“Jade?” Logan moves closer, and I have to remember how to breathe. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just...” I turn in a slow circle, buying time so I don’t say something I’ll regret. “This place is different at night.”
“Everything’s different at night.” His voice carries that low rumble that usually makes me want to do very inappropriate things, but now it just makes me want to... hold him? Talk to him about everything and nothing? Wake up next to him each morning?
“Look up.” He cuts through my emotional spiral by pointing to a group of stars that pulses brighter than the rest. “The Perseus Double Cluster.”
Somehow, I force myself to focus on the stars instead of how perfect his profile looks in this light. Professional. Controlled. Beautiful. Completely unaware that I’m having an emotional crisis three feet away from him.
“Does it mean something?” I manage to ask. “Besides being shiny?”
“I’ve been researching.” He returns his focus to me, and the intense look in his eyes makes my stomach flip. “The Double Cluster creates what ancient texts call an emotional echo chamber. Whatever emotion you’re feeling gets reflected and amplified between the two star clusters.”
“Sounds great.” I roll my eyes. “Because my emotions definitely need amplifying. They’re so subtle and well-controlled as it is.”
He continues like I haven’t spoken. “It’ll help you practice control.”
Disappointment rushes through my body. “So, you brought me here to train.”
Of course he did. Why else would Logan Ashford bring me to a romantic starlit observatory? Certainly not to make out under the cosmos like normal people do.
“Yes.” He nods. “If you can keep your electricity contained when the stars are making you feel everything twice as intensely, the Fury Loop will be manageable.”
Right. The Fury Loop.
The circle we’ve been avoiding having me fight in until now, due to its emotional amplification magic. I’ll basically be a live wire trapped in the wind, about to fry itself and everything around it in a single deadly second.
I need to focus on that. Not on how Logan’s eyes look silver in this light. Not on how I want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he admits he feels this too, or how he’s the only thing in this world keeping me steady.
“Jade?” Logan’s voice breaks through my thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”
Oh, you know, just the usual. Training. Combat. Definitely not about how you’re driving me insane simply by existing in the same space as me.
“The last time I was here,” I lie, since it’s the first thing that pops into my mind that doesn’t have to do with wanting to confess my most intimate feelings to him. “With Margot.”
His brow furrows. “Why were you here with Margot?”
“She brought me here after Miles died.” The memory feels sharper under the starlight, details I’d overlooked suddenly significant. “She said that as stand-in proctor, she wanted to connect with students, but she kept asking about what Miles and I discussed in the library. It was weird. Like, aggressively friendly weird.”
Logan goes still. Not his usual controlled stillness, but the kind that makes me think I stepped on a landmine.
“She chose the observatory specifically.” I start pacing, needing to move while I think. “What if she was trying to... I don’t know, use the stars to manipulate my emotions? Make me spill secrets I didn’t know I had?”
“Jade—”
“Gods, I sound paranoid.” I run both hands through my hair. “But she was so interested in what Miles and I talked about. Like she thought I might know something, or maybe she even suspected?—”
Fire erupts from Logan’s hands, and holy shit, I’ve never seen him lose control like this. The flames are orange bleeding intored, darkening to that eerie black at the edges. It’s terrifying and mesmerizing, like watching someone’s soul catch fire.
The temperature in the room spikes, and I stumble back as heat rolls off him in waves.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words tumbling out. “I shouldn’t have brought up Miles. Not here. I’m an idiot, I didn’t think?—“
His fire snuffs out like someone dumped water on it, and for a heartbeat, neither of us moves.
“Well, that was dramatic,” I say weakly, because apparently, I deal with tension by making stupid jokes. “Should we talk about?—”
“Your arms, Jade,” he says simply.
