Felix had just finished lunch when his communicator rang.
He glanced at the screen.
*Mom*
That alone was enough to make him suspicious.
He answered anyway. "Morning, Mom. What did I do this time?"
"Felix!" Her voice came through far too cheerful for this hour.
"Why do you sound happy?"
"I have good news."
"That sentence has never once been followed by good news."
"Don’t be dramatic."
"I learned it from you."
A brief silence, and then Lucia Valerius spoke with the determination of a woman who’d rehearsed this. "I found someone for you."
Felix set down his fork. "No."
"You haven’t even heard—"
"No."
"She’s from an excellent family."
"No."
"An A-rank awakened. Twenty-seven. Stable career. Very good personality."
"I’m hanging up."
"Felix!"
He stopped, hand hovering over the call button. His mother sighed. "Please."
That word was different from the rest. She rarely begged him for anything, and he leaned back in his chair, caught off guard by it.
"I only want you to attend the meeting," she said. "That’s all."
"I’ve told you, I’m not interested in marriage."
"I know."
"Then why are we doing this?"
"Because you’re twenty-eight."
"That’s your entire argument?"
"Your brother is going to be a father soon."
"Congratulations to him."
"And Liana has a boyfriend."
"Congratulations to her too."
"So everyone in this family is moving forward except you."
"I’m doing important work."
"You’re killing monsters and spending your weekends in a prison."
"That’s not technically inaccurate."
"*Felix.*"
He sighed. Her voice softened. "Just attend the meeting. You don’t have to agree to anything, and you never have to see her again after. If you don’t like her, say no and that’s the end of it."
He said nothing.
"Please," she said again. "For me."
That was unfair, and she knew exactly which weapon she’d reached for. "Fine."
"Really?" Her voice brightened instantly.
"One meeting. And if this turns into another interrogation about my marriage prospects—"
"It won’t."
"Promise?"
"Absolutely," she said, and he didn’t believe her for a second. "When?"
"This evening."
He nearly choked on his coffee. "This evening?"
"She’s already agreed. I’ve sent you her information."
His communicator chimed with an incoming profile: A-rank awakened, twenty-seven, well-educated, good family, accomplished, apparently pleasant.
On paper she was close to perfect, which somehow made him even less interested.
"Just attend," his mother said. "That’s all I’m asking."
He stared at the profile a moment longer. "Fine."
"Thank you."
The call ended. Felix leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
That evening, Felix arrived at the restaurant his mother had picked, one of the more prestigious establishments in Valemont City, of course. Lucia Valerius would never have settled for anything less.
He’d dressed deliberately plain: a black shirt and dark trousers. No suit. No tie. He was aiming for dinner with a friend rather than marriage interview.
His opponent, unfortunately, had come far better prepared.
She was already seated and stood as he approached, elegant without trying too hard, calm, confident.
"Felix Valerius?"
"That obvious?"
"A little," she said, smiling.
"Then I’ll assume you’re the woman my mother’s been trying to sell me to."
Her eyebrows shot up before she laughed. "Your mother described it a little more diplomatically than that."
"I’m sure she did."
He pulled out the chair opposite her. "Then we’re both victims here."
That got another laugh, and the conversation from there was easier than he’d expected.
They talked about work, her time as an A-rank, rift missions, the mountain of paperwork every hero secretly hated, the genuinely terrible food on long deployments.
Felix found himself relaxing. She was likeable. Sharp, funny, easy to talk to.
There was nothing wrong with her at all.
Which was, somehow, exactly the problem.
When dinner wound down, she looked at him. "I enjoyed this."
"So did I."
"Would you want to meet again?"
He could have lied, it would have been easy enough. Instead he gave her an apologetic smile. "You’re a good person."
"But?"
"But I don’t think I can give you what you’re actually looking for."
She studied him a moment. "You’re not interested in relationships at all?"
"Something like that."
She didn’t push. "Then I hope you find whatever it is you are looking for."
"Thank you," he said, and meant it. They said their goodbyes, and Felix walked home alone.
The streets were bright under the evening lights: couples laughing past him, a young man outside a restaurant nervously clutching a bouquet as a woman ran up and threw her arms around him. Felix watched for a moment, then looked away, his footsteps slowing.
Because suddenly he wasn’t seeing them anymore. He was seeing a classroom, nine years gone.
He’d been sixteen on his first day at the Hero Academy, and it had been terrifying: not the combat drills, not the instructors, not even the other students. It was the fact that he’d awakened as a healer.
A support class, in a family of combat heroes who’d never quite known what to do with the one Valerius who couldn’t level a building.
Then he met his combat instructor. Strong, confident, and unlike his friends, never once treated his healing affinity like something lesser.
She corrected his mistakes and praised his progress, and once, after he’d successfully healed a badly injured training partner, she’d smiled at him and said, "Good work, Felix."
Two words. For a sixteen-year-old, they might as well have been a declaration of eternal love.
The crush started small and innocent and never really went away, it just got quieter, and deeper, over the years that followed. He trained harder. He got stronger. He quietly imagined confessing to her after graduation, and by nineteen he’d finally made up his mind: he would tell her, whatever happened next.
He remembered that day with total clarity. The academy halls were nearly empty with graduation approaching.
He’d spent the whole morning rehearsing what to say. *I like you* — too simple. *I’ve admired you for years* — too heavy. *Would you consider going out with me?* — closer. He’d even bought a small gift, nothing extravagant, just something.
He was walking toward her office when he heard two instructors talking around the corner.
"Did you hear? She got married."
"Really? When?"
"Six months ago. Apparently they kept it quiet."
Felix stopped walking. Then came the second line, delivered just as casually.
"She’s pregnant too. Three months along, I think."
The corridor suddenly felt enormous, and painfully quiet. He didn’t remember walking away, or where he went afterward, only that he ended up alone on the academy rooftop that evening, the gift still sitting in his pocket.
He never gave it to her. Never said a word.
There was nothing left to say, she’d already built a life with someone else, and he’d never so much as told her it existed.
He’d been sixteen when he fell in love, and nineteen when that love died without ever having lived at all. Somehow that hurt more than he’d wanted to admit, then or since.
For years after that, Felix stopped trying.
Every interest that came his way, he quietly deflected. Every proposal that came through his family, he turned down.
Friends who tried to set him up got politely, firmly redirected, until eventually everyone learned to stop asking at all.
He told himself romance wasn’t worth the trouble, that he was happier alone, that his life was already full enough without it and after enough years, he’d almost believed it.
Almost.
He stopped walking, standing now under the lights outside his own building, his mind drifting somewhere, to a silent girl in an underground cell. Seven years without a word to anyone, and yet the moment he’d walked into her cell, something in her had shifted. She’d spoken.
She’d simply wanted him to stay.
Felix frowned at the thought. "That’s going to be a problem."
He rode the elevator up, leaning against the wall as the doors closed. He didn’t understand Seraphina, not yet, but for the first time in years, there was someone he actually wanted to understand.
His communicator rang the second he stepped into his apartment. His mother’s name lit up the screen. He answered. "So?"
"She was nice," he said.
Lucia gasped. "Really?"
"Yes."
"Then you’ll see her again?"
"No."
"*Felix!*"
He smiled. "Good night, Mom." He ended the call before she could argue, and silence settled back over the apartment.
He walked out onto the balcony. The city stretched out below him, endless and glowing. Nine years ago he’d decided love wasn’t worth the cost, and he’d lived by that decision ever since.
But somewhere underneath all of it, something had started to stir.
Curiosity.
And Felix had never once in his life been able to leave an interesting thing alone.
Especially the dangerous ones.
He smiled faintly at the city lights. "See you tomorrow, Seraphina."