(Luna) Sleep doesn’t come.
I lie in bed for what feels like hours, staring at the ceiling of my room in Spiritwalker Den.
Guilt over ignoring Jace’s text tangles up with the memory of Kael’s hand on my shoulder blade, both of them sitting heavy and restless under my skin.
My fingers pick at the edge of the blanket.
My jaw stays tight.
The buzzing hasn’t gone away since I got here, that constant hum just beneath the surface of my body, and tonight it feels louder than usual, like something inside me is pacing, testing the boundaries of a cage it hasn’t yet decided to break.
Eventually I give up on sleep entirely and pull on a sweater, slipping out of the Den and down toward the Moonpool.
The halls are empty this late, lit only by the faint blue glow of enchanted sconces, and my footsteps feel too loud against the silence, like I’m intruding on something the castle only shows itself at night.
The water sits still and silver under the night sky, exactly as beautiful as it looked from my window that first night.
I sit down at the edge of it, letting my bare feet dangle just above the surface.
For a while, it almost works.
My shoulders loosen.
My breath comes slower, the hum in my chest quieting a little, soothed by the stillness of the water and the cool mountain air.
Then I hear the guitar.
It’s faint at first, drifting from somewhere near the Emberwolf Den courtyard, low and haunting, notes bending together in a way that doesn’t sound quite like any music I’ve heard before.
There’s an ache to it, something old and unresolved threaded through every chord.
I find myself standing before I decide to, drawn toward the sound without really meaning to follow it, my bare feet silent against the cold stone path.
I find him sitting on a low stone wall at the edge of the courtyard, a battered acoustic guitar balanced across his knee, singing something soft under his breath in a language I don’t recognize.
Black hair falls past his ears, and even in the dim moonlight I can make out a thin scar running from his temple down to his jaw, pale against his skin like something long healed but never forgotten.
His eyes are dark, but they catch the light like embers when he lifts his head and finds me standing there.
He stops playing.
His fingers still against the strings.
He doesn’t startle, doesn’t scramble to explain himself the way I half expect.
He just looks at me, head tilting slightly, something curious in his expression, and something older underneath the curiosity.
Sadder.
Like he’s been waiting for someone to find him here, without quite letting himself hope it would happen.
“You’re the Eclipse girl,” he says, his voice quiet and matter-of-fact, no question in it at all.
“Everyone keeps calling me that,” I say, flat, the words worn thin from repetition.
“What do you want to be called?” he asks, curious, leaning forward slightly.
The question catches me off guard, simple as it is.
Nobody’s asked me that since I got here.
Not Seraphina, not Kael, not even Sage.
“Luna,” I say, and my shoulders drop an inch as the word leaves my mouth.
Something shifts in his face when I say it, the sadness lifting for a moment, transforming him completely.
For a second he isn’t some mysterious boy with a guitar and a scar and eyes like embers.
He’s just a boy, smiling, and the smile makes him look younger, lighter, like a weight has briefly lifted off him too.
“Luna,” he repeats, warm, testing the shape of it.
He sets the guitar down carefully beside him, like it matters to him, like it’s the only thing he has left that’s truly his.
“I’m Caspian.
I’m new too.” “New how?” I ask.
“Arrived a few weeks before you did,” he says, easy, patting the stone wall beside him in invitation.
After a moment’s hesitation I sit, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him despite the cold night air.
“My pack was in the Smoky Mountains.
Shadow wolves destroyed it about six months ago.
I’m the only one who made it out.
Seraphina took me in after.” The words land heavy between us.
I don’t know what to say to something that big, so I just say, “I’m sorry,” quiet, meaning it more than the words can carry.
“Everyone is,” he says, shrugging, though the motion doesn’t quite hide how much the words cost him, a small tremor betraying the careful composure he’s built around himself.
“It gets easier to hear.
Doesn’t make it less true.” “What Den?” I ask.
“Emberwolf.
Fire affinity,” he says, glancing down at his own hands like he’s not entirely sure what to make of them, turning them over slowly as if searching for proof of something he can’t quite see.
“Though I’m quieter than most fire wolves.
They expect us all to burn loud.
I never have.” “Is that a bad thing?” I ask.
“Being quiet?” “No,” he says, steady, a quiet certainty settling into his expression that feels earned rather than assumed.
“Fire doesn’t have to be loud.
Sometimes it’s the ember that lasts longer than the blaze.
Loud burns fast and dies.
Quiet just keeps going.” I don’t have an answer for that.
Something about the way he says it settles into my chest and stays there, low and warm, entirely unlike anything I’ve felt since I got here.
It isn’t the electric charge that ran through me in the library with Kael, sharp and immediate and a little dangerous.
It isn’t the grounding warmth I’ve always felt with Jace either, familiar and safe like coming home.
This feels older than both, quieter, like something that has been waiting a long time to be noticed.
It’s something else.
Deeper.
Like a tuning fork struck somewhere behind my ribs, a note ringing quiet and true that I don’t have a name for yet, but that I recognize all the same, the way you recognize a song you didn’t know you’d memorized.
“You feel that?” Caspian asks, quiet, watching me with an expression that says he felt it too, whatever it is, and doesn’t understand it any better than I do.
There’s no fear in his face, only a kind of wonder, careful and searching.
“I don’t know what it is,” I admit, my hands pressing flat against the cold stone beneath me.
“Neither do I,” he says, picking the guitar back up, fingers resting against the strings without playing anything yet, his dark eyes still fixed on mine, patient in a way that makes the silence between us feel less empty.
“Maybe we’ll figure it out together.” I don’t answer right away.
I just sit there beside him at the edge of the Moonpool, the strange resonance still humming quiet in my chest.
The buzzing under my skin finally goes still, replaced by something that feels, impossibly, almost like peace.
High above the courtyard, behind a tower window that catches the moonlight the way still water does, someone watches the two of them sitting together at the edge of the Moonpool.
Violet eyes catch the light and hold it, steady, unblinking, fixed on the boy with the guitar and the girl beside him like they’re the only two people left in the world worth watching.
*Good*, the watcher thinks.
*Let her find comfort where it’s easiest to find.
It will make everything after so much simpler.* The guitar starts up again below, soft and low.
The watcher’s mouth curves slowly into a smile.
Not a warm one.
Not exactly a cruel one either.
The kind of smile that belongs to someone who has just watched a very old plan begin to move exactly where it was always meant to go.
Give me more motivation!