“You look tired,” I say quietly. I don’t mean it as criticism or pity, just an observation that’s impossible to ignore. The shadows under her eyes, the slump in her posture, the way her breathing keeps hitching as though she’s holding something back, it all points to someone fraying at the edges.
Her reaction is instantaneous and sharp. Her head lifts, eyes flashing with hurt and resentment twisted so tightly together they almost read as anger.
“Don’t pretend you care,” she snaps. Her voice isn’t loud, but it cuts deeper because of that restraint. “You got what you wanted.”
My shoulders tense before I can stop them. “What exactly do you think I wanted?”
She doesn’t hesitate. The words pour out of her in asingle breath, as though they’ve been building and building, waiting for any crack in the moment to burst free.
“You humiliated me,” she says, voice trembling around the edges even as she tries to hold it steady. “You proved to yourself that… that I’m something you can play with.”
The accusation hits harder than I expect. Not because it’s cruel, but because she believes it, believes I would do that to her. The idea sits like a stone in my chest, unwanted and heavy. For a moment I can’t say anything; I’m caught between the urge to defend myself and the sting of knowing she thinks I’m capable of that kind of intention.
I step toward her without realizing I’ve moved, then force myself to slow down, to be deliberate. The last thing she needs is me looming over her again. Still, I can’t stay across the room while she folds into herself like this. She sits on the bed with her arms wrapped so tightly around her torso it looks painful, as if holding herself together is taking everything she has left. Her gaze lowers again, fixed somewhere near her knees, refusing to rise to meet the truth in my expression.
“Harper,” I say, keeping my voice low in a way I hope grounds rather than startles. She doesn’t look up, but I catch the slight hitch of her breath, the tiny shift that tells me she heard something in my tone that wasn’t what she expected.
The room feels too still, the air too thick with the weight of what she’s not saying. Rain whispers against the window, a soft rhythm that only heightens the silence between us. I take one more step forward, not crowding her, just close enough that she can’t pretend I’m not trying, not reaching, not hurting a little myself.
“Look at me,” I say, not a command, not a demand. A request. A quiet one.
But she doesn’t lift her eyes. Her grip tightens on her arms instead, as though bracing for whatever she thinkscomes next. And in that small, pained gesture, I can finally see it: she’s not angry because I touched her in the alcove. She’s angry because she let me. Because some part of her wanted me to. Because she doesn’t trust herself, and she’s terrified that I took advantage of that.
And gods help me, the realization makes my chest ache.
She stays silent for several breaths, shoulders rigid, eyes locked somewhere on the floor between us. I wait, trying not to move, trying not to force anything out of her, not after everything she’s endured these last few days, not after the way she walked into this room like she’d been holding her breath since dawn. The storm outside rattles faintly through the window, a low rolling sound that fills the heavy quiet between us.
Then, finally, she looks up.
The exhaustion in her eyes is no longer hidden, no longer buried under anger or guarded silence. It’s raw and sharp and aching, and the moment her gaze meets mine, something in her fractures.
“Do you have any idea what it feels like,” she begins, voice low and shaking but steady in its determination, “to get thrown into this world?”
Her fingers uncurl from her sleeves as she speaks, as though the force of her words pries them loose.
“To know there was always some kind of order, some kind of set of rules that kept everything predictable, even if it was miserable, and suddenly I’m supposed to act like this place is home? That I belong here? That I should think, behave, breathe like a Vireldan when all I knew before this was surviving the day?”
Each word lands like a stone in my chest. She isn’t accusing me now, she’s telling the truth she’s held under her tongue since the moment she stepped foot on these grounds. The truth no one else bothered to understand.
Her breath hitches, and she keeps going.
“How do you think it looks, Sebastian,” she asks, her gaze burning into mine, “when you keep watching me? Circling me? Staring at me like you’re trying to dissect something I don’t even understand about myself yet?”
I open my mouth, but she cuts me off with a shake of her head.
“How do you think it felt for me,” she presses, voice tightening, “when I so easily let you-”
She stops. Swallows hard. The sentence hangs between us like a live wire sparking at both ends.
For a moment, she can’t say it, but the silence says it for her.
“Being that careless,” she continues eventually, quieter now, shame threading through the words she doesn’t want to give voice to. “Letting your guard down like that… it gets you killed. Where I come from, you don’t let someone get close. You don’t surrender control, even for a second.” Her hands press to her knees as if grounding herself. “So tell me, was it worth it? Was humiliating me like that worth it to you?”
“Harper-” I try again, but she barrels forward.
“How many people did you tell?” she demands, anger rising again, not the sharp, cutting anger from before, but fear wearing the shape of fury to protect itself. “Who knows? Who did you run to after the library? How many-”
Her questions keep coming, stacking one atop another, brittle and breathless, like she’s trying to build a wall between us using nothing but hurt and panic. Each word sharpens the fear she won’t say outright. Each accusation twists deeper, fueled not by anger alone but by the terror of what that alcove momentmeant to her.
