The cell feels smaller now.
Not because the walls have moved, but because something in me has. The air presses closer, warmer than it should be in a place built from stone and iron, carrying the quiet rhythm of her breathing alongside mine. Every sound lands differently—the faint scrape of fabric when she shifts, the soft drag of her fingers across her own arm as she settles her weight, the subtle way our movements echo off the walls and return just a fraction delayed, like the space is forcing us to hear each other more clearly than we want to.
I lean back against the stone, the cold seeping through my shoulders and down my spine, grounding in a way that feels necessary after everything that just unraveled. My hands are still, but not relaxed, the tension in them coiled tight beneath the surface, waiting for direction that hasn’t formed yet.
She watches me.
I can feel it before I look.
When I do, she doesn’t look away.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Lyria says, her voice quiet but steady, her head tilted slightly as she studies me like I’m something she’s already halfway figured out.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“No,” she replies, taking a slow step closer, the soft shift of her boots against the stone loud enough in the silence to track every inch of distance. “You’re worse when you don’t.”
I let out a breath that almost turns into something sharper, but I catch it before it does, dragging it back into something controlled.
“I’m working through it.”
She stops just in front of me, close enough now that I can feel the warmth of her without touching her, close enough that the air between us feels like it belongs to both of us instead of the cell.
“No,” she says, softer now, but more certain. “You’re trying to.”
That lands.
Of course it does.
I look at her properly then, taking in the details I didn’t let myself focus on before—the faint tension still held in her shoulders, the way her hair falls unevenly from where it’s been pulled back and loosened again, the small marks at her wrists where the rope must have pressed harder than it should have. There’s dirt still clinging to the edge of her sleeve, a thin line of dried blood along her forearm that doesn’t belong to her.
“You should sit,” I say, the words coming out quieter than I intend.
She huffs a small breath, something close to a laugh.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” I reply.
“Neither are you.”
That almost earns something from me.
Almost.
She studies me for another second, then steps in closer, closing the distance fully this time, her hand lifting slowly, giving me enough time to stop her if I want to.
I don’t.
Her fingers brush my jaw first, light, careful, like she’s checking something instead of touching me, her thumb dragging just slightly along the edge of where the impact must have landed earlier.
“You let him get in your head,” she says, her tone softer now, not accusing, just—observing.
I don’t answer right away.
Because she’s not wrong.
“He didn’t have to try very hard,” I say finally.
