Chapter 10: Midnight Practices

The courtyard stones were scavengers, leaching the warmth from the soles of my boots until I felt as though I were standing on Dorian’s very heart. 

The air was a sharpened blade, whetted by the late-autumn frost and the residual breath of the Glacies Institute’s architecture. Above, the moon was a sliver of bone against the velvet throat of the sky. I pulled my velvet cloak tighter, the heavy fabric doing little to stifle the frantic hum of the Pyralis fire beneath my skin. My magic didn’t like this place. It didn't like the stillness. It wanted to roar, to consume the frigid silence until the statues melted into slag.

Dorian was already there. 

He stood near the center of the mosaic, where the crests of our two academies—the Phoenix and the Frost-Stag—met in a jagged line of marble. He had already discarded his heavy fur-lined mantle. It lay crumpled on a stone bench like a spent shadow. He wore only a thin linen shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, exposing forearms that looked carved from white cedar. Even in the dead of night, he seemed to radiate a faint, crystalline luminescence.

"You're late, Mira," he said. He didn't turn around. He was watching his own breath bloom in the air, a miniature cloud of ice crystals that hovered for a second before shattering.

"A Chancellor doesn't rush," I replied, my voice clipping the frost. "Especially not to her own funeral."

He turned then. His eyes were the color of a frozen lake just before the sun hits it—pale, depthless, and dangerously beautiful. "If this were a funeral, I’d have brought better wine. This is a resurrection. Or at least, the messy, painful attempt at one."

"The Council wants a miracle by sunrise," I said, stepping closer. The heat from my palms began to soften the frost on the stones around me, creating a ring of damp, dark rock. "If we can't weave the two disciplines, they’ll dissolve the merger. Pyralis will be absorbed into the State Military, and your Institute will become a glorified ice-sculpting gallery for the nobility."

Dorian’s jaw tightened, a small muscle jumping in his cheek. "Then stop standing in the sun and come into the cold. We need to be balanced, Mira. You’re radiating like a furnace. Dial it back."

"I'm not the one whose presence makes the very air hurt to breathe," I snapped, though I concentrated on the internal flame, banking the coals of my magic until the shimmering heat-haze around my shoulders dissipated.

"Good," he whispered, his voice dropping an octave. "Now. Vestiges off. The Weave doesn't tolerate vanity."

He reached for the buttons of his shirt. I froze. "Dorian—"

"Skin-to-skin, Mira. You read the scrolls as well as I did. Conductivity requires the removal of all insulating layers. Unless you're afraid I'll find your birthmark and use it against you in the next faculty meeting?"

I narrowed my eyes. My fingers went to the silver clasps of my cloak. I let it fall, the heavy fabric thudding against the stone. Underneath, I wore a silk camisole. It was practical for fire-casting, designed not to ignite under high-intensity flares, but in the midnight courtyard, it felt like wearing a cobweb.

I stepped into the center of the mosaic. We were three feet apart. The temperature didn't know what to do between us; the air swirled in a chaotic Miniature weather system of warm drafts and biting chills.

"Close the distance," Dorian commanded.

I took a step. My chest was inches from his. The scent of him hit me—clean, sharp ozone and the faint, bitter smell of crushed pine needles. It was a stark contrast to my own scent of charred cedar and spice. 

"Hands," he said.

I lifted my hands. He mirrored the gesture. When our palms met, I gasped. It wasn't just the cold; it was the sensation of a thousand needles of ice sewing themselves into my skin. At the same time, I felt his sharp intake of breath as my heat scalded him. 

"Hold it," he gritted out, his fingers sliding between mine, interlacing our grip. "Don't pull back. If you pull back, the feedback loop will shatter the courtyard."

"I know the theory," I hissed, my eyes locked on his. "Open your mind, Dorian. Let me in or this is just a very cold handshake."

I closed my eyes and pushed. 

The Weave was supposed to be a bridge, a seamless transition of elements. I threw the gates of my mind open, showing him the roaring magma chambers of my discipline, the reckless, driving force of the fire. But as I pushed toward him, I hit a wall. It wasn't a wall of ice, but a wall of *absence*. 

A memory flickered—a glimpse of Dorian as a boy, standing in a vast, empty hall, his hands turning blue as he waited for a father who never came. It was a sharp, piercing spike of loneliness so profound I felt my own breath hitch.

"Don't look at that!" Dorian’s voice echoed in my head, a mental shout that felt like a slap. 

The connection snapped. We were thrown apart by a kinetic burst of steam. I stumbled back, my boots slipping on the slick stones. I caught myself on a pillar, my lungs burning.

"You're blocking me," I accused, pointing a shaking finger at him. "You want total transparency, but you’re hiding behind your childhood trauma like a shield."

Dorian stood his ground, his chest heaving. A thin line of blood trickled from his nose—the sign of a forced mental break. "And you? You’re using your anger as a smoke screen. I saw the flicker, Mira. The fear that if you merge with me, you’ll lose the fire that defines you. You're afraid of being extinguished."

"I am not afraid of you," I lied.

"You're afraid of *us*," he countered, stepping back into the light. "You've spent your whole life being the sun. You don't know how to exist in the twilight."

"That’s a very poetic way of saying you’re difficult to work with," I barked, a hollow laugh escaping me. 

He moved suddenly, closing the gap before I could react. He didn't grab my hands this time. He grabbed my waist, pulling me flush against him. The shock was total. My skin met his—the heat and the frost colliding in a violent, beautiful friction. 

"Stop thinking about the scrolls," he whispered against my ear, his breath a cold mist that sent shivers racing down my spine. "Stop thinking about the Council. Look at me."

I looked up. His face was inches from mine. The hostility was there, yes, but beneath it was a desperate, hunger-edged recognition. 

"We are the only ones who can do this," he said. "Because we are the only ones who understand the cost. I give up my silence. You give up your noise. In the middle, there is the Weave."

He lowered his forehead against mine. I stopped fighting. I closed my eyes and let the fire in my core soften. I didn't bank it; I just let it glow, like a hearth fire waiting for a traveler. 

I reached out, not with magic, but with a confession. I let him see the moment I realized that building Pyralis was the only way I could ensure I’d never be small again. I showed him the terror of the void. 

In return, the ice in his mind began to melt. He showed me the stillness he found in the cold—not a vacuum, but a clarity. He showed me the way he saw the world—as a series of intricate, fragile patterns that he desperately wanted to protect.

The shift happened in a heartbeat. 

Suddenly, I wasn't just Mira, and he wasn't just Dorian. We were a circuit. 

The magic rose effortlessly. It wasn't fire and it wasn't ice. It was a shimmering, iridescent lace that wound around our joined arms, glowing with a soft, mauve light. The air in the courtyard began to hum—a low, resonant frequency that vibrated in my teeth. 

The Weave expanded. It moved through the stones, through the air, turning the frost into diamonds and the heat into a gentle, golden radiance. For the first time in centuries, the two elements sang the same note. 

The sensory experience was overwhelming. I could feel the blood pumping in his veins as clearly as my own. I felt the dry coolness of his skin and the way his heart skipped a beat when my thumb brushed the sensitive skin of his wrist. It was an intimacy so absolute it felt like being flayed. 

We held it. Seconds stretched into minutes. The universe was nothing but the taste of ozone and the feeling of Dorian’s soul pressed against mine. 

Then, slowly, the light began to fade. The hum receded into the stones. 

Neither of us moved. 

Our hands were still locked, our bodies pressed together so tightly I could feel the heat we had generated—a shared warmth that belonged to neither of us and both of us. 

The silence that followed was different than the one before. It wasn't a void; it was heavy, pregnant with the weight of what we had just seen. 

Dorian’s grip shifted. He didn't let go. Instead, his fingers slid up my arms, his palms grazing the bare skin of my shoulders. He was shivering, but I didn't think it was from the cold. 

"You have a very loud mind, Chancellor," he murmured, his voice husky and stripped of its usual venom. 

"And yours is a very lonely place, Dorian," I replied, my voice barely a whisper. 

He pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes were no longer frozen. They were dark, the pupils blown wide. One of titled his head, his gaze dropping to my mouth. 

"What now?" I asked. The bravado was gone. I sounded small, even to myself. 

"Now," he said, his hand moving to the nape of my neck, his fingers tangling in the loose strands of my hair. "I think we stop practicing."

The first touch of his lips wasn't a clash. It wasn't fire or ice. It was a question, soft and tentative, a search for the balance we had just found in the magic. I responded with a depth of hunger that surprised me, my hands finding the damp linen of his shirt and pulling him closer, as if I could pull him inside my very ribs. 

The rivalry didn't disappear; it transformed. Every sharp word we’d ever exchanged, every academic slight, every territorial dispute fueled the fire of the kiss. It was a different kind of Weave—one made of skin and breath and the desperate, late-night realization that we were no longer enemies.

I had spent a decade building a wall of flame to keep the world out, but as Dorian’s fingers traced the hollow of my throat, I realized I was finally willing to let the fire go out if it meant staying in the cold with him.