Chapter Text
Today is the day.
That was the first thought in Stelle’s mind when she cracked open her eyes. The morning light was harsh and unforgiving, casting the room in an odd gray tone. For a moment she just lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out why the weight in her chest felt heavier than usual. It wasn’t the sort of exhaustion that came from running around Styxian puzzle dungeons or getting knocked flat by a voidranger—it was quieter, more insidious. The kind that seeped into her bones and made everything feel like it wasn’t worth moving for.
Mem was already up, reading one of the books that Dan Heng had finished last week. The book was half the size of her, giving the illusion of a floating tome with two big pink fluffy ears sticking out of the top. Mem placed the book down, dog earring the page (something that would surely piss off Dan Heng later) before waving to Stelle.
“Rise and shine, Stelle!” Mem’s chipper voice rang out. “Today’s the day you regain your freedom!”
Stelle didn’t answer. She pushed herself upright, stretching the stiffness out of her neck, and stared blankly at the floor. She tried to summon the kind of relief Mem was talking about, but all she got was the creeping sensation that her stomach was about to drop through the floorboards.She wasn’t sure if she felt groggy because she had overslept or because she simply didn’t want to face the day. She waited for the pressure in her chest to dissipate. It didn’t.
She groaned and pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead. Freedom. That was what this was supposed to be, wasn’t it? She had eagerly looked forward to the end of this circus for days, to put an end to the ridiculous speculation and pointed stares. The ease she expected to feel was nowhere to be found. Instead, she felt like she was waiting in line for her execution.
Mem kept talking—something about breakfast, something about how smooth everything was going to be. Stelle barely registered it.
The sound of the door creaking open saved her from answering. Dan Heng’s footsteps padded across the floor, calm and measured as always. He was holding a small paper bag, the faint buttery smell already giving away its contents.
“I picked up breakfast,” he said simply, setting the bag on the counter. “Pastries. From the vendor near the plaza.”
Stelle finally threw her legs over the edge of the bed, rubbing her face with both hands before dragging herself toward the table. Dan Heng handed her one of the pastries—a flaky, golden thing that should’ve made her mouth water—but her smile was too tight, stretched thin across her face like brittle glass. Her throat felt dry but sticky at the same time. Maybe she was coming down with some disease.
“Thanks.” She sat at the dining table, unwrapped the pastry, and stared at it. Poked it once with her finger. Then again. The flaky layers crumbled slightly, scattering flakes like ashes.
She had no appetite.
Dan Heng slid into the chair across from her, pouring himself a glass of water. “Oh,” he said after a moment, as though remembering something he’d almost forgotten. “Phainon told me to tell you to meet him at the Plaza. By the city entrance.”
That got her attention. Her head snapped up. “You saw him this morning?”
“Yes,” Dan Heng replied evenly, taking a sip. “On my walk. He was headed out of the bathhouse. He asked me to pass the message.”
Stelle’s heart jumped stupidly in her chest. “Did he say anything else?”
“No. Just that.”
That was it? No snarky afterthought, no overly polite greeting for her, no dumb ‘I can’t wait to see you’? Just that? She shoved down the disappointment rising in her throat before it could take shape. But since when did she get nostalgic for Phainon’s overly sappy conjectures?
“Right. Thanks,” she muttered, pushing her plate away and standing up.
Dan Heng’s eyes flicked to the untouched pastry. His eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t want it? I can get you something else.”
“No.” Her voice came out sharper than intended, clipped and brittle. She adjusted her shirt, pretending the motion explained away her tone. “I’m just not hungry.”
If Dan Heng noticed the cracks, he didn’t press. That was one thing she appreciated about him: he let her at least pretend for the sake of her pride.
Stelle grabbed her phone, her fingers moving in muscle memory to open up an all-too-familiar text chain. Before she could even think, she had typed up a draft, her thumb hovering over the send button.
‘Hey, are you sure about this?’
Her chest tightened as she stared at the message, and before she could second-guess herself further, she backspaced every letter. What the hell was she doing? Of course this needed to happen. This was the plan. Her plan. That was the deal. There was nothing to question.
Instead, she sent the message that she had to.
—--------------------
<STELLE> to <PHAINON>
Stelle: ill be there in 10
—--------------------
The response came so fast she swore Phainon must have had his phone in hand, waiting for her text. Something about that mental image made her feel warm.
—--------------------
Phainon: Alright, partner!
Phainon: What's the plan?
—--------------------
Her fingers worked, giving this little thought.
—--------------------
Stelle: we keep it simple
Stelle: U get mad at me, I retaliate, then we dip
Stelle: easy
—--------------------
A beat later, his reply popped up. It was just a thumbs up to her message. Stelle stared at the little icon, an irrational flare of irritation bubbling up in her chest. A thumbs-up. Really? That was it? She almost laughed, except there was nothing funny about the hollowness in her stomach.
Mem leaned over her shoulder, peeking at her screen. “What’d he say?”
“Thumbs-up,” Stelle said flatly.
Mem snorted. “Romantic.”
Stelle shoved her phone back into her pocket, ignoring the way her palms were sweating. She told herself it was fine. This was fine. It was just another part of the plan. And after today, she wouldn’t have to fake anything anymore. This hell would end, and she could go back to focusing on much more important things, like stopping by the Grove to ask Hyacine if chest pressure is a warning sign of cardiac arrest.
Xx….o….xX
Kephale Plaza was too bright and cheerful for the occasion. The marble bowl of the plaza seemed to hold the echoes of the city inside it, voices ricocheting off of walls painted with carvings of its namesake titan. The open sky above was reflected in the recently cleaned marble tiles beneath her shoes.
There were a lot of people out. Of course there were. It was Kephale Plaza at midday. It was full of idle chatter– A group of kids sitting and playing some sort of card game, two middle aged men talking animatedly about some recent policy change, and plenty of people who had come to eat lunch. The guards posted at the arches looked upon the chatter with thinly veiled contentment.
Stelle scanned the sea of people and found him in the first sweep. She always did. It irritated her that it was that easy.
Phainon stood with his back to the statue of Kephale, talking to a vendor with a crate of pomegranates at his feet. He didn’t look like a prince or a hero or the heir to anything. He looked like himself—shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair back from his face. The vendor laughed at something he said. Of course they did. People loved him more than the city itself.
Stelle lifted a hand, small, almost casual—then higher when his attention didn’t snap. He turned as if he’d already known where she was. The minute his eyes caught hers, the world did that sick, traitorous lurch: air leaving, stomach dropping, gravity gone a little sideways. She hated that feeling. Hated how the ground didn’t stabilize until he was walking toward her.
Up close, she could see signs of wear—sleep shadows under his eyes, wrinkles in his shirt as if he had been up all night. Had he?
Phainon leaned in, breath brushing the shell of her ear.
“Are you ready?” he whispered. He was just close enough that the heat of him touched her cheek.
How, she wondered distantly, could four words split her chest in two directions at once? Her heart leapt into her throat like it wanted to meet him halfway and also cracked in the same motion, because ready wasn’t something she could be no matter how hard she tried.
She swallowed an answer that sounded like yes. Instead, she nodded once, sharp and mechanical. Fine. Whatever. Let’s do it. Let’s rip off the bandaid. She was sick of letting the wound fester.
“Guess you’ll be glad to be free after tonight,” she said, flat and sharp, tossing the first shard onto the tile. She wasn’t quite sure why that statement made it past her lips.
Something flashed across his face—confusion, then a slow blink. “Partner—”
No, they didn’t get to have the private preamble. The point was the show itself. He would just have to trust her with this debacle. She stepped back, making sure to angle her voice so it would carry. The plaza was good at amplifying conversations — she knew that from speeches and proclamations made by the council members here. She didn’t have to shout, she just had to project her voice.
“You’re impossible to deal with, Phainon,” she said, loud enough to garner some attention. Heads turned. A few conversations abruptly halted. She didn’t look at the faces. She didn’t need to. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Somewhere, a teleslate clicked. Stelle mentally congratulated herself— She was a better public speaker than she thought. Still, her self-praise fell flat.
He didn’t flinch. He matched her volume almost perfectly. “You’re the one who wanted this, Stelle. Don’t blame me when it all falls apart.”
There it was: the opening volley tossed into the open air where everyone could see. She could do this. Heads had turned. A woman paused mid-bite into her sweet bread. A courier stalled, pretending to retie his sandal strap. Somewhere to their left, a teleslate clicked. Perfect. They had a plan. This would be a piece of cake.
This was her role. But something felt off. Strange. But she couldn’t let that ruin this perfect disaster. She told herself the tightness at the edges of her vision was adrenaline and nothing else.
“At least I’m not just pretending to care,” she shot back, and there it was—that stupid, traitorous part of her that wanted to use real ammunition because blanks didn’t make the right sound when they hit. The words came out too clean. Too true. The feeling took her back to yesterday’s sparring match, where she had made a fool of herself by losing touch of reality.
Phainon froze in the smallest ways: a swallow that worked down the side of his throat, the smallest twitch of his jaw. For half a breath she saw the person who had carried a tray into her room at dawn and said rise and shine, partner three days ago like breakfast in bed was no big deal.
“You think you’re the only one who cared?” he said back. It teetered on the edge of something harsher. His voice didn’t need to climb to be heard; it had the kind of steadiness that made everything else go quiet. “I’ve been the one holding this together.”
Unfortunately, the words falling from her mouth were not the lines she had practiced.
“Right,” she said, and the contempt tasted like copper. “You always do, don’t you? Make it look easy. I mean, look at you—none of this ever fazed you, did it?” She gestured to the plaza, the city, the ridiculous arch of the gate. A guard pointed at himself in confusion. “You were fine.”
His jaw twitched. “You think it didn’t matter to me?” he said, breath hitching. He stepped nearer, enough that their radius shrank by a foot. “You think I wanted this to be fake?”
He froze mid step. He hadn’t meant to say it. She could hear the slip as it skidded out of him and scraped over stone. Her blood ran cold. This was not the plan. Phainon himself looked stunned at his own statement.
The plaza went quiet. Suddenly, Stelle yearned for the eyes to be off her. The gaze of the onlookers burned into her skin until her face was red hot with humiliation. Her mouth went dry and sticky for the second time that morning.
“Don’t say that,” she said, her voice hoarse before turning demanding. “Don’t you dare say that.”
“Why?” he said, not flinching from her sudden heat. “You keep telling me that. Why? Because if I admit it, it makes this harder? Because maybe then you’d have to admit it mattered to you too?”
A second click. Or maybe that was the sound of her composure cracking.
“Don’t project on me,” she snapped. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve watched you for six days,” he said, and there was no softness in watched. “And I watched you long before that, if you want the truth. I watched you step in front of Aglaea’s golden thread. I watched you take Bubbles to the bathhouse. I watched you say stupid things to Verax Leo and get your arm bit. I watched you reclaim a coreflame and put it into the spirit basin. And then I watched you flinch every time anyone implicated this being real.”
Her throat clenched, and her fists did too. “Don’t call me a coward.”
“I’m not.” He shook his head once, as if reining himself in, then let the leash slip again. “But stop acting like the only noble thing here is to set yourself on fire before anyone else can strike a match.”
Her laugh came out warped. “You’d know all about fires, wouldn’t you? Deliverer of the dawn. The blazing sun meant to burn to ashes.” She jerked her chin toward the dawn device looming across the horizon. “You do the same thing, keep your head up and your mouth closed, and then get mad at me when you slip up and I don’t.”
“Congratulations to both of us. It doesn’t mean either of us wanted any of this.”
“You have no idea what I want.” Stelle hated the way her gut twisted up in knots.
“I’ve known you every morning for six days,” he said. “I’ve known you in markets and in steam and under fake sunsets, and I know the sound you make when you’re about to say something real and decide not to.” He took another step, so close now the day itself felt like it should move back to make room. “You want this neat. But you don’t want it honest.”
“Oh, and you’re the pinnacle of honesty?” The sarcasm flared up in self-defense, acid-clean. “Is that why you keep calling me partner like it’s your honest view of me?”
“That’s what you are,” he said, and annoyance finally bled into his voice. “What did you think I meant?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and the admission came out sounding far more pathetic and desperate than intended. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
He stared at her. For a moment everything slowed—like the plaza pulled a curtain and the two of them were backstage, breathing hard in the dark. She could see it in his eyes, the thing he wasn’t saying because saying it would change everything, and wasn’t that the point of today—To leave with everything still named what it was yesterday?
“Tell me what you want me to say,” he said. “Tell me the line I’m supposed to deliver, and I’ll say it, and then you can walk away feeling clean.”
She hated that the idea soothed some terrible part of her. “Fine,” she said. “Say it was a mistake. Say I’m horrible. Say you hate me.”
He looked at her like she’d asked him to step off a roof. “If I say those words, will you believe them?”
“It doesn’t matter if I believe them,” she said. “It matters if everyone else does.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “You said I didn’t look phased,” he murmured, and when he opened his eyes again they were duller, tinged with some twisted sadness. “Do I look phased now?”
She ignored the question because answering would hand him something she didn’t trust him to have. Instead, she took another half-step back.
“Fine,” she said, throwing the word like a stone. “You want honest? Here’s honest. This was supposed to be easy. Six days, then we cut the rope. And then you—you—started making it hard. You cooked. You listened. You looked at me like I was not a joke even when I was trying to be. You made it—” she groped for a word that wouldn’t burn her mouth, failed— “complicated.”
Phainon blinked as if she’d struck him and then nodded, once, slow and terrible. “I know.”
“You know,” she echoed, incredulous.
“I know,” he said again, and in it was everything she didn’t want to hear. “And I kept my mouth shut because you asked me to. Because you wrote no kissing as if that would save us from the other thing. As if those stupid rules on that napkin would stop the inevitable.” He paused, his eyes glued to the ground. “I did what you wanted,” he said. “I stayed where you could stand me.”
“If you wanted to be true, you shouldn’t have agreed to a lie.”
He flinched at that. There—there it was, a hit she hadn’t meant to land so cleanly. She felt sick and victorious in the same breath. Her hands trembled at her sides.
He swallowed. “Partner,” he said quietly.
“Don’t,” she warned.
“Stelle,” he tried, softer.
The word knifed her clean through. She shook her head. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why?” he pushed. “Because if I do, you’ll remember that we were good? For a minute? On a garden railing with the chimera cubs wrestling and your shoulder almost—almost—touching mine? Because if I do, you’ll remember you hugged me without a crowd?”
“This is a crowd,” she said, choking on it. “Congratulations. We can go home now. They got their show.”
He exhaled through his nose, a laugh that wasn’t. “All right then.” He rolled his shoulders once, like easing tension before a fight. “Then let’s stop pretending we’re doing this for them.” Phainon tipped his chin at the crowd without looking. “Say what you need to say. Not the script. You.”
Her mouth dared her to. Her heart dared her not to. Her common sense felt miles away from them both.
“Say your line,” she said. “Say you’re done.”
His mouth set. “I’m not done.”
She heard her own pulse in her ears, in the fountain’s whisper, in the faint metallic cough of a guard clearing his throat like a nervous audience member.
“That’s not how the scene goes,” she said, and hated how close to begging it sounded. “We planned this.”
“We planned the lie,” he said. “Apparently we forgot to plan the truth.”
“Stop,” she said, quieter. “Please, Phainon. Don’t do this.”
“Do what,” he said, just as quiet. “Say what’s obvious?”
The air went thin. Somewhere a bell rang the half hour. She hated that not even time let her catch up. Her hands had clenched without her permission.
“Don’t you get it?” She hated the plea in it. “I can’t—” She stopped. The rest of the sentence was a cliff with a sea at the bottom.
“You won’t,” he corrected, and there was no cruelty in it. “There’s a difference.”
“Stop,” she said again, her voice cracking this time.
“Make me,” he said. His eyes were steady and infuriating and unbearably kind. “Say the thing you’re trying not to. I’ll say mine.” His throat bobbed. “I already almost did.”
“Don’t,” she said, throat burning. “If you say it, I can’t—”
His voice cut through her, quiet and relentless. “Can’t what? Keep hating me to make it easier? Keep pretending I’m the only one who turned this into more than what it was?”
Stelle's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
The plaza breathed, one collective inhale balanced on the point of a blade. He had thrown his line; she felt it catch, felt it pull. She could cut it. She knew how. All she had to do was swing.
She looked at him, really looked: the way the sun used his hair like a wire to hang light on, the faint smear of sleeplessness under his eyes, the tiny scar near his jaw she’d only noticed once when he’d leaned too close over a pastry in a café. He was not bulletproof. He had never been.
“Don’t say it,” she whispered, not sure if she was asking for mercy for herself or him. “Please.”
He held her gaze, a muscle twitching in his cheek, a thousand calculations flashing behind his eyes and coming up with nothing that didn’t hurt. And then—whether it was mercy or cowardice or a kindness she would hate him for—he shook his head, just once.
“Then answer the question,” he said. “Why do you keep telling me not to? Because if I admit it, it makes this harder? Because maybe then you’d have to admit it mattered to you too?”
She wanted to shove him. She wanted to grab his shirt and make him feel how hard her heart was hitting her ribs. She did neither. She said, “Don’t make this about me,” and heard the lie hollow.
“It’s about both of us,” he said. “It always was.”
Phainon didn’t look angry, though. He never did. In anger’s place, he bears sadness and something akin to grief or regret— And it was this that she saw a flash of in his eyes. It was there for just a moment, and then it was gone. Perhaps she had imagined it.
A student in the cluster near the bushes gasped. Someone hissed shh, which never in the history of shushing had ever worked.
“You want both?” she said, leaning in because leaning away felt like drowning. “Fine. Both: I’m tired, Phainon. I’m tired of being turned into a story every time I breathe near you. I’m tired of everyone being in my business. I’m tired of waking up and checking if someone invented a new headline out of me tying my shoe.”
“I’m tired too,” he said, and for a breath he sounded it. “I’m tired of being the person everyone assumes is fine. I’m tired of swallowing words because you look like you’ll bolt if I say them. I’m tired of being told to keep my hands folded while the person I—” He stopped, the word breaking, and for a blink the look on his face was less man and more boy. He shook his head briefly as if to shake off the thought, before stepping back.
She wasn’t looking at the onlookers anymore. Let them gawk. Let them get their little clickbait moment and their whispered recaps on the evening ride home. She felt herself losing grip on what she was saying, her own thoughts 6 feet underwater. The square might as well have been empty, the archway just a painted backdrop, the guards statues dressed up as men. It was only him. It had always, infuriatingly, been only him.
Her throat burned. “You agreed to this anyway,” she said, and the tremor let itself into her voice like a stranger through a cracked door. “What do you have to cry about? This was your choice as much as it was mine. So why did you agree?”
Phainon looked at her as if the question had been sitting in him for days, hot and uncooled. “Because having you a little bit,” he said, every syllable plain, “is better than not having you at all.”
The world went so silent inside her that she could hear a pin drop.
“Quit acting like I’m some charity case that needs your help,” she snapped, reflex flaring like a match. “Admit it—you acted because you wanted to indulge yourself for five minutes inconsequentially, right? You wanted to play house with me and then walk away from the consequences—”
His head jerked like the words had actually struck him. “You know it’s not that.”
“Do I?” The bitter laugh that crawled up her throat sounded wrong in her own ears. She shoved her hands in her pockets and leaned forward. “Because that’s what it looks like—Deliverer playing magnanimous with the outlander, a little game of pretend to keep the city pacified, keep your friends smiling, keep—”
“Stop.” The word ricocheted off marble. He had raised his voice. For the first time since she’d known him, Phainon’s voice climbed and cracked, and the plaza listened. Pigeons exploded from a cornice; somewhere a vendor swore softly. He didn’t seem to notice any of it. “Don’t rewrite my words to make them uglier because it hurts less to hate me.”
“If it hurts less, why does it hurt at all?” Stelle took another step closer. “I wanted to know this meant something! I wanted to know it wasn’t just me.” She gestured, vicious and helpless, between them. “Because I cannot for the life of me understand how you’re so unbothered by this.”
His mouth opened, confusion and fury colliding. “Unbothered?” The word came out raw. “Then why does it feel like I’m the only one who actually cares?” His voice caught on only and the tone felt all warped.
“Because you don’t know when to stop caring!” The admission tore out of her before she could staple it down. Her self restraint and common sense felt miles away, her mouth having a mind of its own. “You make me feel things I never wanted to feel, and I hate you for it.”
There it was—naked and mean, dripping on the stones between them.
The one thing she swore she would take to her grave.
He stared at her, uncharacteristically unreadable. Either that, or Stelle didn’t care enough to try to get a read on him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his tone was one of a business negotiation more than something to be shared between people who had shared six quiet mornings. “Then what is it that you want from me?”
“I want you to get over this,” she spat, forcing the malice into her tone. Maybe if she hit him hard enough, hurt him bad enough, then he’d walk away and stop torturing her. “To get a fucking grip, Phainon. Because if you don’t get a grip, how the hell am I supposed to get one?”
The silence that followed was not empty. It pressed in, thick, a held breath spread across a hundred strangers and the two of them.
“Of course,” he said at last. He brought two fingers to the bridge of his nose and pinched. It wasn’t cruel. It was worse—tired, the resignation of someone who had foreseen this outcome miles away yet still let it pass.
Her vision tunneled. She didn’t care what she admitted anymore. The script had burned to ash in her hands, alongside those stupid rules she had made six days ago.
“What does it even matter to you?” she asked, low now, like a secret they were sharing. “This was all fake anyway.”
His jaw flexed. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, and in the space between the words, she felt something fold up and put itself away. “Maybe the only real thing here is how relieved I’ll feel once this is over.”
Stelle's heart dropped right through her chest and down to her gut. “Good,” she said, using the last bit of her pride to ignore the feeling. “At least we agree on something.”
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Then he did.
He turned.
He walked.
There was no dramatism to his exit. He just left, the crowd parting around him in slack-jawed ripples, the heat of his absence blooming immediately against her skin like a slap of cold air. The weight of it hit her with a lag, as if grief were a message sent through a long wire and the distance had to be crossed before it could arrive. Everything around her faded back into focus.
Stelle didn’t feel the first tear. Not the second, either. The third burned enough to register, a hot line that salt-stung the corner of her mouth. The last bit of anger she had left died in her throat like a spark smothered in wet ash.
Someone near the hedges whispered an ‘Oh’, as if they had realized only now the gravity of the situation. A guard stationed by the entrance cleared his throat and looked up at the sky. A mother hurried her two kids out of the plaza, shushing them as they departed.
She stood exactly where he left her. Her legs felt so numb that it was a wonder that she was still standing upright. Her shaking hands didn’t look like her own. From miles away her own self-consciousness returned, and the only thing she felt now was shame. The plaza began to move again– Sandals shuffling against tile, groups returning to their own conversation. It began slow, awkward, and careful. But slowly, slowly— The plaza returned to breathing. The shifted attention she desperately wanted ten minutes ago now felt disgustingly offensive. It felt obscene that anything else could exist.
He was gone. She had told him to get a grip, and he had—around the one thing that would hurt the most. He had let go. She tried to move. One foot. Then the other. Her body did not receive the command. The air felt thick like tar.
This, she realized with a clarity that made her stomach churn, was what it meant to lose control. It wasn’t shouting. It wasn’t an overly brutal spar. It wasn’t getting drunk and waking up in sheets that smelled like your best friend. It was standing very still while the worst, quietest version of the thing you feared happened anyway.
Xx….o….xX
By the time she reached the door of her room, Stelle’s legs were shaking so badly she almost missed the handle. She got it open on the second try.
Mem had her back to the entryway, tiny feet propped on the arm of the couch, humming as she scrolled Dan Heng’s phone. “How’d it go?” she chirped without turning. “Did you two—”
She looked over her shoulder.
Her face fell. “Oh.”
Dan Heng was at the counter rinsing a cup. He turned at Mem’s tone, took in the tears on Stelle’s cheeks, the way her breath kept stuttering, and set the cup down with careful precision. “Stelle—”
Words crashed toward her from both sides.
“What happened—”
“Did he—”
“Are you hurt—”
“Tell me where he is—”
“Do you want me to—”
She didn’t answer them. Couldn’t. With the ringing in her ears, the room itself felt far away. She stumbled into the room, her hand instinctively reaching out to the nightstand to steady herself. The sun charm lay there on the desk. Its glass glinted in the light, tauntingly gorgeous. With shaking hands she reached towards it, fingertips brushing against the band before pressing it into her palm. The sharp edges of the sun’s rays pressed painfully into her skin as she squeezed it. She squeezed it so hard that she wasn’t sure if she wanted it to break the calloused skin and draw blood. If she threw it at the wall it would crack and leave a dent and maybe that would be proof that something could break properly and clean. She saw it in her mind— golden glass fragments scattered against the ground, returning to dust and sand and its original state. She lifted her arm, breath hitching, jaw locked—
—and couldn’t do it. The motion died at her shoulder. Her arm trembled. She stared at the charm glowing faintly in her fist and saw—uselessly—the way Phainon’s hand had once held it up to the light just to watch the amber center catch. Something about the little ridiculous thing, the way it had lived on her desk like a cruel reminder, refused to be discarded. Her fingers unclenched. It hit the carpeted floor with the most pathetic sound—no satisfying shatter, no proof of damage—just a muffled clink, and then it lay there, harmless as a coin. Stelle’s knees went out from under her. She sank to the rug on a hard exhale and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes until sparks bloomed behind her eyelids.
Mem was beside her in a heartbeat, skidding on the rug, babbling: “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—oh Stelle, what happened—talk to us, please—”
Dan Heng crouched, hands hovering like he wanted to touch her but wouldn’t without permission. His voice cut through the static. “I told you,” he said quietly. “I told you this would happen.” He didn’t say it like I told you so. He said it more like a sad resignation.
He stood and moved with purpose. He grabbed a blanket from the arm of the couch; he shook it out, smoothed it flat, then piled pillows on top of it. Mem and Dan Heng each took an elbow and lifted her, gently, arranging her on the couch as if she were a person made of glass. Stelle let them. Her body felt far away and heavy.
She refused to talk. The words’d jammed somewhere behind her teeth; anything she let loose would be a flood she didn’t know how to survive. Dan Heng gave her a look that said okay and vanished into the kitchenette. The kettle clicked to life. Mem sat on the edge of the couch with both paws on Stelle’s shoulder.
“That bad, huh?” Mem said, patting her gently.
Stelle managed a nod.
Dan Heng returned to them both, a steaming cup of tea in hand. It smelled sage-y. Stelle was no drink expert, but it smelled good, and that was enough. He held out the cup, waiting for her to take it into her hands on her own terms. She wrapped her fingers around the handle. She drank. The cup clinked slightly against her teeth.
“You did what you had to,” Mem said, softer now. “It doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.”
But why does it hurt this much? The thought sent a fresh ache through her chest, mean and bewildered. She sucked a breath over the rim of the cup and tried not to choke on it.
The truth slid in painfully: she was grieving something that hadn’t existed at all, not really—grieving the negative space where a thing could have been if she’d let it. That was the worst of it, somehow. The absence had weight. What the hell is wrong with me? she thought, and then uncharitably, What is wrong with him for making me feel like this? The tea trembled in her hand. She put the cup down before she spilled it and made a second mess that day.
“Thank you,” she said, voice wavering. It felt too small for what they were doing—holding her together by showing up. She swallowed. “Both of you.”
Mem answered by climbing—no, burrowing—into her side, pink fluff and warmth and a kind of determined cuddling that should have been funny if anything felt like anything. Dan Heng took the other side of the couch. He didn’t drape an arm around her; he simply sat close enough that their shoulders touched and the contact said I’m here in the silent way he always did.
They stayed like that for a while—breathing, adjusting, re-adjusting when gravity insisted on making lumps of the pillows, existing. The room smelled like tea and soap and the faint mineral scent that clung to the Marmoreal stone. The clock ticked. Somewhere outside the window Dromas made its weird little chirring sound, and Mem muttered, “Hush,” to it, which was somehow also to Stelle’s thoughts.
When her cup emptied, Dan Heng took it wordlessly and returned with a second. “I’ll always be here,” he said, like he was reminding her of something practical. “Sometimes with tea.”
That almost earned a smile out of her. Almost.
“Okay,” Mem announced, like a general mustering a counteroffensive. “Distractions– We got this.” She pointed her paw at Stelle. “First, we feed Bubbles. Bubbles is good for morale. Second, we bake something. If we can’t bake we assemble something that thinks it’s baking, like pre-made dough.” Mem held out her next paw. “ Third. We write a list of everything thats annoyed you in the last forty-eight hours and fold it into tiny papers and toss them into a Georios flame and watch them burn up.” She paused, then added, very seriously, “Fourth, we find a trashcan and make a shrine.”
Stelle made a ragged noise that, if given time, might have grown into a laugh. “You burn trash in Amphoreus,” she managed. “No cans.”
“You’re right,” Mem sighed. “We’ll have to improvise. We’ll… admire a—what do you call it—broom closet? Infrastructure adjacent.”
“Eat first,” Dan Heng said mildly. “You haven’t today.”
“I brought pastries,” Mem said, already springing off the couch. “They’re not as good as golden honey cakes but they have sugar. Sugar is good.” She rattled around in the cabinet and triumphantly produced a plate.
They got her to nibble half a roll. Then another bite. The world didn’t tilt for a full minute. Two. She let Mem stand behind her with a brush and pull slow strokes through her hair, the tug-and-release rhythm softening some awful knot low at the base of her skull. Dan Heng opened a book and began reading aloud about ancient sediment and how rivers rewrote the land by insisting over years. His voice was a metronome; the words almost putting her straight to sleep. It was absurd. It helped.
They didn’t talk about him. When her mind slid toward the Plaza, one of them nudged it back: Mem asking if Stelle would rather have hands for feet or feet for hands; Dan Heng observing that the Dawn Device’s artificial afternoon always looked a little too yellow. They let her dissociate—let her eyes unfocus and her breath go shallow—without yanking. Each time, eventually, she resurfaced, took another sip, and took a refreshing breath.
She let herself lean on them. She let the weight distribute.
They ate an easy, sloppy dinner—noodles drowning in sauce and a plate of cut fruit that Mem kept rearranging into weird faces until Dan Heng arched a brow and she giggled and stopped. After, they lay in a pile on the couch that would have been reminiscent of a pillow fort. Mem tucked under Stelle’s arm; Dan Heng folded long limbs into the remaining space. The blanket settled over them with ease.
This was what family felt like, she realized—not the blood kind, but the quieter sort where people remembered your silences and how to sit next to you without asking anything of you. She had had this before Phainon. She had it now. She would have it tomorrow. The thought didn’t erase the hurt; it gave the hurt someplace safe to exist while it softened.
She exhaled into Dan Heng’s shoulder. Mem’s fur tickled her cheek. Bubbles snored on her feet. The city outside went about its relentless business. Inside, there was tea and warmth and the steady heartbeat of people who had chosen her and kept choosing her.
She would be fine without him, she told herself. She’d been living a full, stupid, beautiful life well before he’d complicated it. She would again.
Not today. Not perfectly. But again.