Jade
Logan’s mouth finds that spot where my neck meets my shoulder, his tongue pressing against my skin in a way that makes me gasp. My hands tangle in his hair, pulling him closer, needing more. Always more.
“I’ve been thinking about this every day. Every night.” His confession vibrates against my throat. “Every damn moment since—”
He cuts himself off, his jaw clenching like he’s said too much. But his hands tell a different story, one gripping my thigh to hold me closer, the other tangled in my hair like he can’t bear to let go.
When he rocks his hips into mine, electricity races through my veins, literal sparks dancing between us.
“Sorry,” I gasp. “The electricity thing happens when I’m—“
“I know,” he says, and then he’s kissing me again like it’s the end of the world, like we’re running out of time, like he’s trying to say everything he can’t put into words.
Silver electricity shoots upward into the glass dome, creating our own personal light show. Wind rushes around us, probably violating several laws of physics. But for once, he doesn’t stop kissing me, doesn’t pull away.
When we eventually break apart, he’s watching me with an expression that makes my chest feel too tight. Wonder mixed with something deeper, something that looks dangerously close to—
“You’re incredible.” His voice is rough and wrecked, so different from the Logan I’ve been training with each night. “You have no idea how you’ve become everything to me, how I’d rewrite time itself just to have more moments like—”
His face tightens with panic. It’s subtle—a flash in his eyes, a slight tension in his jaw—but after so much time together, I’ve gotten good at reading the tiny cracks in Logan Ashford’s armor.
“Pull it back.” He sets me down, his hands gripping my shoulders so hard it hurts. “Now.”
“What?” I can barely focus, dizzy from the way he was kissing me seconds ago. “Pull what back? Because if you’re about to do that thing where you push me away again, I swear to the gods—”
“Your electricity.” His voice is steady, but his eyes betray real concern. “You’re going to overload the observatory’s protective enchantments if you don’t pull it back now.”
“Oh.” I look up at the light show I’m creating, silver webs of electricity crackling across the dome. “Yeah, that’s... probably not great.”
I close my eyes, fighting to contain the storm raging under my skin, but the Double Cluster is making everything feel more amplified than ever.
Trying to shove all these feelings—want, need, and something terrifyingly close to a thing I don’t want to name—back into my imaginary glass sphere feels like trying to stuff a hurricane into a jewelry box.
“Find your center. Picture the sphere. Keep it contained.” Logan’s hands move to frame my face again, grounding me. “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re too much. But you’re not too much for me. And I’ve never wanted anything the way I want all of you.”
All of you.
Logan wants all of me. This impossibly controlled man who keeps everyone at arm’s length wants messy, chaotic, electricity-throwing me.
And that’s exactly what I want to give him.
So, I focus on his voice and the warmth of his hands against my skin as I imagine that beautiful glass sphere, picturing myself pouring all this excess energy into it like the world’s weirdest snow globe. And slowly, miraculously, the storm around us fades.
When I open my eyes, Logan’s skin looks paler than usual, and there are shadows under his eyes that I swear weren’t there minutes ago.
It’s the same exhausted look he had after the Drowned Tower, the death trial, and during the sigil ceremony, to name a few.
Like something about being near me when I lose control drains him all the way down to his soul.
“Are you okay?” I reach up to touch his face, and he leans into the contact for just a second, his eyes fluttering closed.
“I’m fine,” he says, but the words come out rough, and when he opens his eyes, they’re darker than before. Not with desire, but with exhaustion.
“You’re not fine,” I say, since I know him well enough by now that he can’t hide certain things from me.
Emotions war across his face—words, feelings, or maybe truths that the Perseus Double Cluster is trying to drag from him. He opens his mouth like he might tell me something real but then—
The door bursts open.
“There you are!”
Margot’s voice fills the observatory, her gaze sweeping between me and Logan.
Cold realization slaps me in the face. Because if she’d walked in thirty seconds earlier, she would have seen the electricity buzzing across my skin and the storm I created in the observatory.
She would have seen me and Logan pressed against each other, lost in that kiss that felt like drowning and coming up for air at the same time.
“Callie’s been looking everywhere for you.” She closes the door behind her with a soft click that somehow sounds ominous and turns to look at Logan. “You weren’t in your room. You weren’t at the party. She was upset, so Alessandra’s with her right now, and they sent me to look for you.”
Logan’s jaw tightens. “You’re not Callie’s personal messenger, and my whereabouts aren’t your concern, Margot.”
“Oh, but they are.” She walks deeper into the room, her fingers trailing along the telescope’s brass fittings. “As assistant proctor, I have to be aware of what’s going on with the students. It would be irresponsible for me to do otherwise.”
“There’s no such thing as an ‘assistant proctor.’” Logan’s eyes narrow, and I’m surprised Margot isn’t backing up from the venom in his gaze.
“There is now.” She swallows and glances up at the stars.
“The Perseus Double Cluster is fascinating, isn’t it?
Some say it reveals hidden truths. Others say it amplifies what’s already there.
” She turns to face us fully, and any pretense of her usual bouncing enthusiasm is gone.
“I’ve been doing my own investigation into Miles’s death.
Certain things don’t add up, and I have reason to believe that the killer was someone with an unusual magical signature. ”
Electricity hums beneath my skin, but I reinforce the sphere and contain the magic.
Logan remains focused on Margot, his gaze sharp enough to cut through steel.
“Leave. Now.” His voice carries that same weight it had in the Drowned Tower, that same commanding presence that makes reality bend a little.
Compulsion. “Check on the students at the Forge Party and forget you saw us here.”
Then compliance washes over Margot’s features. “I should go check on the other students at the Forge Party.” Her voice sounds robotic, and she moves toward the door, which closes behind her with a final click.
The silence that follows is heavy and dangerous. I can’t bring myself to look at Logan, fearing his walls will be up again, and that whatever magic happened between us in this place will be gone.
“We’re done for tonight.” His voice is strained, and there are new lines of exhaustion around his eyes. “You’ll take tomorrow off and get some rest.”
“Tomorrow off?” I repeat, unsure I heard him right.
Logan Ashford doesn’t believe in days off.
“The Fury Loop is intense.” He heads toward the nearly invisible lines at the side of the observatory that lead into the passages, clenching his sigil hand so tightly his knuckles turn white. “You’ll need rest before we practice in it.”
“Logan.” I reach for his arm, needing him to look at me again. “What just happened between us…”
He turns, steps closer, then leans down and kisses me. His lips move against mine with a tenderness that makes my chest ache, but when he pulls back, he’s already rebuilding every wall I thought we’d torn down tonight.
Tears well in my eyes as that familiar hardness returns to his.
“Come on.” He takes my hand. “Let’s get you back before someone else comes looking.”
We descend the spiral stairs in silence, and with each step, the distance grows between us. It’s like watching something beautiful slip through my fingers, and no matter how badly I want to stop it, I don’t know how, and I wish I did. I so, so wish I did.
By the time we reach the door that leads back to Phoenix Hall, I’m second-guessing everything.
Logan’s words about wanting all of me. The way he looked at me like I hung the moon.
Even that moment when our magic created an actual storm…
did any of it truly happen? Or was it just the Double Cluster making us both crazy?
“Monday night.” He releases my hand and flexes his fingers, pain crossing his eyes. When he looks back at me, all that’s left is steel. “The Fury Loop.”
I search his face for any trace of what we shared in the observatory, but he might as well have locked his feelings into a metal box and thrown that box into the treacherous sea surrounding the island. “Right,” I finally say, surprised I’m able to find my voice at all. “The Fury Loop.”
Then he’s turning away and disappearing into the tunnels, leaving me to wonder if anything that happened tonight was real, or if it was just the stars playing cruel tricks on my heart.