Chapter 27 Everly
They release Ren at seven.
We've been on the bench outside the infirmary for two hours—me, Brittany, Atlas, Felix, and Callum, who arrived from his mother's office forty minutes ago and sat at the far end without speaking.
The bond pulled us here the way gravity pulls water downhill: not a choice, just physics.
Ren was inside, Ren was the weakest point, and the four of us arranged ourselves around him without anyone suggesting it.
The October evening is cold. The bench is stone and my ass went numb an hour ago.
Atlas is standing—he can't sit still, the pacing instinct too strong—but he's keeping his circuit tight, ten feet out and back, his conductor sparking faintly in the dark.
Felix is on the ground with his back against the infirmary wall, cards in a pattern I don't understand, muttering numbers.
Callum hasn't moved since he sat down. Arms crossed, spine straight, the mask back on but thinner than usual.
Through the bond I feel him like standing next to a freezer—cold, locked, humming with something that wants out.
He won't tell us what his mother said. I can feel the shape of it sitting in his chest like a stone, but the bond doesn't give me specifics. Just weight.
Brittany is beside me. She brought coffee from the contraband hot plate—two mugs, mine and hers. She did not bring coffee for anyone else. She's been reading a textbook with the focus of someone who has decided that normalcy is a weapon.
When the infirmary door opens and Ren walks out—slow, careful, the bandage on his palm bright white—the bond does something I haven't felt before.
It exhales. All four connections ease at once, the tension dropping like a held breath released, and for a second the ache behind my ribs is almost bearable.
He looks terrible. Pale, dark circles under his eyes, his blazer rumpled and spotted with something that might be his own blood.
But he's standing. Breathing. His heartbeat in the bond is weak but steady, and when his brown eyes find mine across the flagstones, I feel the blood magic stir behind my ribs.
Recognition. Relief that isn't just mine.
"I'm fine," he says. Before anyone asks.
"You almost died," Atlas says.
"And now I'm fine." He descends the steps carefully. "Where are we going?"
"Dorm," I say. "Bellamy Hall. It's closest."
We start walking. All of us—Brittany beside me, the boys behind, a clump of six people moving across the quad like a single organism. I can feel them through the bond, a constellation rearranging with every step. The flagstones are wet with dew, silver in the lamplight.
I walk faster than them. Not on purpose—my legs are longer than Brittany's, and the boys are moving slowly because Ren is moving slowly and the bond won't let them leave him behind. I pull ahead without thinking about it. Ten feet. Twenty. Thirty.
Fifty.
My ribs catch fire.
Not metaphor. Not the dull ache of magic settling or the background hum doing its thing.
Fire—actual, searing, white-hot fire that erupts behind my sternum and drops me to my knees on the flagstones.
The sound that comes out of me might be a scream.
Might just be the noise a body makes when it's being torn in four directions at once.
The four heartbeats spike into a frequency I feel in my teeth, my eye sockets, the roots of my hair. Each one pulling toward its source—behind me, all of them behind me, I walked too far ahead—
"Everly!" Brittany's hands on my shoulders. She was keeping pace with me, not them. "What's happening?"
"Too far—" The fire pulses. Tightens. I curl forward, forehead against cold stone. "Got too far ahead."
Footsteps. Fast. The fire eases as the distance closes—Atlas first, breathing hard, one hand on his own ribs. Then Felix, pale, leaning on his knees. Callum, rigid. Ren, last, grey-faced with the effort of hurrying.
"Hundred yards," Felix gasps. "Give or take.
That's our range." He straightens, does something that might be a smile if his face weren't the color of old milk.
"I ran the numbers on the way over. Hundred yards is the wall.
Past hundred and fifty we'd probably black out.
Past two hundred—" He shrugs. "Didn't run those numbers. Didn't want to."
Brittany looks at the group. Five people and a spider, standing in a wet quad in the dark because I walked too fast.
"So none of you can be more than a hundred yards from Everly."
"That's about right."
"And Everly can't be more than a hundred yards from any of them."
"Correct."
"Seven beings. Maximum range of a football field." She pauses. Herbert adjusts on her collar. "Wonderful. Everyone walk together this time. Slowly. We're going to my room because it's closest and because I refuse to manage this crisis in a courtyard."
"Your room is a double," Atlas says.
"Yes it is."
"There are six of us."
"I'm aware." She doesn't slow down. "Everyone who made Everly cry gets the floor."
Room 217 was not designed for six people.
It was barely designed for two. Brittany and I have spent the semester in a space roughly the size of a prison cell—two beds, two desks, one window, a closet that doesn't close properly, and a bathroom so narrow you have to choose between closing the door and using the toilet.
We've made it work through territorial boundaries, mutual respect for silence, and Herbert's web installations, which function as a kind of organic room divider.
Now there are four additional bodies in it, and the room has the approximate comfort level of a packed subway car at rush hour.
Atlas is on the floor against the far wall, legs drawn up, conductor across his knees—someone retrieved it from the amphitheater.
He takes up roughly the same amount of space as a piece of furniture.
His shoulders are wider than the gap between Brittany's desk and my bed, and every time he shifts his weight something falls off a shelf.
Callum is standing. Because of course he is—Callum Bolingbroke would rather stand for six hours than sit on a floor that hasn't been vacuumed.
He's in the corner by the window, arms crossed, spine against the wall, his face reassembled into something that almost looks like the old mask.
Almost. The cuffs are still wrinkled. He hasn't fixed them.
Felix is sitting cross-legged on the end of my bed without asking, shuffling his cards at a speed that's edging toward manic. The sound—snap, snap, snap—fills the small room like a second clock, and Brittany has already looked at him twice with the expression that precedes violence.
Ren is in the desk chair. He lowered himself into it the moment we arrived and hasn't moved.
Still pale—the color of someone who lost too much blood and got most of it back through magical intervention—his brown eyes quiet and focused and aimed at the floor.
His heartbeat in the bond is the steadiest of the four.
Slow, measured, the rhythm of someone who nearly died and has already filed it away and moved on to the next problem.
I'm on Brittany's bed, because she told me to sit down and I was too tired to argue. Herbert is on the pillow beside me, motionless, his web stretching between the headboard and the lamp in a pattern that looks deliberately protective.
Brittany is standing in the center of the room—the only remaining floorspace—with her arms crossed and her face set to its default expression of aggressive pragmatism.
"Right," she says. "Let's establish some ground rules, since apparently we all live here now."
"We don't all live—" Atlas starts.
"You can't leave. You literally, physically, magically cannot leave this room without her." She points at me. "Which means you live here until the situation changes. So. Rules."
"Brittany—"
"Rule one. Nobody touches Everly without asking.
I've watched four men grab her, shove her, corner her, and drag her across campus for the last three months, and that's done.
You want to touch her, you ask. She says no, you back off.
I don't care if the bond is pulling, I don't care if your magic is acting up.
You ask." She looks at each of them in turn.
Atlas drops his eyes first. Callum last. "Rule two.
Nobody reports anything to the administration.
Nothing. Not a word, not a text, not a carrier pigeon.
" Her eyes land on Callum and stay. "Especially you. "
"I'm aware of the situation," Callum says. His voice is flat. Controlled. The voice of a man who has been to his mother's office and come back with something sitting in his stomach like a stone.
"Good. Rule three. Herbert has full run of the room. Anyone who disturbs his webs sleeps in the hallway. That's non-negotiable."
Felix stops shuffling. "Is the spider actually—"
"Non. Negotiable."
Silence. The bond hums between us—five heartbeats in the same small room, close enough that the pain has faded to nothing and what's left is a kind of pressure. An awareness. Each of them at the edge of my mind, their emotions leaking through in currents I can't filter.
Atlas's guilt, banked hot behind his ribs.
Callum's terror, sealed and locked but leaking at the seams. Felix's manic processing—the feeling of a brain running every possible scenario and finding no good outcomes.
Ren's careful, steady calm, which up close feels less like peace and more like a man standing very still because any movement might break something.
And mine. My exhaustion and my fear and the dizzy, overwhelming strangeness of having four people living inside my chest, each of them a person I was afraid of six hours ago.
Felix starts shuffling again. The snap of cards fills the silence.
"So," he says. His voice has the brittle brightness of someone who is either about to laugh or about to break.
"We're bound to someone we spent months trying to destroy.
We can't leave her side without collapsing.
The headmaster of this school has plans for her that involve the word handled, which historically means people disappear.
" He flips a card between his fingers—the Fracture, branching paths, all of them bad.
"And none of us know what happens next."
The words hang in the room. Small room. Too many people. Herbert's webs catching the lamplight like silver thread.
"What does she want?" I ask. My voice sounds far away. Thin. "Catalina. What does she want with a grimoire at full capacity?"
They look at each other. Through the bond I feel the spike—all four of them, simultaneously, a jolt of fear so sharp and unified that for a second I can't tell whose it is.
None of them know.
But they're all terrified.
"We're going to figure this out," Brittany says.
She says it the way she says everything—flat, certain, like a statement of fact rather than a hope.
"Tomorrow. Tonight, nobody leaves this room, nobody does anything stupid, and nobody has an emotional crisis until I've had at least four hours of sleep. " She looks at me. "You okay?"
I'm not okay. I'm bonded to four men who spent months tormenting me, crammed into a dorm room with a magic spider and a best friend who communicates exclusively through sarcasm, and the most powerful woman on campus has plans for me that involve a word that means disappear.
"I'll live," I say.
"Good enough." She turns off the overhead light. The lamp stays on—Herbert's territory, she won't touch it. "Everyone shut up. We start tomorrow."
Atlas shifts against the wall. Callum doesn't move. Felix's cards go quiet. Ren's eyes close.
Four heartbeats in my chest. The bond settling into something that almost feels like a rhythm—not comfortable, not yet, maybe not ever, but present.
Real. Five people in a room the size of a closet, held together by magic and fear and the slowly dawning understanding that whatever's coming, they can't face it apart.
Brittany's breathing evens out first. Then Ren's. Then Atlas's—fitful, interrupted by twitches that I feel through the bond like small electrical shocks.
Felix shuffles once more. Twice. Stops.
Callum doesn't sleep. I know because I can feel him—the cold, rigid awareness, the mind that won't turn off, the thoughts running in patterns I can almost trace through the bond. He's calculating. Always calculating.
I don't sleep either. I lie on Brittany's bed with Herbert beside my head and four new heartbeats in my chest and I stare at the ceiling and I think about a woman who looked at a cracked amphitheater and a bleeding student and five broken kids and checked her phone.
The sphere is gone. Shattered. The four colors that lived inside it live inside me now, and the crack that ran through the glass runs through me too—invisible, untouchable, a fault line that nobody knows how to fix.
Your responsibility. Figure out how to fix it.
I'm working on it, Professor Warrick.
I'm working on it.