shouts my name, but it sounds far away. Or maybe I’m the one drifting. The Hollowed jerk backward, limbs folding in on themselves. Their faces twist toward the sigil like it’s the sun and they’re terrified of burning alive.

Luke tries to step forward again, God, he really tries but the frost shoves him back a second time, harder than before. His face breaks open in fear. And something else. Something that looks a lot like heartbreak. I clutch my burning palm to my chest, but the light only gets brighter. Hotter. More demanding. My vision whites out at the edges. My legs stop holding me.

“Ash..” The word scratches out of me. “Help me..” Ashriel lunges forward, wings flaring wide, a blur of black and silver cutting through the frost-thick air. His face isn’t calm anymore. It’s fear, real fear shining through every line of him.

Not fear of the Hollowed. Not fear of being seen. Fear for me. I want to reach for him. I try. But my fingers won’t move the way I want them to. My arm feels too heavy. My vision tilts sideways and the whole room ripples, like I’m underwater and the world is too far above to touch.

The light from my palm spikes, one last vicious pulse that rips through my ribs and knocks the breath out of me. Somewhere, I hear glass shatter. Somewhere, someone screams. Everything inside me pulls tight, like a string snapping.

And then the ground rushes up. The last thing I see is Ashriel’s face, terrified and furious and desperate, reaching for me with both hands. Then everything goes dark.