Astrid
The apartment was freezing by the time I made it back from combat training, cold enough that I checked the windows before I’d even set my bag down, certain someone had left one cracked open.
"Heating’s dead," Xander announced from the couch, wrapped in a blanket like a disgruntled burrito. "Reed already checked."
Reed emerged from the hallway a moment later, phone in hand. "Maintenance can’t come until tomorrow. Something’s broken in the main line."
I sighed and started mentally mapping out whether the library stayed open late enough to sleep in a corner somewhere.
"My room’s fine," Xander offered, entirely too cheerful about it. "Reed’s room is the only one big enough, though, since the vent problem hit the guest room too."
I understood exactly where this was going a half second before Reed confirmed it.
"Where am I supposed to sleep?" I asked, already dreading the answer.
"My room," Reed said, like it was the most obvious solution in the world.
I assumed he was joking. He wasn’t.
"I’ll take the couch," I said immediately.
"The couch is closest to the broken vent. It’ll be worse than sleeping outside."
"I don’t mind."
Reed studied me for a moment, taking in whatever exhaustion I clearly wasn’t hiding as well as I thought. "You’re terrible at pretending you’re fine."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
He didn’t explain.
Xander leaned in from the doorway, grinning. "This is the best entertainment I’ve had all week."
"Stay out of it," I snapped, cheeks warm despite the cold.
Eventually Reed offered a version I could almost live with. "Take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor."
I refused that too, mostly out of principle, until we landed somewhere in the middle. We’d share the bed. Opposite sides. No further discussion required.
That night, I stepped into his room feeling like I was crossing into territory that didn’t belong to me. It was quiet and orderly in a way that felt distinctly Reed, a stack of books arranged by height on the desk, training gear folded neatly in the corner, a jacket thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, the one visible sign that he wasn’t entirely as controlled as he liked to seem.
I climbed into bed and kept as much distance between us as the mattress allowed, staring up at the ceiling like it owed me an explanation for how I’d ended up here.
This is ridiculous, I told myself. It’s just a bed.
Except I was aware of everything. His breathing, slow and even beside me. The faint warmth radiating off him despite the space between us. Every small shift of the mattress whenever either of us moved.
"Are you uncomfortable?" Reed asked into the dark.
"No," I said, too fast.
"You’re holding your breath."
I hadn’t realized I was. I let it out slowly, unsettled that he’d noticed something I hadn’t caught myself doing.
Time passed. Sleep refused to come. My mind kept circling back to the journal, to that frantic handwriting and the phrase that had lodged itself somewhere behind my ribs. The blood beneath the moon. I didn’t understand what it meant, only that it made the ground beneath everything I thought I knew feel slightly less solid.
"Still awake?" Reed asked.
"Yes."
"What’s keeping you up?"
"I don’t like being here," I admitted, which was true in a way that let me avoid the whole truth.
He was quiet for a moment. "Because of the royal family?"
I froze.
"I just don’t trust powerful people," I said, too quickly, my voice tighter than I meant it to sound.
"Because they’ve hurt you?"
I didn’t answer. For one dangerous second, the truth sat right at the edge of my mouth, ready to spill out into the dark where he couldn’t even see my face. I swallowed it back down.
"Powerful people destroy ordinary lives without ever facing consequences," I said instead. "I learned that a long time ago."
Reed didn’t push. "You don’t have to tell me."
I looked over at him, surprised. Most people demanded explanations from me the second I hesitated. He simply let the silence sit there, undemanding.
"Why do you care?" I asked.
"I don’t like unnecessary risks," he said, the same restrained answer he’d given before, though it landed differently this time, heavier somehow.
"That’s not an answer," I said, a small smile tugging at my mouth despite everything.
He looked at me in the dark. "Maybe I don’t have one."
Something in my chest shifted at that, quiet and unfamiliar.
"You don’t like being watched," I said after a moment, testing the observation out loud. "Or having people assume they know what you’re thinking."
He didn’t confirm it outright, but something in his silence told me I’d landed close enough.
"You’re not as difficult to understand as you think," I said.
"You think you understand me?"
I hesitated. "A little."
A small, rare smile crossed his face, barely visible in the low light. "That’s more than most people manage."
The conversation faded naturally after that, exhaustion finally catching up with me. "Sleep," Reed said quietly, and I turned onto my side, facing away from him, my body too tired to argue anymore.
I was asleep within minutes, too exhausted to keep fighting it.
I don’t remember falling asleep. I don’t remember moving, either, though I must have, because when I woke sometime near dawn, gray light just beginning to find its way through the curtains, I wasn’t on my side of the bed anymore.
My head was resting against Reed’s shoulder. My hand had somehow found its way into a loose fist against the front of his shirt, holding on like I’d meant to.
I froze, certain he was still asleep, certain I could ease away before he ever noticed.
Then I felt him go still beneath me, already awake, already aware of exactly where I was.
Neither of us moved for a long moment. I braced myself for him to shift away, to make some quiet comment that would let us both pretend this hadn’t happened.
He didn’t.
His hand had drifted near my hair at some point in the night, close enough that I could feel the warmth of it without him actually touching me, and when I glanced up, half expecting irritation, I found something else in his expression instead. Something careful. Something that looked a great deal like he hadn’t minded at all.
"Morning," he said quietly, his voice rougher than usual.
I sat up too fast, putting distance between us that suddenly felt harder to reach for than it should have. "Sorry. I didn’t mean to—"
"It’s fine," he said, and the way he said it, calm and unhurried, told me he meant exactly that.
I busied myself untangling from the blankets, my face far too warm for a room this cold, painfully aware that for the first time since I’d arrived at Moonshade, I’d slept through an entire night without a single nightmare finding me.
I didn’t understand what that meant yet. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
But some quiet, treacherous part of me already suspected it had everything to do with the boy sitting beside me, watching me gather myself together with an expression I couldn’t quite read, and didn’t trust myself to look at for too long.