“For what,” I say.
“Guy who goes to one dance and immediately becomes emotionally well-adjusted,” he says.
I almost smile.
“Don’t ruin it,” he adds.
“I won’t,” I say.
He nods once.
Good.
We stay until the lights come up. Leo dances with everyone who will let him and several who initially won't. Gray dances with me most of the night and with Lumi once, which makes her laugh in a way I've never heard from her. James keeps the hat on the entire night and by the end three other people have asked to try it on.
The cold hits when we go outside — my heels in my hand, Leo's jacket around my shoulders, Gray on one side and James on the other and Lumi slightly ahead. The Frosthaven paths quiet now, the lights still strung, the music gone.
The bonds pull warm from Feral Academy. Jim awake. RJ settled. Dalton present.
"Good night," Leo says.
"Yeah," I say.
He puts his arm around my shoulders and we walk back through the lit paths toward the treeline and the dark and everything waiting on the other side of it.
Chapter twenty-four
Alex: Epilogue
The cabin sits just past the Frosthaven boundary line.
Technically staff housing. Dalton's, on paper. In practice it smells like all of us now — layered, lived-in.
Leo's jacket is on the hook by the door. Jake's boots by the fire. Dalton's chair — his, without anyone ever saying so. Gray's book on the table, face down. Jim's handwriting on the notepad by the window, left mid-sentence.
I know all of it without looking. I know it the way I know the bonds. Warm. Specific. Ours.
No one called it a meeting. Nobody said come over. We're just here, the way we've been most nights since the cabin stopped being staff housing and started being the place we end up when the day is done.
Leo is horizontal on the couch, taking up more space than seems possible. He's been like this for forty minutes and hasn't spoken in twelve, which for Leo means something is actually running through his head. Jake is in the chair nearest the fire, not looking like he's paying attention and paying complete attention. Jim is at the window with his notepad, pen moving. Gray is beside me, shoulder warm against mine, another book open and unread.
RJ is on the floor with his back against my legs.
He got there the way he gets everywhere now — quiet, no announcement. His shoulder warm against my knee. His hand loose on the floor beside him. Watching the fire.
I put my hand on his head. He doesn't move. He lets me.
Tomorrow is Frosthaven. New schedules. New classrooms. All of it theoretical until now, and now it isn't.
Nobody says it.
Leo breaks first.
"What are the odds," he says, to the ceiling, "that they put me in a remedial track."
"High," Gray says.
"Thank you, Gray."
