Chapter 113: Mandi’s Warning

The footsteps faded down the corridor, each step softer than the last until the distant stairwell swallowed them whole.

"Puck..."

His name left my mouth before I decided to speak, barely above a whisper, the kind of quiet sound that could dissolve into the lamplight if he chose to ignore it. He remained motionless instead of bolting toward the exit, planted exactly where the hallway noise had frozen him in the center of the floor, his amber gaze fixed firmly on the floorboards between us. I could see the war happening inside him, something that looked almost like pain flickering beneath the surface of his composure.

One second. Two.

He finally moved, crossing the space to the door in three measured steps. But he stopped dead at the threshold instead of walking through it; his hand came up to brace against the frame, fingers splayed against the wood as the tendons in his wrist went rigid. He stood caught between leaving and staying. The simple fact that he remained in this room, visibly fighting whatever mandate governed him, told me far more than any guarded phrase he had offered all evening. I found myself holding my breath, afraid that even the smallest sound might tip him back toward the door and away from whatever truth sat trapped behind his teeth.

I stepped closer to him across the narrow gap.

"Are you allowed to tell me anything?" I kept the words flat and low, stripping the question down to its rawest edge. "Anything at all...?"

The silence stretched out between us. His shoulders pulled back until the line of his posture hardened; the small muscles along his jaw tightened in sharp succession, as if every response he tested slammed directly into an invisible wall. He looked straight past me toward the dark hallway, fixing his attention on the space beyond the threshold where the rules lived. I watched the effort cost him something, a toll written plainly in the hollow of his cheeks and the faint tremor along his clenched hand.

That was the answer.

It was a cage. The rigid tension in his frame looked like someone throwing their weight against a locked barrier from the inside and feeling the heavy timber hold. I wanted to reach for him again, the way I had in the library when gold had poured between us and made the impossible feel briefly, achingly real. But something in his expression warned me not to, a silent plea to let him leave with whatever dignity the moment still allowed him.

He let his hand drop from the doorframe.

Puck walked into the corridor without a word or a single backward glance, and the door clicked shut behind him with quiet finality. It felt deliberate and tightly controlled, as though he kept even that small click below the threshold of what the building could track.

I stood alone in the silence and stared at the dark wood of the panels, my pulse still unsteady from how close he had come to breaking.

Three days.

Someone had constructed the invisible boundaries around him, and someone had ordered that patrol down the hallway at the exact second our conversation turned dangerous. The timing was entirely intentional; it was careful management designed by a system that already tracked my questions and strictly decided what answers I was permitted to hear. The thought settled over me like a cold hand on the back of my neck, and for the first time since arriving at Rosethorne, I understood exactly how small I was against whatever machinery ran this place.

I walked over to the workspace and dragged the grid closer, spreading out the lunar calendar and the catalog of absences marked in dark red ink.

Three days remained on the chart.

I picked up the pen and circled the date in red, my hand steadier than I expected given how loudly my heart was still pounding. Then I went to find Mandi.

The corridor by the rink smelled of cold rubber and floor wax, an institutional scent that had stopped registering weeks ago. It used to mean comfort, the smell of ice and effort and a sport that had once belonged entirely to me. Now it just smelled like one more thing I no longer trusted.

The moment she looked up, her expression snapped shut. It was instantaneous, like someone catching movement in their peripheral vision that had no business being there. Her phone dropped against her thigh; her chin came up fast, staring at me in total, frozen panic.

Then she moved.

She crossed the distance in four quick strides, and her hand clamped around my forearm before I could react. The grip dug hard into my sleeve, urgent and sharp. She steered me sideways, away from the rink doors and the main corridor traffic, shoving me into the narrow alcove beside the equipment lockers where the overhead bulb had stayed dead for a month.

"Mandi..."

"Not here." Her voice barely cleared a whisper as she checked the corridor past my shoulder, a fast, practiced scan that landed on empty floorboards and gave her no relief. "Not near the rink. They’re watching. Especially this week."

"Three days from now. I know about the cycle." I watched her face for the flinch I expected, and it came. "What is it, Mandi? What happens at the gathering?"

She went rigid, her hand still locked around my arm. For a moment I thought she might actually answer - her lips parted, and something close to a name formed at the back of her throat before she bit it back down. I saw the fear underneath her usual brightness, a rawness she had never once let surface in all the months I had known her, and it frightened me more than anything Puck had shown me.

"The Hollow," she finally breathed, so quiet I nearly missed it. "If you’re asking about the Hollow, Georgia, you need to stop asking anyone else. Ask Liam. Nobody else. Promise me."

Her grip released. She was already backing away, putting the width of the corridor between us, her eyes darting once more toward the rink doors before she turned and left me standing alone with a single word and three days left on the clock. The echo of her fear lingered in the empty hallway long after she disappeared, settling into my chest like a stone I could not set down.