The second we step back inside, the noise hits.
Music slams into my chest like a second heartbeat—too loud, too close. Neon lights fracture across glossy floors, splitting into jagged color that refuses to settle. Every sound overlaps every other sound, like the room is broadcasting on frequencies I was never meant to hear.
My skin prickles. My teeth ache.
A whisper threads through the ringing in my ears.
Not English.
Not sound.
Aetheria.
The name doesn't echo. It presses—like something heavy settling into place behind my eyes.
This is still the IceHouse. Same cracked tables. Same sticky floors. Same smell of grease and spilled beer. But my body doesn't believe that anymore. My body thinks we crossed a threshold.
Will holds the door open.
I slip past him quickly, careful not to brush his arm. My nerves can't handle another spark—not when a single handshake felt like grabbing a live wire and flipping the universe back on.
I feel him looking at me.
I don't look back.
Shelby immediately latches onto my hand.
"Bathroom," she chirps, tugging.
But Evan stops her, hand on her wrist like a disappointed PTA dad.
"Hold on. What do you want to eat? Drinks? Because you two will disappear in there for forty-five minutes and then I will starve."
For once… he isn't wrong.
Shelby leans up and whispers something into his ear. Whatever it is, Evan turns the color of marinara and forgets how lungs work.
Behind us, Will's voice—low, even.
"Pizza. Wings. Beer. For everyone. Sound good?"
I nod without looking at him. "That's fine. Thank you."
He's standing too close.
Heat creeps up my bare arms, sparking along my skin like memory trying to wake up. Not desire—recognition. I grab Shelby by the wrist and drag her toward the bathroom before my body does something unforgivable.
The door swings shut behind us.
The light is brutal—too white, too reflective. The whole room smells like cheap soap and panic.
Shelby's cheer collapses instantly.
"What the hell was that with you two and What the hell! I can't believe Evan doesn't talk about me to his family," she groans, pacing. "He's mentioned me. That's nothing. I'm just a decoration."
"Shelby." I brace myself against the sink, completely ignoring her question about Will and I and what just happened. "Guys don't gossip like we do. 'He's mentioned you' is basically Shakespeare in dude."
She freezes. "Really?"
"Really."
Her shoulders drop. Relief floods her face.
For a moment, we're just two girls in a mirror—fixing hair, touching up gloss, pretending our biggest concern is how we look under fluorescent lighting.
Except I'm not really here.
Part of me is still outside—caught in Will's voice, his eyes, that click. The way he said my name like it belonged to him once. The way my chest responded before my brain could intervene.
Something is happening to me.
Not wrong.
Not right.
Just inevitable.
I adjust my shirt without thinking, fabric slipping lower as if my body remembers something my mind refuses to name, and the war inside my ribs surges instead of quieting.
Shelby narrows her eyes.
"You like him."
I choke. "Absolutely not."
"You just adjusted your shirt for him."
"I adjusted my shirt because I'm not a barn animal."
She does not believe me. Not even a little.
Then her voice softens.
"You look like you're about to bolt. You're allowed to like someone again. It doesn't make you stupid."
The words land harder than she intends.
"I know," I say, because anything else would crack me open.
She reaches to fix a stray hair behind my ear—then freezes.
Her hand hovers.
Her eyes lock on something over my shoulder.
The bathroom door.
Cracked open—just an inch.
Enough to see out. Enough to be seen.
For half a second, I swear I caught a flash of ice-blue. Dream-blue.
Then it's gone.
Cold spears up my spine.
When I blink, the doorway is empty.
"Hey," Shelby says carefully. "You okay?"
I force a nod. "Let's go."
The hallway hums with laughter and clinking glasses. No Will. No Evan.
But the world feels…off. Like time is dragging in some places and sprinting in others.
By the time Shelby and I make it back to the table, half the food is already gone. A crime scene of bones and barbecue smears, napkins, and one lone carrot stick looking traumatized.
I stop dead. "Seriously?"
Shelby shrugs, way too forgiving. "We interrupted their sacred man-ritual of food. Their survival instincts kicked in."
"You said we were meeting up, not storming the gates of testosterone."
Before she can fire back, the waitress appears with a second platter—fresh, steaming, glorious. Wings glisten under the bar lights like a divine offering.
Will nods toward it. "Those are yours. We told them not to touch that plate until you got back."
My irritation evaporates on contact.
"You…saved us wings?" I ask.
A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "You looked like you'd need them."
Warmth blooms traitorously in my chest, bright and fast, like somebody lit a match to something dry that's been waiting. "You read minds now?" I mutter.
His eyes hold mine for a second too long. "Sometimes."
The way he says it is light, joking—but something deep in my bones doesn't hear it as a joke at all. Something older folds toward his voice the way metal leans toward true north.
I focus on the food like it's a matter of survival, piling wings onto a plate. The smell of sauce and char and heat grounds me better than any exercise we've done at Northwood. Meat, salt, grease. Simple things. Mortal things.
Shelby slides in next to Evan, which leaves one seat.
Next to Will.
Of course.
I sit, leaving the tiniest possible sliver of distance between us—but distance doesn't exist in a narrow booth built for four. His body heat seeps across the gap. Distance doesn't exist in a booth built for four.
The waitress rattles off drink options. Her voice warps, muffled by the static roaring in my head.
Then—
A word pulses inside my mind.
Not sound.
Not thought.
Vibration.
Anámnisi.
Memory.
Greek.
I flinch hard enough to jostle the table. No one else reacts.
The restaurant fractures. Light splits. Shelby's laugh stretches too long.
Will doesn't move.
But something in his expression breaks—recognition, dread, regret colliding all at once.
Something stirs behind my ribs. Too deep. Too familiar.
I grip the edge of the table until my knuckles burn.
Shelby taps my shin. "Earth to Angela. You alive?"
"Yeah," I lie.
Will leans just close enough that only I hear him.
"Tell me when you remember."
I shake my head—small. Precise.
"I don't."
Pain flashes across his face. Real. Sharp. Uncontrolled.
"Then I shouldn't be here," he whispers.
"But you are."
The words slip out before I can stop them.
His breath stutters—half laugh, half surrender.
"I will be now."
Drinks arrive. Glasses clattering on the wooden table. Life resumes like nothing happened.
Shelby and Evan dissolve into their own orbit—knees touching, private jokes, easy warmth.
Will and I are the opposite.
Two magnets held too close. Never touching. Both shaking.
My phone buzzes.
Cassie: you need to leave. something shifted.
Cold floods my lungs.
Me: Shifted how?
Cassie: fate doesn't like delays. he wasn't supposed to find you yet. the board jumped.
My pulse trips.
Me: What does that mean?
Dots blink.
Then nothing.
I lift my eyes.
Will is already watching me.
Not with hunger.
With curiosity.
As if he agrees with Cassie. As if the world just pivoted beneath my feet and there's no pivoting back.
Shelby laughs. Neon pulses. Music surges.
But for me—everything locks into place.
The girl I was before tonight is gone. No pretending this is normal. No outrunning the door fate carved into my bones.
Will is the beginning of everything I tried not to remember from my nightmares.
And whether I'm ready or not—this is the point of no return.