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.”