Noa.
I startle. He’s there at the edge of the platform, standing with a winded Tsvetan, who is sporting a blooming black eye and clutching his elbow. Match won, Noa’s arms are crossed, eyes dark with warning.
Gavrail releases me. He offers a hand to help me up, giving aslight bow of his head as he does so—mocking or respectful, I can’t tell.
I step off the platform and walk to Noa’s side. My heart races as adrenaline courses through me. Noa stands next to me but doesn’t touch me as he glares at Gavrail from across the ring.
Behind us, Headmaster Thorne raises his hand for silence, ready to call the next match.
I’m flushed in a way that makes my skin feel too tight, too sensitive. I glance up at Noa. His jaw is clenched, posture forcibly relaxed even though the tension in his arms suggests otherwise. I press my hand to his. He glances down—relief and something darker flickering across his face—then turns toward the next challenge.
My skin is still charged with the memory of Gavrail’s strength against me, Noa’s silent warning echoing in my head. I draw a steadying breath, as if trying to make my traitorous body forget what it’s feeling. The biological betrayals I refuse to acknowledge.
I hate that even now, I still seem to know the shape of him.
CHAPTER 28
Some remnants of magick are not lost; they merely change form—into scars, into relics, into reckoning. Waiting to be discovered once more.
—Foundations of Arcanarchaeology, Vol. I
It takes Finn the entire holiday break to recover. All of us take turns visiting him in the infirmary beside the Administration building.
Christmas break at Whittaker is quiet in the way snow makes everything quiet. Headmaster Thorne doesn’t do holidays—no campus leave without special permission, no school-hosted parties. Not officially.
Gods help us if anyone tries to celebrate something that isn’t a duel or a near-death experience.
I leave my dorm with my mother’s voice still in my ear—I miss you, sweetheart—and a tightness in my throat. It’s my first Christmas without my father, and the guilt of leaving mymother to spend it alone tugs hard enough to make my chest ache.
Noa is waiting at the bottom of the stairs like he belongs there. Like winter can’t touch him. It must be some unfair fire-wielder advantage—sun-warm skin in the dead of December, turquoise eyes bright as if he’s carrying his own light.
They soften when he sees me. He doesn’t ask what my mother said or how I’m feeling. But he knows. Somehow he knows. Instead, he just hooks his hand around mine and squeezes—steady, warm, grounding—then walks with me across the quad like it’s the simplest thing in the world to hold me together.
We already exchanged gifts yesterday. I gave him a small box of personally modified potions, salves, and tinctures—for burns, bruises, and whatever stupid heroics he insists on doing. He gave me a signed book by my favorite alchemist and potion master, Dr. Sage Davenport, like he’d reached into my head and pulled out the one thing I didn’t realize I needed.
The infirmary is the only place on campus that dares to look like Christmas. The air smells like mint and antiseptic, sharp with sterility, but Madame Nahira Ching—the school nurse, a light Magick, and Professor Ching’s wife—has threaded warmth into it anyway. A small pine sits near the front desk, its branches hung with tiny glass charms that catch her magick and scatter it in soft prisms across the walls. Above the beds, an intricate lattice of light magick drifts in slow loops—constellations stitched between gold and silver streamers, gentle as breath.
Rows of crisp white beds stretch wall to wall. A fountain in the corner trickles over smooth stone in a steady cadence that barely muffles the low groans of the injured. Nearly every bed is filled now—the aftermath of the Vikhrostrum “showcase.”
Professor Ching’s words drift back to me.
Spectacle has a habit of becoming consequence.
Finn is propped up against a mound of pillows like a reluctantprisoner, arm in a sling, ribs wrapped, burns fading from angry red to tender pink. He looks better than he did before.
Rozsen strides in first and drops a paper holiday crown onto his head like she’s knighting him.
Finn squints up at her. “If you’ve come to mock me, at least bring tribute.”
“I did.” Rozsen produces a wrapped bundle with a flourish. “Stolen bread pudding from the dining hall. Don’t ask how.”
Ryan follows with two steaming cups. “Hot cocoa,” he says, offering one.
Finn eyes the cup suspiciously.
“We didn’t poison it,” Rozsen says, then tilts her head. “Well…Ididn’t poison it.”
Before Finn can respond, she throws herself onto the side of his bed like it belongs to her. Finn makes a pained sound and awkwardly tries to make space that doesn’t exist. His gaze flicks to her face, then away—but his mouth betrays him, softening at the corners.
