L I R A
My pulse still hasn’t climbed back into my body by the time I step into the sanctuary. Everyone else looks normal. Chattering, tuning instruments, draping crepe paper like this is just another rehearsal. Not the aftermath of… whatever the hell happened to me in the hallway.
I keep touching my ribs like something’s lodged there. A cold echo. A voice that shouldn’t exist but still curls under my heartbeat like a hook.
Lira.
I swallow hard and pretend it didn’t happen. That it’s not happening now. The sanctuary is warm, but I’m shivering, and my breath fogs just a little too long in the air. No one notices. No one ever notices anything until it’s too late.
I slip into a pew, hugging my arms tight, trying to look like a person who got a normal night’s sleep and not someone who technically almost passed out inside a frost circle that carved my name like a threat.
I keep waiting for Ezra to walk in. He doesn’t. The choir director claps sharply, her rings flashing under the stained glass. “Places! We’re behind schedule.”
Everyone shuffles, but their eyes keep sliding toward me in those quick, sharp looks that feel like paper cuts. Whispering. Always whispering. My name blends with Callen’s and Ezra’s, a messy triangle I never asked for but somehow ended up in the center of like a cautionary tale.
Homecoming banners hang crooked on the walls, half-finished. Someone painted a bell on one of them, and the sight punched the breath out of me. Stupid coincidence. Probably.
A couple of juniors snicker when I pass, and one of them nudges the other, whispering, “Told you she ditched Ezra again.” I pretend I didn’t hear it. My cheeks burn, but I keep my eyes forward, like if I act unaffected, I will be.
Callen isn’t here yet. Ezra isn’t either. The space between their absences feels dangerous. I’m adjusting a stack of sheet music when a cold draft brushes the back of my neck. Not a normal one. This one feels… aware.
I turn, and Callen’s just inside the doorway, shoulders tense, eyes scanning the room like he’s expecting something to strike. When his gaze lands on me, something in his expression cracks open. Not wide, just enough that I see the worry he’s trying to hide. He walks over like he’s approaching the site of an accident. Controlled. Too careful.
“You look pale,” he says quietly. “Paler than usual.”
“I’m fine.” It comes out too fast, too bright. A lie with a shiny bow on top. He doesn’t buy it. His jaw shifts like he’s holding back the real questions. The ones he knows I won’t answer honestly.
“Did you… hear anything today?” he asks. Just the word hear sends a sting through my chest, like the frost letters are still carved under my skin. I shake my head. Another lie. His eyes soften in a way that hurts.
Someone starts warming up on the piano, but the notes sound warped, like they’re underwater. I blink hard, but the distortion doesn’t stop until I look toward the sanctuary windows.
A thin thread of frost crawls along the bottom pane. Just a whisper of white, nothing anyone else would notice unless they were looking directly at it. The frost lifts, trembles, like it’s breathing. My own breath catches.
A black crow sits on the outside ledge, head tilted, watching me with one bright, unblinking eye. Its beak taps the glass once. Twice. A rhythm I don’t recognize but my ribs do.
Callen’s head snaps up, following my stare. His shoulders lock. “Lira,” he murmurs, voice low enough that no one else hears. “Something’s..” The frost twitches, jumps an inch higher, like it’s racing up the glass.
I stand without realizing it, every nerve bracing for something I can’t name but feel coming. The crow taps again. Harder. The frost jerks upward in a jagged streak, too fast, too deliberate, and before I can suck in a full breath, the entire pane spiderwebs with a crack that screams through the sanctuary.
Everyone freezes. There’s this one impossibly still second where nothing moves, not even dust, and then— BOOM.
The glass explodes inward. Shards hit the pews like thrown knives. People scream. Someone drops a violin. I flinch back as a spray of ice-cold air slams into my face, stealing the breath from my mouth.
The frost isn’t just breaking the window. It’s carving through it. Letters half-formed, twitching, like the message is trying to claw its way into the world before the glass gives out completely.
HEA—
The bell tolls. Not from the bell tower. Not from outside. From inside my bones. My knees go weak. The whole sanctuary tilts. I grab the closest pew to stay upright, but the sound swells until it’s not a sound anymore, it’s a force, shaking the breath out of me, rattling my ribs, screaming without a voice.
Kids are running. Crying. The director is shouting something I can’t hear. And the frost reaches for me. Before I can think or scream or breathe, Callen is suddenly there, grabbing my arm and pulling me down behind the nearest pew just as another crack rips through the window frame. Glass knives rain over where my head was a second ago.
We hit the floor hard. My breath knocks out. His hand lands on my back, warm, steadying, too much, not enough and the contact sends a shiver straight through my spine. Not frost. Not curse. Him.
He keeps me pinned low, his body angled over mine like he’s waiting for another blast. His breath brushes my cheek, fast and uneven, and when I look up, his eyes are already on me. Wide. Shaken. Like he felt the same pull I did.
“Why are you always here?” The words tumble out before I can stop them. Too raw. Too honest.
He swallows hard. “Because I hear it.” Something breaks open in my chest, the truth of it, the fear of it, the recognition. He hears it. The toll. The frost. Whatever wants me. And somehow, that scares me more than the shattering glass. Once the ringing in my ears fades, the room explodes into chaos.
People are climbing over pews, tripping over instrument cases, shouting for teachers. Someone cries that they saw a face in the frost. Someone else insists it was a prank, even though the entire front row is dusted in ice like powdered sugar.
The crow is gone. Of course it is. The choir director finally gets control of her voice and starts herding people toward the hallway, her heels slipping on shards of glass. “Everyone out! NOW!”
Callen helps me stand, but only barely, his hand lingers at my elbow like he’s not convinced I won’t collapse again. I’m not convinced either.
A freshman girl stares at me like I’m radioactive. “It cracked right toward her,” she whispers to her friend. “I swear it did.” I turn away before I have to see the look on Callen’s face. Before I have to wonder if he thinks the same thing.
When the director finally clears the sanctuary, Callen steps back so abruptly it startles me. Like he realized all at once how close he was. How close we were. He runs a hand through his hair, eyes darting from the ruined window to me. Back and forth. Like he’s doing math he definitely doesn’t want me seeing.
“You should go home,” he says quietly. Too quietly. “This isn’t… it’s getting worse.”
“No kidding,” I try to joke, but it comes out thin, warped. He doesn’t smile.
For a second, it looks like he’s going to say something else, something that scares him but then he shuts it down and steps back another foot. This time the distance feels like a wall.
“Callen..”
But he’s already turning away, jaw set, shoulders tight, like staying near me is dangerous. For him. For me. For both of us. Ezra should be here. He should’ve come running when the glass blew out. But he didn’t. He wasn’t anywhere. And that absence sits in my chest like a bruise.
By the time I get outside, rehearsal is canceled, police are being called, and everyone’s buzzing like shaken bees. My hands still won’t stop trembling.
My phone buzzes.
Ezra: Where were you?
Not Are you okay? Not Did something happen? Just a question that feels like an accusation. I stare at the screen too long before typing back.
Me: Rehearsal. Why?
A beat. Another.
Ezra: You weren’t there when I checked.
Something cold slides down my spine that has nothing to do with frost. I force myself to keep breathing. I don’t know what he means, checked how? checked where? but the tone is wrong. Off. Tight around the edges.
Me: It got crazy. Window stuff. I left early.
Another pause.
Ezra: Right.
Just that. One word sharp enough to cut. He doesn’t believe me. And he wants me to know he doesn’t. I sit on the stone steps outside the sanctuary, the cold seeping through my jeans, the sky bruised purple overhead. People keep streaming past me, their voices blurred like static.
I should go home. I should call someone. I should do anything except sit here shaking. My phone buzzes again, but it’s not a text this time. The screen flickers, just once like the backlight hiccups. Then frost creeps along the inside of the glass.
I choke on a breath, staring as a thin white line curves into the beginning of a shape. Not quite a letter. Not quite nothing. The air around me drops a full ten degrees in a heartbeat. No one else reacts.
I press my thumb to the screen like I can wipe it away, but the frost thickens under the glass, like it’s growing from the phone’s bones outward. A single pulse hits my ribs. Then another. Then, very faint, like a memory pressed into ice. I hear it.
The bell. Not far away. Not above. Inside me. Calling again.