Kai looks at me.
Reallylooks—not assessing, not calculating, just... seeing.
I don't know what he finds in my expression.
Maybe the exhaustion that goes deeper than physical. Maybe the grief I've been carrying for ten years. Maybe the desperate, aching need for connection that I've been denying for so long I almost forgot it existed.
I smile.
Not the manic one.
Not the sharp one.
Just tired.
I walk over to the nearest armchair—a plush single-seater, probably worth more than my entire existence—and sink into it. His whiskey glass comes with me, cradled in my hands like a talisman.
The ice has mostly melted.
The amber liquid swirls when I move the glass, catching the light, refracting it into patterns that are almost hypnotic.
One-two-three-four.
My eyes track the movement.
"I'm lonely," I admit, and the words taste strange on my tongue. Foreign. Like a language I forgot how to speak. "The thrill of Ruthless Academy gets old when it's all you have. The violence, the survival, the constant need to prove you deserve to exist... it stops being exciting. Starts being..."
I trail off.
Search for the right word.
"Empty."
The glass continues to swirl.
"Now I can't dance." The statement is flat. Matter-of-fact. The kind of calm that comes from accepting something devastating as permanent. "Can't send my letters. Can't do anything that used to make life feel worth living. So then... what's the point?"
The question hangs in the air.
What's the point?
It's not rhetorical.
It's the question I've been asking myself for weeks—months, maybe. The question I tried to answer with poison and violence and one final performance in front of the men who wanted me dead.
I lower the glass onto the side table.
Lift my legs.
Curl into myself on the chair—knees to chest, arms wrapped around them, chin resting on top. The position is defensive. Childish. The pose of someone trying to make themselves small enough that the universe might forget to hurt them.
"But death was sad too."
The words come out quiet.
Fragile.
"All I did was float. Exist in this... void. And I saw my parents."
