Chapter 42: The Walls Come Down

Chapter 42: Chapter 42: The Walls Come Down

Gideon’s office was unusually quiet the next morning. Felix sat across from him, silent for several minutes, elbows on his knees and hands clenched together, his expression darker than Gideon had seen it before.

Gideon had already walked him through all of it: Vesper’s escape, Seraphina’s reassignment, the incident in the plaza, the injuries. Felix listened to every word without interrupting.

Then Gideon turned the monitor toward him.

"There’s something else you need to see."

The security footage started. Seraphina entering the plaza. The confusion crossing her face when she realized Felix’s team wasn’t there.

The Association employee explaining her reassignment. The new team approaching. The comments. The distress building in her expression, piece by piece, until a woman stepped directly into her path.

Felix’s eyes narrowed. The woman said something. Seraphina went still. The attack came seconds later: water, lightning, blood, heroes scrambling to defend themselves, Seraphina standing dead center of it all.

Gideon paused the footage there. Felix’s gaze stayed locked on the screen, and he raised one hand slowly, pointing at the frozen image of the woman who’d blocked her path.

"That." His voice came out quiet. "That was the trigger."

Gideon said nothing.

"I don’t know what happened in her past. She never told me, barely spoke at all when I first met her." His fingers tightened again. "But she was finally opening up. She was *starting* to trust me." He looked up at Gideon. "And then you people did this."

His voice went colder. "You triggered whatever’s buried in her past, something tied to a mass murder nobody understands the shape of, including her. She’s unstable because of something that happened long before I ever met her. And instead of leaving her with the one person she actually trusted, you pulled her off the team and dropped her in a room full of strangers who knew nothing about her."

"We made a mistake," Gideon said.

"You made a very dangerous mistake." There was no shouting in it, which somehow made it land harder.

Gideon told him about the confiscations next. "The books were pulled from her cell after the incident."

"And Liora’s console?"

"Also confiscated."

Felix went still, and whatever color was left in his face drained out. "The one I gave her?"

"Yes."

He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. When they opened again, the anger hadn’t gone anywhere. "I want the three regional directors contacted. All three. I want a meeting this evening, Dr. Hart attends."

"And you?" Gideon asked.

"I’ll be there." Felix stood, straightened his coat, and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?"

He stopped in the doorway. "To see Seraphina."

---

**Acheron Deep**

Seraphina sat alone on the floor of her cell: no books, no flowers, nothing left in the room that belonged to her. Knees drawn to her chest, arms locked around them, eyes fixed on the wall with nothing behind them.

Her mind wasn’t in the cell anymore. It had gone back seven years, and stayed there.

*Where am I? Am I in a cell?* Her fingers moved slowly against the floor, her breathing shallow.

*Felix. Where is he?* The thought of him brought something sharp into her chest, and her head dropped lower.

*He knows now. He knows what I am.*

A murderer. A hero killer. A monster. She stared at her own hands like they belonged to someone else, someone she couldn’t stand to look at.

*He thought he could fix this. He thought I was still human.* A bitter kind of emptiness spread through her at the thought.

*He’ll hate me now.*

Her eyes shut. *He should.* A tear slid down her cheek without her noticing. *The Association will probably execute me. That’s fine. That’s what monsters like me deserve.*

Silence, and then one thought surfaced that she couldn’t push back down.

*But I want to see him. Just once.* Her hand pressed flat against her own chest.

*Before I die.*

The cell door unlocked without her hearing it.

Footsteps crossed the floor without registering. Then something warm brushed against the edge of her mind: a presence she knew, mana she’d know anywhere and the darkness pressing down on her thoughts started to loosen.

The memories receded. The hatred thinned out. The fear let go of her by degrees, that familiar warmth moving through her like sunlight finally breaking through a storm that had lasted days.

Her eyes lifted slowly, and stopped.

Felix stood in front of her, expression serious, concern written plainly across his face. "Seraphina."

Her lips parted.

He stepped closer. "Are you okay?"

That was all it took. Every wall she’d spent hours rebuilding came down at once, and she surged forward before she could think better of it, arms locking around him, face buried against his chest.

A sob broke loose, then another, her hands fisting in his clothes like letting go meant losing him for good.

He went rigid for a second, caught off guard, then his expression softened, and one hand settled gently against the back of her head.

She cried harder at that. *He cares. He still cares about me.* The tears kept coming, her whole body shaking against him, and underneath everything else, one thought finally rose up and drowned out all the rest, the first time in her life.

*I don’t want to die. I want to live.* Her arms tightened around him further. *I want to live with him.*

Felix just stayed where he was. He didn’t ask what had happened. He didn’t ask why she’d done it.

For now, he just let her cry.