Chapter 112: Puck’s Indifference

The knock comes before the pen touches the desk.

Three sharp raps echo against the panels, nothing like the soft, unhurried pattern I’ve grown used to hearing after lights-out. Unease prickles up my spine before I’ve even moved. I snap the notebook shut over the calendar page and shove back from the desk; my ankle buckles on the first stride, a familiar drag of bone and scar tissue that I swallow down without breaking stride, and I grab the cane from where it leans against the nightstand before I reach the entrance and yank it open.

Puck.

He fills the frame with that heavy, deliberate mass, broad and completely motionless, but the usual easy discipline that sits on him is gone entirely tonight. A rigid tension cuts along the bone of his jaw, and the quiet around him holds the sharp, suffocating density of something kept under extreme pressure.

"You weren’t asleep," he says.

"No." I step aside, but he bypasses the courtesy, crossing into the pool of lamplight because he clearly intended to enter before his fist ever touched the wood.

He avoids the chair; instead, he stays planted in the center of the floor, his stare pinning me until the amber flecks in his irises catch the glare and hit my ribs like a sudden drop.

"Stay close to the dorm over the next few days," he tells me, each syllable clipped and unyielding. "Don’t head toward the tree line, and stay where you can get back in five minutes."

The flat command cuts straight through the room.

"Why?"

"Things are going to get complicated."

I hold my ground while the quiet stretches out between us, my grip tightening on the cane’s handle; I watch the calculation settle behind his expression, sealing off whatever detail he was close to giving, and something in me pulls taut and razor-thin.

"Three days," I say.

His shoulders freeze.

"That’s when it happens, isn’t it? The reason the grounds have been clearing out, the reason the council shifts are falling apart; it all converges in three days."

The shift in his posture is subtle, stripped of real surprise and replaced by a cold, immediate vigilance, studying me like a threat that was supposed to stay buried under lock and key.

"Georgia - "

"I mapped it." I refuse to explain the ledger, the dense rows of colored ink, the tidal alignment that only clicked once I stopped assuming full moons mattered most. I let the reality sit between us on the bare floorboards.

The bright amber in his gaze locks dead still.

Then his boots shift back toward the hallway.

I abandon the cane against the wall and cross the rug faster than I have in months, ignoring the hot flare in my ankle, and throw myself between his chest and the brass latch. The solid wood digs into my spine, and he halts inches away; the heat rolling off his skin hits me immediately, thick and suffocating, completely separate from the chill seeping through the windowpane.

"You can’t do this," I tell him. "You don’t get to step into my room, lock me out of the truth, and walk away."

He does not step back. That is the detail I track first, because he stands close enough that I feel the feverish air coming off his chest, and he refuses to retreat even an inch.

"You’ve been tracking it," he says.

"Blue dots for the full cycles, red for the gaps." I hold his stare, explaining how the absences cluster around the waning phases rather than the full moon, an irregularity that puzzled me until the Council shifts, the grounds clearing, and the quiet on the senior roster locked together to point directly to three days from now.

A tight shift passes over his expression, not shock, but the sudden recognition of a barrier failing where he expected solid wood.

"Georgia."

"Don’t." I press my spine harder against the door, demanding that he stop saying my name with that unearned weight while leaving me in the dark.

He states flatly that knowing more puts me at risk, his controlled tone doing little to mask the sudden flush of warmth that hits my forearms; he insists that the moment I confirm what I suspect, I become a different target to everyone watching this school.

"I’m already something different." I keep my delivery level, reminding him that the ice moved under my feet the morning I first crossed the perimeter, a reality he already knows.

His jaw shifts as a muscle pulls tight along the bone; he tells me there are details he cannot explain without compounding my exposure, insisting the explanation itself creates the threat.

"That’s convenient."

"It’s true."

I counter that it sounds identical to every warning used to keep me compliant; Liam offered the exact same logic with different phrasing, while Mandi gave nothing at all. He goes motionless, so I press him on whether he actually trusts me or merely views me as an unstable variable he has to contain; I remind him that I spent weeks working in isolation, mapping the anomalies, cross-referencing the purged school archives, and piecing together the truth about Calloway and Wren without anyone helping me.

"I’m not asking for permission to be involved," I tell him. "I’m already involved. I’m asking if you’re going to treat me like a partner or keep managing me like a liability."

The room drops into an absolute quiet, far heavier than the previous pauses, holding an unspoken weight that fills the space between us. Puck’s hands drop to his sides, fingers curling into pale knuckles while a steady, suffocating heat pushes into the air around him. He keeps his focus pinned squarely on me, stripped of calculation, suspended right on the edge of an unplanned choice.

He offers no answer.

Still, he makes no move toward the door.

He looks at me.

Not past my shoulders. Not at whatever disruption I might bring to the chain of command above him. The amber in his irises sharpens with sudden focus, draining every trace of ease from the air.

I don’t move. I barely breathe.

The silence stretches between us, heavy and taut, while the physical toll of a costly choice plays out openly across his features. His jaw sets hard as the tendons in his neck strain under the pressure, and when he finally parts his lips, the quiet in the room turns suffocatingly thin.

He draws one slow breath.

His hands hang low at his sides, fingers uncurling outward in an unprompted gesture, and my chest tightens at the plain meaning of the motion. His posture leans forward into an impulse before his mind can sanction the movement, offering an opening he never intended to grant.

Footsteps echo outside.

The sound is rapid and deliberate, pacing the hallway with an unmistakable sense of purpose that permits no deviation. They approach along the floorboards without hesitation, and Puck’s expression hardens instantly into a flat barrier, extinguishing the unguarded warmth that surfaced moments before. He steps back immediately; he puts space between us with two quick paces, the distance widening while his posture resets into complete indifference, erasing the person standing there seconds earlier.

I press my palm flat against the wood behind me.

"Puck..."

He angles his chin aside once, offering no verbal denial, yet the small recoil carries the silent weight of a regret he cannot afford to speak.

The heavy tread outside continues past the doorway and recedes toward the far stairwell until the hall falls completely quiet again.

He stays planted in the center of the room instead of walking over to the exit; the lamplight cuts across the rigid line of his shoulders while he stares fixedly downward at the floor planks. The realization comes together clearly. He did not settle on silence out of loyalty; an external authority made the decision for him, leaving him trapped inside a mandate he cannot alter.

I file the observation away alongside every other missing piece, cataloging the relaxed fingers, the caught breath, and the sudden speed with which his defenses closed back down. It confirms what Liam avoided addressing and Mandi consistently denied, a truth Puck himself refused to put into speech.

The rules belong to someone else.

He merely has to survive within them.