Chapter 7: Locked in the Dark

The iron door didn’t just slam; it fused into the stone casing with a finality that vibrated through the marrow of Mira’s bones.

"Dammit, Dorian, hold the light!" Mira barked, her fingers already scrabbling against the freezing surface of the door. 

There was no handle on this side. There was no keyhole. There was only the smooth, mocking expanse of enchanted Crownglass, reinforced by the very dampness of the archives beneath the North Wing. 

Behind her, the faint blue glow of Dorian’s starlight-sphere flickered. She heard the sharp, rhythmic intake of his breath—a sound she’d learned to recognize as his specific brand of controlled panic. 

"The light is stable, Mira. It is the door that is the problem." His voice was low, vibrating with a tectonic friction. He stepped closer, the hem of his heavy wool coat brushing against her shoulder. "The seal is ancient. It responds to the weight of the library above. We shouldn’t have come down here after the moonset shift."

Mira turned, her back to the cold metal. The air in the archive vault was already thinning, smelling of dust, old parchment, and the sharp, ozonic tang of Dorian’s ice magic. "We wouldn’t have had to come down here at all if your registrar hadn’t 'misplaced' the merger scrolls. I need those signatures, Dorian. I need them before the Council arrives at dawn."

"I told you, they weren't misplaced. They were archived for security." Dorian raised the light. It caught the sharp angle of his jaw and the devastatingly pale blue of his eyes. He looked like an ice sculpture carved by a madman. "Perhaps if your fire-mages didn't treat every administrative building like a bonfire pit, I wouldn’t feel the need to hide our most precious treaties in the depths of the earth."

Mira felt the heat rising in her throat, a physical coal of resentment she’d been carrying since the schools merged. "Oh, forgive us for having a pulse. At least my students don't need a map and a thermal blanket to find their own hearts."

She snapped her fingers. A spark of bright, orange-red flame licked across her knuckles, casting long, dancing shadows against the rows of lead-bound books. The heat hit the frost-nipped air, creating a swirl of mist between them. 

"Stop that," Dorian snapped, reaching out. His hand caught her wrist. His skin was unnervingly cold, but the pressure of his grip was firm, grounding. "You’re consuming the oxygen. If we’re trapped here until the morning shift, we need to breathe more than we need to be angry."

Mira looked down at where his hand met her skin. The contrast was a bruise-like violet in the overlapping light of their magic. She should have pulled away. Instead, she felt the frantic beat of her own pulse against his palm. 

"I can melt through the hinges," she whispered, though the bravado felt brittle.

"You'll crack the stone and collapse the ceiling on our heads," Dorian countered, but he didn't let go. His thumb brushed, almost imperceptibly, against the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. "These walls are reinforced with glacial salt. It eats heat. You’ll drain yourself to nothing before you even leave a mark."

He was right. She knew he was right, which only fueled the simmering frustration in her gut. She yanked her arm back, the absence of his touch feeling suddenly, sharply cold. 

"Fine. Then we wait. But I’m not sitting on the floor." Mira marched toward the center of the vault, where a heavy oak table sat laden with crates of uncataloged scrolls. She cleared a space with a violent sweep of her hand, the parchment crinkling like dry leaves. 

Dorian followed, the glow of his orb following him like a loyal hound. He leaned against the opposite end of the table, crossing his arms over his chest. In the confined space, his presence felt massive, an inevitability she couldn't outrun. 

Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy as the dust. 

"Why do you hate this so much?" Dorian asked quietly. The usual edge of condescension was gone, replaced by a raw, jagged curiosity. 

Mira stared at a spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling. "I don't hate the merger, Dorian. I hate the erasure. You want us to be like you. Quiet. Orderly. Frozen in place. You look at my students and you see chaos, but I see life."

"I see people who don't understand that power requires a vessel," he said, stepping into the circle of her heat. "You think I’m cold because I want to be? Ice isn't about the absence of feeling, Mira. It’s about the preservation of it. If I let go—even for a second—everything I’ve built shatters."

"Then shatter it," Mira challenged, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous velvet. She stood up, her boots clicking against the stone as she bridged the gap between them. "I’ve seen the way you look at the flames in the Great Hall. You don’t want to put them out. You want to touch them."

Dorian’s eyes darkened, the pupils blowing wide until the blue was just a thin, trembling rim. He didn't move. He didn't even seem to breathe. 

"You are a dangerous woman, Mira Thorne," he murmured. 

"And you’re a liar, Dorian Vance."

She reached out, her fingers hovering just inches from the silver clasp of his cloak. The air between them sizzled, the temperature fluctuating wildly—hot, cold, a storm front trapped in a six-foot space. 

Dorian moved then. It wasn't the slow, calculated movement of a chancellor; it was the strike of a predator. He caught her waist and pulled her flush against him, his mouth crashing down onto hers. 

It wasn't a soft kiss. It was a collision. He tasted like mint and winter air, and Mira met him with a vertical heat that threatened to turn the very floor to glass. Her hands threaded into his hair, pulling him closer, desperate to bridge the impossible gap between fire and frost. 

His touch was a frantic contradiction—his hands were freezing, but the way he moved against her was molten. Mira let out a low moan into his mouth, her magic flaring instinctively. The starlight-sphere overhead flickered and died, plunged into darkness by the sheer surge of their combined power. 

In the blackness, everything became sensory. The scratch of his stubble against her jaw. The heavy weight of his velvet coat. The way his breath hitched when she nipped at his lower lip. 

Dorian pulled back just an inch, his forehead resting against hers. They were both gasping, the air in the vault now dangerously thin and charged with static. 

"If we die down here," Dorian whispered, his voice ravaged, "I am going to haunt you for eternity."

"Good," Mira bit out, reaching for the buttons of his vest. "I’ve always wanted a permanent resident."

She got the first button undone before a massive, grinding sound echoed through the room. 

The door didn't open. Instead, the wall behind them—the one lined with the oldest, most fragile scrolls—began to slide upward with a groan of prehistoric gears. 

A pale, sickly green light spilled into the vault from a hidden passageway they hadn't known existed. 

Mira froze, her hand still tucked inside Dorian’s vest. Dorian straightened, shielding her instinctively as he turned toward the opening. 

Rising from the depths of the hidden corridor was a sound—a wet, dragging slide of something that hadn't breathed air in a thousand years.

The merger scrolls weren't archived. They were being guarded.