“You hate that you agree with me,” he says, and if there was pride in it I would walk out. There isn’t. There’s weariness and the knowledge of what it costs to be right in the wrong room.
We leave the intake room. He doesn’t touch me, and now I want him to. That’s the perversity of this new world: I like him least when he’s right, and I want him most when he shows me the thing he’s protecting and then refuses to use it to make me softer.
We turn down another corridor and step into a space that makes me stop. The ceiling is higher here, and above it isa rectangle of glass with light spilling down. A garden under a skylight, I think, and it is—ferns and succulents and two small trees in containers that look old enough to have opinions. A woman sits on a bench with a book face-down in her lap and her head tipped back. It takes me a second to realize her eyes are closed and she’s listening, not sleeping. The light on her face turns her into a painting from a century where women had to sit very still to be seen.
“This is for the ones who can’t go outside,” he says softly.
“Because of whom is looking for them,” I say.
“And because of who they are,” he says. “Sometimes outside is a trigger before it’s a promise.”
I step closer to the tree nearest me and touch a leaf with the back of my finger. It’s glossy and thick. It doesn’t care about my touch. I like that, too.
“You built this for people like me,” I say, and the words catch like a snag in silk. My eyes sting before I can stop them. It’s embarrassing to cry in a hallway. It’s more embarrassing to do it with someone who once stood over me with his fingers at my throat and told me to be quiet. But embarrassment isn’t enough to keep it back. Two tears slide and I swipe them with the heel of my hand the way I learned at twelve when adults said they wanted to help and then wrote notes on clipboards instead.
He watches me the way he watched Sol without reaching or stepping away. He stands inside the radius of whatever this is and lets it be a thing.
“Are you angry?” he asks, and I love him a little for that. For not assuming what the water means, for not making it pretty so he can feel heroic.
“At you?” I ask.
“At the fact of it,” he says. “At the way the world makes rooms like this necessary.”
“Yes,” I say, and it’s ugly in my mouth. “Yes. And at you. And at me. For needing it.”
He nods. “That’s honest,” he says, and he sounds like the man in the conservatory that night when he touched the piano keys like confession.
Chapter 43 – Cassian
The glass in this room makes night look like a polished stone. Beyond it, the garden is darker black moving against softer black where the wind troubles the cypresses. If I angle my head, I can see the faint grid of the skylight above the subterranean greenhouse, a dim geometry ghosting through the reflection.
Behind me, the door eases shut. I don’t turn. I know who’s crossed the threshold by the change in the air. The floor of this suite is padded under the oak; the sound of her steps is the sound of skin against breath.
“You didn’t tell me this was here,” she says at last. The words are quiet, not accusatory. I can feel her shoulder against the jamb, her fingers fidgeting with a cufflink she doesn’t wear.
“I didn’t tell you a lot of things,” I answer. “You asked to see more. This is more.”
She waits. In the glass, her reflection is small compared to mine. She’s near the door, one hand still on the handle, the other curled against her ribs like she’s trying not to show me that her body knows before her mind does where we’ve come. She could back out and be in the corridor in one and a half steps. If she closes the door, she’s here with me and the room will close around us the way it was designed to.
“Why here?” she asks, and there’s a roughness under the question that wasn’t there in the music room, or the garden under the skylight, or Sol’s room. The anger is banked. What’s left is curiosity, wariness, and the hard shine of defiance that has not dulled since the first time I heard her voice through a line I shouldn’t have answered.
“Because this is where I work,” I say. “Where I heal people like you.”
The sound she makes is almost a laugh. “People like me,” she repeats. “You’re not wrong. I just want to hear you say what you mean.”
I turn then. Aurora is framed by the door, one foot inside, one out. “What’s behind the panels,” she tips her chin toward the cabinets, “isn’t for show.”
“No,” I say. “Nothing in here is for show.”
She inhales slowly. She lets the door fall the rest of the way into its frame. The seal catches as the air shifts. She isn’t touching the handle anymore. I cross the room and stop at a distance that would be polite anywhere else and provocative here.
“You asked me downstairs why I hide what works,” I say. “I told you about Caldwell. About cameras. That’s one answer.” I nod toward the cabinets. “This is another. Most people don’t understand that the line between control and care runs through the same body.”
Her mouth curves; it’s not a smile. “No, they understand,” she says. “They just pretend they don’t so they can feel clean when they call it monstrous.”
“Do you?” I ask.
“I don’t have clean parts,” she answers. “You already know that.”
