The snow didn't just fall; it sieged.
By noon, the entire campus of Northcrest University was buried under three feet of gray, heavy slush that smelled faintly of ozone and old pennies. The magic in the air was thick, static-charged, and oppressive.
Dean Marrow had issued a campus-wide alert:Magical disturbance in the atmosphere. All students are to remain in their dorms until further notice. Stay warm. Stay safe. Stay put.
"He's flexing," Rhett grumbled, pacing the living room of the penthouse. He was wearing nothing but gray sweatpants that hung low on his hips, and every time he passed the window, he growled at the storm. "He's showing us he controls the weather now."
"He doesn't control it," Lucien said from the floor, where he was setting up a board game. "He suppressed the local weather wards. This is just... unfiltered Pacific Northwest chaos, amplified by his Null field."
"It's cold," Kai said, shivering slightly as he walked in from the kitchen with a tray of steaming mugs. He was wearing a thickcable-knit sweater that looked big enough to swallow him whole. "Even with the heating runes at max, I can feel the chill in my bones."
I was curled up on the massive velvet sofa, wrapped in three blankets and wearing Rhett's oversized hoodie. "It's the Null energy," I said. "It feels like... like the world is holding its breath."
Kai set the tray down on the coffee table. "Hot cocoa. Spiked with a little warming tonic for the nerves."
"You're a saint," I said, reaching for a mug.
Rhett finally stopped pacing and flopped down onto the sofa beside me, his heavy arm immediately going around my shoulders. He radiated heat like a furnace. "I hate being trapped," he muttered into my hair. "Makes me feel like a caged animal."
"You are a caged animal," I teased, leaning into him. "A very large, grumpy wolf."
He huffed, but I felt him relax slightly. "Whatever. What are we playing?"
"Settlers of Catan," Lucien said, looking up with a wicked glint in his violet eyes. "Magical Edition."
Rhett clenched his jaw. "No. Absolutely not. Last time we played that, you shadow-stepped the robber piece and Kai grew actual wheat on the board."
"It was a valid strategy," Kai said innocently, blowing on his cocoa.
"It ruined the felt," Rhett argued.
"We can play Scrabble?" I suggested.
"Rhett spells 'growl' and 'bite' for every word," Lucien drawled.
"Those are valid words!" Rhett defended.
We settled on Monopoly, which was universally acknowledged as a terrible idea for maintaining harmony, but we were bored and trapped.
Two hours later, Kai owned half the board, Lucien was embezzling from the bank using shadow magic, Rhett was in jail (and refusing to pay bail on principle), and I was barely hanging on with Baltic Avenue and a utility company.
"This is rigged," Rhett growled, rolling doubles for the third time and landing back in jail. "The dice are cursed."
"They're standard plastic dice, Rhett," Kai said, counting his stack of colorful money. "You just have bad karma."
"I'm resetting the board," Rhett threatened.
"If you flip the table," Lucien said calmly, "I will teleport your favorite chew toy into the void."
We burst out laughing. The tension that had been hanging over us—the threat of Marrow, the Registry, the impending war—seemed to melt away in the warmth of the firelight.
"Okay," I said, stretching my legs out over Rhett's lap. "I fold. Kai wins. Capitalist overlord."
Kai grinned, gathering the pieces. "I'll treat you all to dinner with my winnings. Oh wait, it's fake money."
"We have real food," Rhett said. "I made stew. It's in the slow cooker."
Of course he did. Because Rhett, despite looking like a brooding bad boy who subsisted on raw meat and whiskey, was actually the biggest provider in the pack.
