Chapter 12 Cold Mornings And Colder Captains
Dara's alarm goes off at six-fifteen and she has never once in her life considered using headphones.
"Sorry," she says, sitting straight up and reaching for her textbook like a person who was designed to be conscious before seven AM.
"No you're not," I reply into my pillow.
"Ability Theory quiz," she says.
I sit up.
The quiz I have known about since Monday and prepared for thoroughly becomes completely different information at six-fifteen on a cold grey Friday when the radiator is making that sound again, the one that suggests it's considering working but hasn't emotionally committed to the decision yet.
I drag myself up, pull on clothes, splash cold water on my face, and look at myself in the bathroom mirror.
My right hand is warm. Steady and low, like something that's been burning long enough to stop flickering and settle into a permanent state. It's been like this since the forest four days ago and it hasn't faded once, not during sleep, not during classes, not during any of the approximately forty moments per day where I've pressed it flat against something cold trying to make it stop.
It doesn't stop.
I think about that the whole walk to the dining hall and arrive at no useful conclusions.
Breakfast is quiet this early, half the tables empty, the smell of coffee and something with cinnamon doing the necessary work of making consciousness feel worthwhile. I get a mug and a plate and find a window seat and open my Ability Theory notes and I'm doing genuinely well, genuinely focused, for about eight full minutes.
Then Rhydan walks in with Cassian and two other Wolves and the room does the thing it always does, that small unconscious rearrangement, people sitting slightly straighter, conversations tilting, the specific atmospheric shift of someone entering a space they dominate without trying.
He doesn't look at my table.
I don't look at his.
We are both remarkably busy with our respective coffees and it is very mature and very convincing and Dara sees through it in approximately four seconds.
"You're re-reading the same paragraph," she says.
"I'm absorbing it thoroughly," I reply.
She makes a small sound and goes back to her notes.
The quiz is at nine in the circular Theory room and I arrive two minutes early and settle into my usual seat and uncap my pen and I'm writing the date at the top of the page when someone drops into the seat beside me.
Wrong energy for Petra. Wrong energy for Dara.
I look up.
Zael Morrow is sitting next to me with a calm half-smile and a notebook that belongs to someone who does the reading every single time without exception. He's been in this class since day one and I've noticed him the way you notice someone who doesn't need a room to know they're in it... quiet and self-contained, comfortable in his own skin in a way that looks genuinely effortless rather than performed.
Dragon shifter. Third year transfer. European, Petra told me, though she wasn't sure from where exactly.
"You're Veyra," he says.
"And you're Zael," I reply.
His smile settles into something a degree warmer. "The dual-nature chapter," he says quietly. "Wednesday. I heard you and Rhydan talking in the library."
I look at him carefully. "That was a private conversation."
"Dragon hearing," he says, with a slight apologetic tilt of his head. "Not intentional. I was at the next shelf." He pauses. "I know that chapter well. If you have questions, I can help. Better than a textbook can."
"Why?" I ask directly.
He considers the question, which I appreciate, the pause of someone actually thinking rather than performing thought.
"Because dragon shifters carry historical knowledge of the ability you might be waking up into," he says quietly. "And because I think you deserve to understand what's happening to you from someone who isn't complicated about it."
Someone who isn't complicated about it.
Professor Elara calls the class to order before I can respond to that, and the quiz begins, and I write my answers with half my brain and think about Zael's last sentence with the other half.
Someone who isn't Rhydan.
I don't glance across the room to where Rhydan is sitting.
I feel him look over twice during the quiz anyway, that particular cold-window pressure change that I've apparently developed a calibrated awareness of whether I want one or not.
After class, in the corridor, Zael falls into step beside me naturally.
"There's something in the east archive I want to show you," he says. "It's directly relevant to what's happening to you. Thirty minutes, that's all."
I have notes to review, a conversation with Rhydan scheduled for after morning classes, and seventeen other things requiring attention.
"Sure," I say.
We're halfway down the corridor when that pressure change happens at the back of my neck, familiar and specific, and I don't turn around.
Zael glances back once, calmly, and something shifts in his expression, subtle and interested, like a piece of information landing cleanly in a category he already had prepared for it.
"Someone you know?" he asks.
"Complicated," I reply.
"Yes," he says, in a tone that means considerably more than the word itself. "I thought so."
Behind us, Rhydan's footsteps slow.
Then stop.