The loop had aged us again.

  I could feel it in the way my robes sat heavier on my shoulders, in the quiet ache behind my knees after drills I didn't remember attending, in the lowered timbre of Cael's voice as he recited evening prayers from across the hall.

  Older. Old enough for what I needed. Not so old that the indoctrination had fully set in.

  Because tonight, I didn't go to the library.

  Tonight, I waited.

  I knew Cael's schedule by now—when he finished drills, when he went to the reflection chamber to pray, when he lingered too long outside the study hall with something aching behind his eyes. I knew when he went to check on me and Seraphine, when he hovered outside our door without knocking, torn between duty and devotion.

  And I knew when he walked down the east hallway after curfew, alone and tired, feeling like the world was asking too much of him.

  I waited in the east corridor, curled at the base of a window alcove, pretending to read by the flickering mplight. The halls were silent, lined with the soft echo of distant footsteps and the low, perpetual hum of Tower wards.

  When Cael rounded the corner and saw me, he stopped short like he had walked into a wall.

  "Cire?"

  His hair was damp from evening drills. His colr was askew.

  "You're out after curfew." His voice wavered. "You shouldn't be."

  I lifted my head, letting him see the steadiness in my eyes. "I know."

  He stared. Something in his expression flickered, uneasy. "Is something wrong? Are you hurt?"

  Only inside, I wanted to say. Only in all the pces the Tower taught you to ignore.

  Instead, I stood.

  He blinked, startled as I stepped close and wrapped my arms around him in a soft, deliberate hug.

  It was barely more than the lean of two bodies, but he froze as if the act itself were sacrilege. As if no one had touched him with simple kindness in years. His hands hovered in the air, trembling between pushing me away and pulling me in. A small, helpless sound slipped from him, the kind he would never allow himself while awake.

  "I don't want to be alone tonight," I whispered.

  The words were simple. Gentle. And devastating.

  When I drew back, his resolve was already shaking.

  His breath hitched hard enough that his hand tightened reflexively on the strap of his training satchel. "Cire, I can't... I shouldn't..."

  I didn't reach for him again. I let the sudden cold where my warmth had been speak for me.

  I simply held his gaze the way he'd held Seraphine's—quiet and earnest—except I didn't force myself to look away when affection pushed against doctrine.

  His resolve wavered like a candle in the wind.

  He whispered my name again—small, terrified, pleading.

  Then the dream shifted.

  Time buckled the way it always did when the memory wanted to skip ahead: the mps flickered, the hallway bowed, and the next breath of air tasted like a new hour.

  The dormitory curtain dropped back into pce behind us.

  My robe hung half off my shoulder, belt missing completely. Cael stood a few feet away, his hair mussed, training whites twisted, face flushed a horrified shade of red. His hands hovered uselessly in the air, his gaze fixed anywhere but on me, as if still wrestling with a choice he had already made.

  The dream had filled in the missing hours clumsily—as if it knew the outline of something intimate but not the nguage of it. A suggestion of closeness, the faint warmth of shared breath, and the rustle of fabric the dream couldn't quite recreate. It refused to render the scene pinly because Seraphine's mind had no terms for what it was implying.

  Yet it affected Cael all the same.

  "This didn't happen," he whispered, his shoulders curling inward. "This—I don't—Cire, I... I don't know what came over me."

  I reached out, letting my voice tremble just slightly. "It's okay. I won't tell anyone."

  He flinched like I'd struck him. "That's not the point. I'm bound by oath. I'm supposed to protect you, not—"

  His voice cracked on the st word.

  I stifled a ugh. I knew exactly what his "protection" would turn into.

  "Cael," I said, "this time, let me protect you."

  A faint tremor of wards hummed under the floor—right on schedule.

  Surprise inspection.

  Footsteps thundered down the hall. The dormitory curtain snapped open, and light sigils fred at the hands of three padins. Their gazes swept the alcove, taking in the scene: the disordered bnkets, the state of our robes, Cael's exposed throat where his colr had come undone.

  Silence fell like a bde.

  "Dormitory misconduct," one said coldly.

  "Curfew viotion," added the other.

  Cael stumbled forward, hands raised as if to shield me. "Wait—it's not—she didn't—"

  A padin stopped him. "And you. Fraternizing with your charges. That's grounds for expulsion."

  "Initiate Cael, was it? Shame. You had a promising future ahead of you."

  "It wasn't Cael." I stood, holding my hands in front of him. "It was me."

  All eyes snapped to me. I swallowed, steeling myself.

  "I seduced him."

  The words left my mouth soft, steady, and completely unshakable.

  "What did you say, apprentice?"

  Cael's face went white. "Cire, no. That's not—you didn't—please—"

  A low murmur rippled between them.

  "Influence magic?"

  "Has to be. There's no other way."

  "Even initiates are trained to resist temptation."

  Cael made a choked noise. "I—I wanted—it wasn't her—"

  But they ignored him, shadows passing behind their eyes.

  "Influence magic... in these halls..."

  I met their wary gazes, miming panic on my face.

  "I didn't mean to," I said quickly. "I just desired... and the magic answered before I could stop it."

  A ripple of unease passed through all four of them.

  Cael made a strangled noise. "Cire—you can't—you don't have that kind of magic—"

  A padin took a step toward me, light pulsing in his palm. "Apprentice. What spell did you use? Show me. Now."

  I drew a glyph in the air—unfamiliar, heretical. The padins exchanged looks, eyes wide.

  A thin white wisp lofted from my hands, trembling like it was afraid of being seen.

  A tired smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. After forty loops, out of all the dozens of spells I'd studied, I'd only managed to learn one:

  Seraphine's original spell.

  "I was struggling," I whispered, hanging my head. "I thought it was the spells we were taught. So I tried coming up with my own."

  Cael stared at me, stricken—the look of someone who had just understood a terrible, beautiful lie.

  The air in the room chilled.

  "Unauthorized spellcraft. Manipution of a padin's will. Only one kind of magic is capable."

  "Demon magic."

  "The punishment... is summary execution."

  All I did was pnt the suggestion. Their dogma did the rest.

  Cael lunged toward me. "No! Don't—don't you dare. She didn't... you can't—"

  "Quiet, boy. We will release you from her spell."

  One padin seized him, dragging him back. His nails scraped uselessly against the stone floor.

  "Cire! Cire, look at me!"

  I didn't turn. I only smiled weakly.

  This was a gift.

  Something to break his conviction. Something to change him for just one loop.

  And destroy the moment the nightmare was protecting.

  My magic.

  I finally addressed him, voice cracking. "The Tower's judgment is absolute, remember? You swore to uphold that ideal... even now."

  Cael's eyes went wide. His breath hitched like he was drowning.

  The padins kicked my feet out from under me, bdes whispering free of their scabbards.

  "Keep Seraphine safe. For me, Cael..."

  He screamed my name as the bde fell.

  A fre of white light. A snap of judgment.

  Pain like fire splitting the dream open.

  And the nightmare cracked apart like gss struck by a hammer.

  Seraphine's eyes flew open.

  The forest light filtered through the canopy. She inhaled sharply, her vision blurry, her breath ragged, her hands clutching at the roots beneath her as if the world were sliding sideways. She jolted upright—and Ysel caught her shoulders before she could fall.

  "Slowly, child. You are safe now. You've survived the trial."

  Seraphine gasped for air, blinking back tears. She reached up to her neck. The dark lines tracing her veins were gone—the pain along with it.

  Her eyes darted wildly across the clearing. The details of the nightmare were still seared in her mind.

  "Where is she?" she demanded.

  Her gaze dropped.

  Cire y beside her on the moss, eyes closed, breath shallow, utterly unmoving.

  Velka lifted her head from where she crouched near the Great Tree, pupils dited and unfocused. "Mmm. Warm one... still dreaming..."

  Ysel's expression tightened.

  Seraphine seized her arm. "Cire is still inside? She didn't follow me out?"

  Ysel pressed her palm to Seraphine's forehead, checking the lingering aura.

  "She did not emerge with you," Ysel murmured. "The dream released only one mind."

  Seraphine shook her head violently.

  Velka's lips curved into something unsettling. "Anchors cut wrong... break," she murmured. "Threads snap... then they tangle on the deepest fear."

  Seraphine went still. Her hands rose to her mouth as realization hit with the force of a crushing wave.

  "She freed me... and chained herself in my pce."

  Ysel's silence was confirmation.

  Seraphine's breath hitched. Then she surged to her feet. "Pull her out! Now!"

  The Great Tree's roots pulsed faintly, a slow heartbeat she couldn't match with her own.

  No response came. Her dream was a faint memory now, gone from the edges.

  Which meant—

  Velka's voice drifted like a half-feral lulby. "Warm one is not... in the red one's fear anymore."

  Ysel's hand tightened around Seraphine's wrist. "Then what nightmare has her?"

  Velka smiled ckadaisically.

  "Her own."

  Warmth reached me before anything else.

  Not the damp heat of a forest clearing. Not the sharp burn of spell residue.

  Just... bnkets. Soft, familiar bnkets I hadn't felt in years.

  I breathed in.

  Clean cotton. Laundry detergent my mother used to buy in bulk. A faint trace of vender from the sachets she'd tuck in my drawers no matter how many times I told her I didn't care.

  My chest tightened.

  This was impossible.

  I cracked my eyes open.

  My old bedroom stared back at me—not the Tower, not the Great Tree, not the nightmare corridor where Seraphine broke again and again.

  The posters. Mark Hamill. Christopher Reeve.The snted morning sun through blinds I always forgot to dust.The half-colpsed pile of clothes on the chair.My chipped desk mp.The stuffed dolphin I pretended I didn't sleep with past age ten.The red digits on my old Panasonic arm clock that blinked 7:04 AM, still stuck an hour ahead because I'd never bothered to fix daylight savings.

  A breath left me in a shaky sigh.

  A knock sounded at the door—three taps, nothing urgent.

  "Rise and shine, ????!" my mother called, voice gravelly with sleep but already bracing for the day. "You have tutoring in an hour!"

  Tutoring. That used to be my whole weekend.

  Footsteps padded closer.

  Another voice chimed in, cheerful and certain as sunrise.

  "Don't let him crawl back under the covers," my father said. "He'll y there until lunch."

  A spike of old irritation ran through me—familiar as bone. Love wrapped tight around expectation, so tight it squeezed.

  This is a dream, I reminded myself. Just a fragment. Don't get sucked in.

  But it was the third knock—lighter, confident, and achingly familiar—that froze me solid.

  "Morning," said a voice I hadn't heard since before I'd become Cire. Warm. Teasing. Too bright. "You gonna sleep through my whole shift?"

  My breath stopped.

  Jae.

  I sat bolt upright—too fast—and nearly tangled myself in the bnkets.

  He leaned against my doorway with the same easy posture he always had, one hand in his pocket, the other brushing his hair back in a move that used to short-circuit my teenage brain.

  He hadn't changed at all.

  "Wow," he said, grinning. "You look like you got hit by a bus. Rough night?"

  I swallowed hard.

  Jae. My old babysitter. His parents and mine were friends from church.

  College-aged and all but mythical to the awkward disaster I used to be.

  Tall. Confident. Kind. The first person I ever had a crush on.

  I'd forgotten how much I used to look up to him.

  I turned, half expecting cold stone under my feet.

  Carpet. My old carpet.

  My legs felt wrong. Too long, too heavy—the weight of a boy's body I hadn't worn in years.

  My heart thudded.

  Jae stepped into the room and ruffled my hair exactly the way he used to—the kind of casual, affectionate gesture that once lit up whole days.

  "You okay?" he asked. His smile softened when I didn't answer. "You're staring like you've seen a ghost."

  "I..." My throat felt tight. "I didn't think you'd be here."

  He blinked, amused. "Where else would I be? Your parents begged me to cover a few hours this morning."

  Of course they did. They always did.

  I was too much work for them on my own.

  He nudged my shoulder lightly. "Come on. If you don't get moving, your mom's going to drag me into lecturing you again."

  A huff of a ugh escaped me before I could help it—a reflex from a life I thought I'd buried.

  But underneath the warmth, something else flickered: wrongness. A soft tightening at the edges of the room.

  A sense that I wasn't supposed to be here. That this wasn't memory but a shape cut from it. A facsimile. A lie with a pulse.

  I curled my fingers into the bnkets, grounding myself.

  "Jae," I whispered. "This... none of this is real."

  He tilted his head. "What are you talking about?"

  His confusion was perfect. Too perfect.

  And the warmth of the room suddenly felt like a hand closing around my ribs.

  Because the gentlest nightmares are the ones that start with love.

  And without asking, this one had wrapped me in it.