***
The library is quieter in the late afternoon, a few students at the long tables with the focused look of people actually working. I find a table near the back, away from the windows, and spread out the syllabi and handouts and the campus-issued laptop.
I start with mythology. Most interesting, least behind.
I read. I take notes. Someone's pencil on paper nearby. The heating system. A chair scraping two tables over. My coffee goes cold while I'm not paying attention to it.
That's when I feel it.
Not the bond.
The air shifts — a stillness settling over the room that I recognize from Feral Academy. From common rooms. Corridors. From the way everything changes when Lumi is somewhere nearby.
I look up.
She's two tables away. Textbook open. Coffee in hand. Frosthaven hoodie pulled close. Head down, highlighter moving steadily across the page.
She could have been there ten minutes. She could have just sat down. She doesn't look up.
I close my laptop and move to her table.
She makes room without being asked — shifts her textbook, sets the highlighter aside, wraps both hands around her coffee cup. We sit in the quiet for a moment without speaking.
"You're a student," I say.
"Second year," she says.
"Here. At Frosthaven. With a library card and a hoodie and—" I glance at her book. "Advanced biology."
"Yes."
"At Feral Academy you're staff. You meet with residents, you—" I stop. "Here you're just sitting in the library with a highlighter."
"Yes."
"Why."
She looks down at her coffee. Not avoiding — choosing where to begin.
"I still need to finish school," she says. "And Frosthaven made sense. For what I'm wanting to do." She lifts her eyes. "At Feral Academy I have a title. People know what I am. Here I'm a second-year who studies in the east wing."
The library moves around us — pages turning, quiet footsteps, the low hum of people trying not to be heard.
"I didn't realize you were still a student," I say. "You told me once, but I didn't really—" I shake my head. "It changes things. Knowing you're here."
She watches me. "How."
"At Feral Academy you're Lumi." I search for it. "There's distance in that. Even when you're sitting right next to me." I glance at her cup. "Here you're just a person. In a hoodie. With cold coffee."
"The coffee was hot when I sat down," she says.
"It's cold now."
"Yes," she says quietly. "It is."
Her hands tighten slightly around the cup. Something in her face goes briefly unguarded — younger, less assembled — before it settles back.
"Is it strange," I ask, "going back and forth between what you are there and what you are here."
