Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sophia
By late afternoon on Thursday, I’ve been staring at my laptop for so many hours that the words have started to blur together.
Interview prep. Argument frameworks. Potential questions and my answers to them. The same bullet points I’ve reorganized seventeen different ways, as if the perfect structure will make the committee’s decision for them.
My shoulders are somewhere up near my ears, tension knotted so deep I can feel it in my jaw.
I need air. I need to move—anything to stop thinking in circles.
Only when I open the door do I realize how tightly I’m holding my shoulders—and see him waiting on the bench outside my cabin.
Flavius rises the moment he sees me, as though something wired into him refuses to let me face anything alone. His hair is damp from a shower; his T-shirt is clean. The sight hits me with a strange, steady warmth.
“Long day?” he asks quietly.
I let out a tired breath. “Tired brain.” It’s the simplest, truest answer.
His lips twitch, the ghost of a smile meant only for me. “Come inside. Sit with me.”
Inside, my laptop waits open on the table, the documents arranged into neat windows I’ve built and rebuilt three times. The timeline. The file of stolen phrasing. The pattern-of-appropriation notes. A space where my supporting narrative will go once I translate the logic from brain to screen.
But right now my nervous system is… too loud to think.
Not panicked. Just overloaded. Like someone filled my veins with static.
Flavius notices immediately. Of course he does.
He steps behind me and eases me into one of the kitchen chairs. “Sit,” he murmurs.
I do.
His hands rest lightly on my shoulders—steady, warm, intentional.
The pressure is subtle, not guiding, just anchoring.
The same instinct he’s used before, the one that seems to rise in him whenever my breath goes thin.
My lungs respond before I do, drawing deeper, steadier air as if my body recognizes the cue before my mind catches up.
“You knew I needed this,” I whisper.
“I know when you’re slipping,” he says. “And how to keep you here.”
The words land low in my chest, loosening something coiled.
When he moves his thumbs along the base of my skull, a shiver runs through me—not from heat, not from want, but from the strange, holy sensation of being understood without explanation.
“Better,” he murmurs, reading my posture like text.
“A little.”
“You do not have to be stone for them,” he says. “Only steady enough to speak.”
Words jam in my throat. “I keep thinking… what if I mess it up? What if they twist every answer? What if—”
He steps in front of me so I have to look at him.
“Sophia.” Just my name, and the world quiets a little.
“You cannot control them,” he says softly. “You cannot shape their questions. Cannot make them fair. The only thing you command is how you stand.” His fingertips brush my jaw. “And you stand stronger than you think.”
My throat tightens—not with fear this time, but with something like recognition.
“I’m scared,” I admit. The words tremble but don’t fall apart.
“I know,” he says. “Be scared. And speak anyway.”
I nod, because anything more will break me open.
I turn back to the laptop. He pulls a chair beside me—not hovering, not intruding, just present—and we review the points together.
Not the whole dossier; we’ve already dissected the timeline in excruciating detail.
Now it’s just clarity: dates, patterns, quotes she lifted whole-cloth, emails in which I voiced ideas Blackwell later presented as hers, and the places where my autistic communication style was misread as uncertainty.
Flavius doesn’t comment much. He doesn’t need to.
When something matters, his breathing changes.
If something strengthens my case, he taps once on the table.
And when something could hurt me, his jaw shifts the way it does before a fight.
After an hour, my brain feels… aligned. Not calm, but organized.
I close the laptop with a decisive click.
His brow arches. “Finished?”
“For now. Any more and I’ll start rearranging the alphabet out of spite.”
He makes a thoughtful sound. “A fighter knows when to stop sharpening, or the blade will snap.”
A laugh slips out—thin, real. “That comparison died on impact.”
He smirks. “Still got the point across.”
I push to my feet, rolling my shoulders. The whole cabin feels less heavy.
“Thank you,” I say softly.
He shakes his head. “You did this.”
“No,” I correct. “I’m doing this. Present tense.”
His eyes warm—pride, respect, something more.
Something warm and steady settles through me. He doesn’t have to explain. The wheel has been between us for days—turning, tugging, reshaping us. I know which words he’s asking for.
I inhale. Slow. Certain.
“Let the wheel turn.”
The words feel like stepping onto solid ground.
He exhales a quiet, reverent sound. “Yes.”
Outside, evening is settling. Voices drift from the dining hall—silverware clattering, distant laughter, a child insisting they can definitely carry four cups of juice at once. Sanctuary normal.
For a moment, the gravity of tomorrow (or next week, or whenever the bureaucracy decides to notice me again) presses against my ribs. But it doesn’t crush me.
Because I’m not stepping into the unknown alone.
I gather my notebook, slip it into my bag, and turn toward him.
“I think…” I say, choosing the words carefully, “I can be done working for today.”
His smile is small. Real. “Good.”
He reaches for my hand—not grabbing, not claiming, just settling warmth through my palm.
I take it.
We walk into the cooling evening air together, my body humming with fear and certainty in equal measure.
The wheel is turning. And for the first time, I am not bracing to be crushed beneath it. I am standing next to it.
Ready.