Seraphina had been waiting since morning.
She’d finished the book the day before. Usually she closed a book, set it aside, and picked up the next one without a second thought. But this one was different, because Felix had given it to her, and today he was supposed to come back for it.
She’d placed it neatly beside her on the bed.
There was a small stack of others nearby, but she’d already decided which one she’d ask for next: a mystery, maybe, though part of her wanted to see what he’d bring instead of choosing herself.
The thought had crossed her mind several times that morning, and each time it struck her as strange.
She looked toward the door. Nothing.
*He’ll come,* she told herself. Felix always came on Thursday.
Noon passed, then afternoon, and still nothing. Every so often her eyes drifted toward the door, and every time she made herself look away.
He was probably busy, he was a hero, he had missions, he had responsibilities that had nothing to do with her. Maybe the Association had changed his schedule.
Maybe something had come up.
*Maybe he doesn’t want to come.*
The thought arrived uninvited, and she rejected it immediately, it was ridiculous, Felix had never once given her a reason to think it.
He’d come back every time. He’d brought her books, sat with her, listened without ever demanding anything in return, never once looked at her the way everyone else did.
But the longer the door stayed shut, the harder that certainty was to hold onto.
Maybe he was bored of her. Maybe he’d finally noticed how little their conversations actually moved: books, characters, people, trust, choice, the same handful of subjects circling back on themselves week after week and decided the whole exercise wasn’t worth his time anymore.
Or maybe he’d finally looked at her long enough to see what everyone else saw.
Maybe he’d finally arrived at the only conclusion anyone else had ever reached: murderer, monster, someone who couldn’t be fixed, no matter how many books he brought her.
*Maybe he abandoned me.*
The thought hurt, and the hurt itself frightened her more than the thought did.
Why would it hurt? She didn’t need him.
She’d survived seven years without needing anyone, seven years without speaking, without trusting a single person, without expecting anything from the world at all.
So why was the mere possibility of Felix not coming back becoming something she could barely sit still with?
She clenched her jaw. *He said he would come.*
It was a small thought, quieter than the rest, but it held its ground where the others hadn’t. He’d said it, and she had believed him and some stubborn, unfamiliar part of her wasn’t ready to stop.
By late afternoon the thoughts had turned uglier. Maybe he’d decided she wasn’t worth the effort. Maybe he’d finally accepted she couldn’t be rehabilitated. Maybe something better had simply come along.
Every version of it led to the same place, Felix wasn’t coming and by the time she’d arrived there for the tenth time.
The warmth she’d started associating with his presence, without ever quite noticing she’d started, was nowhere left to find.
Only the cold remained, and slowly the thoughts themselves went quiet, until there was nothing left to think at all.
Her face settled back into the expression she’d spent years perfecting.
Cold. Empty. Untouchable.
The face that had kept out questions, sympathy, hatred, people —
the face of someone who had learned, a long time ago, to expect nothing from the world.
*Maybe this is how things are supposed to be,* she thought. *Maybe I made a mistake, letting myself expect something again.*
She looked at the door one more time.
Nothing. Her eyes had gone as flat as the rest of her.
Then — a click. The outer lock.
Her whole body reacted before her mind caught up. The cold broke instantly; hope, then anticipation, then relief, then, just as fast, something sharper: a small, indignant spark of anger.
*Finally.*
He’d made her wait an entire day.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the book.
*Is this some new therapy technique?*
Fine. She’d make him work for it. She’d ignore him: ten minutes, maybe fifteen, read calmly, naturally, answer whatever he said with a single word and let him sit in silence for once, the way she’d been sitting in it all day.
She almost felt satisfied with the plan by the time the door began to open. She picked the book back up, opened it to a random page, and lowered her eyes to pretend she was reading.
The door slid aside.
She waited for the voice she already knew —
*Sorry I’m late,*
maybe a joke, maybe some excuse he’d think was clever and when nothing came, she finally let her eyes lift.
A large figure filled the doorway. Not Felix.
Gideon Rask.
For a fraction of a second, real shock crossed her face before the mask slammed back into place: blank, cold, unreadable, so fast that Gideon didn’t seem to notice anything had slipped at all.
"Seraphina." His eyes stayed on her, and hers stayed just as level on him.
"Today’s session is cancelled." A pause. "Tomorrow’s session is also cancelled."
Her fingers tightened around the book, though nothing else about her moved.
"There has been an emergency involving one of the Association’s active teams," Gideon went on. "Until the situation is resolved, your rehabilitation sessions are suspended."
She said nothing. Her face gave nothing away. Gideon turned toward the door. "I’ll inform you when the schedule resumes." He took one step, then another, his hand already reaching for the control panel.
"Where is Felix?"
The question stopped him mid-motion. He turned back slowly. She hadn’t moved from the bed, and her expression still gave nothing away, but she was looking directly at him now, and he seemed to understand it wasn’t a question he could walk away from.
He answered carefully. "He’s injured." A beat. "Badly." Another. "He was involved in a raid. The circumstances were unusual, his team was separated inside the rift, and Felix encountered the boss monster alone." He let that settle before continuing. "He’s currently unconscious."
The word seemed to hang in the cell longer than it should have.
*Unconscious. Felix. Unconscious.*
"When will he wake up?"
Gideon hesitated. "We don’t know. The medical team stabilized him, his physical injuries are being treated, but the fight put an extreme strain on his body. There’s no confirmed time for his recovery."
She stared at him, and he looked away first, toward the corridor. "The sessions will remain suspended until further notice."
Then he left. The door closed.
*Click.*
Silence returned but it was a different silence than the one she’d been sitting in all day.
Seraphina didn’t move. The book slipped from her fingers and landed on the floor, and she didn’t notice it go.
Gideon’s words kept replaying, over and over, refusing to settle into something she could set aside.
*He’s injured. Badly. Unconscious. We don’t know when he’ll wake up.*
She’d spent the entire day convinced he’d abandoned her that he’d finally grown disgusted with her, or bored of her, or simply decided she wasn’t worth returning to and every piece of that certainty had been wrong.
He hadn’t gotten tired of her. He hadn’t looked at her file and finally seen what everyone else saw. He’d been fighting for his life.
The color drained slowly out of her face. Her lips parted, and she looked, genuinely and visibly, shaken.
She stared at the book lying open on the floor without reading a word of it. *He said he would come.*
And he’d meant it, he’d intended to sit in that chair, ask what she thought of the last book, hand her another one. He had been coming. Something had simply stopped him. Something dangerous, something entirely outside his control.
Her hands curled slowly into fists, and something hot and unfamiliar began rising underneath the anger.
*Why?* Why was something being taken from her again, the moment she’d finally found something she wanted, something as small and harmless as a conversation, a book, a person who kept coming back?
*Why do monsters exist?*
The question surprised her; she’d never once cared about monsters before, never given the rifts or what came out of them a single thought beyond the fact that they existed.
Now she hated them, hated the rifts, hated a world that let people like Felix walk into them in the first place.
Why hadn’t the Association protected him? They’d sent him in. He had a team, he’d told her so himself, so where had they been? Why had he been alone?
They knew what he was. A healer wasn’t supposed to fight alone, and everyone at that Association knew exactly how dangerous a rift could turn.
She stood, and her legs felt strangely unsteady under her. She took one step, then stopped, pressing a hand flat against her chest, where something was twisting in a way she didn’t have a name for.
Anger she knew. Hatred, fear, grief, loneliness, all of that was familiar ground, worn smooth from seven years of walking it.
This wasn’t any of those, or it was all of them at once, tangled together around the thought of Felix lying somewhere unconscious, like something inside her had been torn straight open.
She wanted to know where he was. She wanted to see him. She wanted someone, anyone, to tell her he was going to wake up.
She wanted—
Her eyes widened, and she stopped there, because she didn’t actually know how to finish that sentence. Not yet.
She only knew one thing for certain. For seven years she had wanted nothing from anyone. Now there was exactly one person whose absence had become unbearable, and she was only just beginning to understand how much that frightened her.
She looked toward the closed door. Her voice stayed silent, but she wished, badly, that it wouldn’t.
*Please wake up.*
The thought echoed through the empty cell, and somewhere underneath it, Seraphina understood, that waiting for Thursday had never really been about the books.
It had been about him.