The dormitory hallways settle into their familiar nighttime quiet, punctuated only by the distant hum of heating systems and the occasional creak of old building bones adjusting to temperature changes. Most students have surrendered to sleep hours ago, their rooms dark and peaceful behind closed doors. But in room 237 on the second floor, Lily Hart lies wide awake, staring at the ceiling while her mind replays the day's impossible events on an endless loop.
Her small single room usually feels like a sanctuary—walls decorated with literary quotes and landscapes torn from travel magazines, bookshelves overflowing with beloved novels, and a window seat cushioned with pillows that serves as her personal reading nook. Tonight, however, the familiar space feels more like a prison, its walls closing in as she struggles to make sense of everything that has turned her world upside down.
The sheets tangle around her legs as she shifts restlessly, trying to find a position that might encourage sleep. But every time she closes her eyes, she sees silver irises that seem to look straight through to her soul. Every time she attempts to clear her mind, she feels the ghost of ice-cold skin against her palms and remembers the profound silence where a heartbeat should have been.
"This is insane," she whispers to the darkness, her voice barely audible in the quiet room. "People don't just... they don't have skin that cold. Hearts don't just stop beating."
But even as she speaks the words, she knows they're inadequate to explain what she experienced in Damon's arms. The memory of his touch sends shivers through her entire body—not of fear, but of something far more complex and infinitely more dangerous.
She rolls onto her side, pulling a pillow over her head in a futile attempt to muffle her racing thoughts. Instead of finding peace, however, she discovers that darkness only intensifies the vivid recollections that refuse to leave her alone. Behind her closed eyelids, she can see every detail of Damon's face with perfect clarity—the aristocratic bone structure that speaks of centuries-old bloodlines, the luminous quality of skin that seems to glow from within, and those impossible silver eyes that hold depths no seventeen-year-old should possess.
Sleep, when it finally claims her despite her resistance, brings no relief from the intensity of her obsession.
Instead, her dreams become a theater where subconscious desires play out with startling vividness. She finds herself walking through moonlit gardens that exist nowhere in the waking world, their paths lined with night-blooming flowers that release intoxicating fragrances into air that tastes of silver and starlight.
In these dreams, Damon appears like something from Gothic romance novels—moving through shadows with supernatural grace, his silver eyes luminous in the darkness as they track her every movement with predatory intensity. But there's nothing threatening about his presence in this dream realm. Instead, he radiates a magnetism that draws her forward despite every rational warning her sleeping mind attempts to generate.
When dream-Damon reaches for her, his fingers trailing along her cheek with gossamer touches that make her breath catch, the sensation feels more real than anything she's ever experienced. His skin carries that same impossible coldness, but instead of alarming her, the temperature contrast creates an electric awareness that races through her nervous system like lightning.
"You're not real," dream-Lily whispers, even as she leans into his touch with shameless abandon.
"Does it matter?" dream-Damon replies, his accented voice carrying undertones that speak of secrets and centuries and desires that transcend normal human understanding. "Does anything matter except this moment, this connection that pulls us together despite every reason we should stay apart?"
The dream escalates with an intensity that makes her body respond in ways that both thrill and embarrass her. When dream-Damon's lips find hers, the kiss ignites every nerve ending with sensations that feel more vivid than waking reality. His cold mouth against her warm lips creates a temperature play that sends waves of unprecedented awareness cascading through her sleeping form.
She wakes with a gasp that echoes through her quiet room, her heart pounding and her skin flushed with heat that has nothing to do with her dormitory's heating system. The dream's intensity lingers like aftershocks, making her hyperaware of every sensation—the softness of her sheets against sensitized skin, the way her nightgown clings to curves that feel somehow more defined than usual, the persistent ache of longing that seems to have taken permanent residence in her chest.
"Oh God," she breathes, pressing her hands to her burning cheeks as she realizes the nature of what just occurred. She's never experienced dreams like that before—so vivid they felt more real than reality, so intense they left physical reactions that persist into waking consciousness.
The digital clock on her nightstand reads 2:47 AM, its red numbers glowing like accusatory eyes in the darkness. She's been asleep for less than an hour, yet the dream felt like it lasted for days. More disturbing still is the realization that part of her wants nothing more than to close her eyes and return to that moonlit garden where silver-eyed enchantment awaits.
Unable to bear the confines of her room any longer, Lily slips from her bed and pads barefoot to the window seat that overlooks the dormitory's front lawn. The campus spreads out below her in shades of gray and silver, illuminated by strategically placed streetlights that create pools of illumination connected by pathways of shadow.
What she sees there makes her breath catch in her throat.
A solitary figure stands beneath the ancient elm tree that graces the lawn directly below her window. Even in the dim light, she recognizes the graceful posture and the way moonlight seems to gather around him like he's magnetizing the very illumination from the sky.
Damon.
He stands perfectly still, his face turned up toward her window with an expression she can read even at this distance. Longing wars with restraint in his posture, desire battles with what appears to be an almost physical struggle to maintain distance. His hands are clenched at his sides as if he's fighting the urge to scale the building's brick facade and eliminate the space that separates them.
Their eyes meet across the distance—her green gaze finding his silver one through the darkness as if drawn by invisible threads. The connection is immediate and electric, just as it was beneath the oak tree and in the parking lot where he saved her life. Even separated by two stories and a wall of glass, the pull between them feels strong enough to reshape gravity itself.
Lily presses her palm against the cool window, her fingers spread wide as if she could somehow reach through the barrier and touch him. Below, Damon mirrors the gesture, raising his own hand in a motion that suggests he feels the same desperate need for contact.
For a moment that stretches like eternity, they remain frozen in that tableau—two souls separated by distance and circumstances, yet connected by something that transcends physical barriers. The intensity of their mutual gaze speaks of recognition that goes deeper than conscious understanding, of a bond that exists whether they can explain it or not.
Then Damon's expression shifts, pain flickering across his perfect features as he seems to remember all the reasons why standing beneath her window is dangerous for both of them. His hand falls to his side, and he takes a step backward into deeper shadows.
But he doesn't leave.
As Lily watches from her window seat, torn between the rational voice that tells her to go back to bed and the overwhelming compulsion that keeps her stationed at the glass, she realizes that whatever force has drawn them together is stronger than fear, stronger than logic, and perhaps stronger than either of their abilities to resist.