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“Open your eyes for me. Open them, and show me how strong you are.”

I don’t even know if she can hear me. But I continue talking to her as my thumb brushes under her cheek. “Come on, now. You have to open those eyes and scream at me again.”

She’s still breathing, she’s just out of it and it pisses me off because I wasn’t here. I promised her that as long as I was here, the monsters would never reach her and I failed.

Footsteps rush back in. Hayzel kneels beside me holding out a cloth with shaky hands and the red box. I take it without looking and guide it toward her wound. “Hold this. Don’t press too hard, okay?”

She nods and I ask Bennett to open the kit in the meantime. “Gauze, now,” I say without taking my eyes off her.

Everything after this happens in a blur. I was on my knees next to her, stabilizing her, and the next second I was standing up, with her in my arms. I don’t remember lifting her up or starting to move to the hallway. I just remember asking Hayzel to not stay alone tonight, and Bennett saying she’s going to stay with him.

“Please take care of her.” Was the only thing I remember her saying. Like she trusted me enough to do so when I actually am the worst at taking care of her.

Mireya’s head stays steady against my arm the whole way to my office and it’s the only thing I focus on. The door opens and I carefully lay her down on the small sofa next to the window. But my hands don’t leave her right away. I check her breathing again, then her pulse, then her face.

And when I saw her eyebrows moving, I finally let out a long breath I was holding. Only then do I step back and grab her hand to kiss it. Holding it like it’s the only thing that matters.

“You fucking scared me.”

But she doesn’t answer. I count her breaths without even wanting to. One, Two, Three, Four… I keep counting, looking at her face, deciding if the anger I felt toward the person who hurt her was stronger than the worry I feel right now.

Then her hand moves and I take a step back. She wakes like she’s been dropped back into her body instead of returning to it. There’s a pause before anything makes sense to her. Eyes open, but not focusing, ceiling first, then the edge of the room, then me, like I’m just another object she has to place correctly.

Her hand goes to her temple before she even sits up properly. Fingers press into the bandage, then stop halfway. “What happened?” she asks softly.

“Someone hurt you.”

She exhales through her nose as if that explanation is inconvenient, “I remember being hit,” she replies. “I mean why am I here?”

“You were unconscious.”

“I’m fine.” She pushes herself up too fast. I see the exact moment her body disagrees with her decision. Her shoulders stiffen, her breath catches, and she fixes it immediately like correcting it erases it from ever happening. “I’m fine,” she repeats.

“No you’re not,” I say.

That should end it, but it doesn’t, because she looks at me properly now. And I can feel it again, the space that’s been missing for days. Her absence.

“You’re checking on everything I do now?”

“Yes,” I say without thinking. “Yes,” I repeat, because I don’t want to soften it. “Because I’m fucking worried. Because you’ve been disappearing every night from the academy and coming back like nothing happens and I’m supposed to just ignore it.”

“You’re tracking me,” she spits out.

“I’m not tracking you.”

“You are when you say it like that,” she replies, swinging her legs over the edge of the sofa like she’s done being contained by this room. “You don’t get to do that,” she adds.

“Do what?”

“Act like you care only when it suits you.”

I step closer without meaning to, and she notices immediately. We both stop like we’ve agreed on a boundary neither of us wants to respect. “You’ve been avoiding me,” I say.

“I haven’t.”

“You have.”

Her laugh is short before she speaks again, “I don’t want to talk to you, and you still show up when I don’t even need you.”