Chapter Fifteen
Sophia
The shower helped quiet the panic. Not completely—nothing ever does that—but enough.
I dress. Make coffee. Organize my bag with mechanical precision. My body moves through the familiar routines, but my mind keeps circling the same narrow orbit.
Last night: lantern light, music, Flavius’s hands steady at my waist. Dancing. Joy. The promise of something good.
This morning: Blackwell’s email. “Under the right names.” “Preliminary contributions.” The shape of something wrong.
The two sensations, joy and dread, sit side by side in my chest without resolving, as if they’re both true but neither knows how to take precedence.
I should tell Flavius.
The thought arrives fully formed, deceptively simple. But when I imagine actually doing it—standing in front of him, watching his face change—the calculation fractures.
If I tell him, he will listen. Completely. He always does.
And then he will shift—not away, never away, but toward me. He’ll brace. He’ll start thinking in contingencies and protections and strategies, the way he does when someone he cares about is threatened.
Whatever this is between us won’t feel like two people choosing each other in open space.
It will feel as though I’ve handed him a burden.
So, I decide to wait.
When I step outside, the world is bright. Too bright. Birds call to each other in the trees and the sanctuary is already busy with volunteers moving equipment.
I see him across the courtyard.
My body reacts before my mind can intervene—muscles loosening, breath easing, an instinctive orientation toward him like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
Then I stop.
Because I can’t cross the courtyard carrying two truths I haven’t sorted yet.
He spots me. His posture changes immediately—softening, attention narrowing. He starts toward me, then stops when he reads whatever is on my face.
We lift our hands in greeting, a small mirrored gesture that would look ordinary to anyone watching.
Neither of us crosses the distance.
Later that afternoon, I nearly collide with him on the walkway between buildings.
He straightens instantly. He’s been pacing—or waiting—or trying to pretend he wasn’t doing either.
“Sophia,” he says softly. “Are you well?”
“I’m okay,” I answer automatically.
The lie tastes bitter.
He studies my face with that unsettling accuracy that makes hiding feel pointless.
“I was just walking,” he adds, though we both know that’s untrue.
We stand here too long. The kind of moment that should tip into honesty if I were built differently.
But I’m built for analysis. For pattern recognition. For assembling data until it tells a story safe enough to believe.
And this—us—is not data.
Then something in his face shifts—not anger, but decision.
“Sophia,” he says quietly. “I will not push. But I need to know: do you want me to stay away? Or do you want me close while you work through… whatever this is?”
His directness cuts through my spiral.
He’s not asking what’s wrong. He’s asking what I need.
That kindness nearly undoes me.
“I need a few days,” I manage. “To think. To sort something out. It’s not about you… or about us. But I need to figure out how to handle it before I can…” I gesture helplessly between us.
His jaw works. “You can tell me anything. You know this.”
“I know. I just… not yet. Please.”
The silence stretches. I can see him processing, deciding whether to push.
Finally, he nods. “Three days,” he says. “Then I ask again.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“But Sophia—” He waits until I meet his eyes. “If you need me, even while taking space, you call. Yes?”
“Yes.”
He reaches out, carefully, and brushes his knuckles against mine. Once. Then he steps back.
“Three days,” he repeats.
Finally, he nods, careful and restrained, as if any sudden motion might fracture something already fragile.
The next morning, the quiet has changed texture.
Not absence. Presence.
Something unsaid has taken up residence between us, and it moves with us now.
We spend the morning in Conference Room B, going over the latest healing-technique notes. Or trying to.
Normally, our sessions have an easy rhythm—question, answer, demonstration, insight. His explanations are precise. My questions sharpen the focus. Our synergy is effortless.
Today, everything catches.
Words snag. Pauses stretch too long. I ask him to repeat things I would normally absorb the first time, and each repetition adds a fine edge to his attention.
He notices. Of course he notices.
“You are… quiet today,” he says gently after the third repetition. “Different.”
“I’m just tired,” I reply.
It isn’t entirely untrue. But it avoids the center of the problem so neatly it might as well be a lie.
His fingers flex on top of the table, a small, controlled movement, the way he grounds himself before sparring. “If your strength is low—”
“No. I’m fine.”
The phrase lands brittle between us, precise, bloodless. The familiar shield.
He doesn’t believe me. I can tell by the way his eyes linger, cataloging posture, breath, and micro-expressions.
But he lets it go.
He always respects my boundaries, even when the restraint costs him something. Even when I wish, just once, he’d push hard enough to force honesty.
We continue, but the work never quite locks in. My pen scratches notes that I immediately forget. His explanations slow, as if he’s watching me more than the material, trying to figure out what changed.
By lunchtime, the dining hall is a blur of sound and motion. I sit alone, pretending to read while my food goes untouched.
Across the room, he sits with Quintus and Thrax, laughing at something Thrax says, but the sound is wrong.
It’s thinner. Controlled. A version of his performance laugh—not the arena mask, but close enough that it chills me.
He glances over.
I look away first.
The guilt that follows is sharp and immediate.
By the third morning, the quiet has learned how to breathe.
It has weight now. Shape.
I avoid my inbox entirely. The unopened emails from Dr. Blackwell sit like pressure valves I refuse to touch. Every research thought fractures halfway through, branching into possibilities that all loop back to the same place.
By evening, the avoidance feels like its own kind of weight.
Back in my room, I sit at my desk and open my laptop.
The emails are still there. Waiting. Loud in the silence.
I don’t open them.
Instead, I close the laptop and press my palms against my knees until my breathing steadies.
I can still feel the phantom pressure of the stable wall at my back. His hands bracketing my hips. The heat of his thigh between mine. The way he whispered “I have you” before he kissed me like he’d been starving for it.
Beneath it all—beneath the joy and dread braided together—a single thought pulses, quiet and unsteady:
If I tell him everything, he will carry it with me.
He will shoulder part of it without hesitation. Without complaint.
And whatever this fragile, growing thing between us is will change shape under the weight.
I am not ready to watch something tender become heavy.
So I choose silence.
Just for now.
And I hope tomorrow will feel easier.
Even though I know it won’t.