CHAPTER 13

I asked for extra shifts the moment the café opened.

"I can't," my manager said, not unkindly, already shaking his head before I'd finished the sentence. "We just cut hours last week, remember? There's nothing extra to give you."

"Even one more shift a week would help."

"I wish I could, Zéphyrine. I really do." He looked like he meant it, which somehow made the answer worse instead of easier. "Try again next month, maybe."

Next month wasn't going to help me by Friday.

I spent my break doing math on a napkin, the kind of math that never comes out right no matter how many times you rearrange the numbers. Wages. Savings. What was left after Ephraim's medication, after the f*e I still owed the university, after the two months of rent that had apparently vanished somewhere between my hand and Maevra's. Every column ended somewhere short of what I needed, no matter which numbers I moved around. I pressed the pen hard enough into the paper that it tore through on the last line, and I sat there staring at the ripped napkin like it was somehow a fitting metaphor for the rest of my week.

My phone buzzed once — Rhydian, a short message asking how the morning had gone. I typed still figuring it out and nothing else, not ready yet to turn my panic into something I had to explain out loud, even to him.

• • •

I tried campus next, some desperate hope pulling me toward the financial aid office between classes, though I already suspected what I'd find there.

"Emergency funds are fully allocated for the semester," the woman behind the desk told me, apologetic but final. "You're welcome to apply for next term."

Next term. Everyone kept handing me next month, next term, next cycle, like time was a resource I had an abundance of instead of the one thing running out fastest.

Neriah found me afterward on the library steps, staring at nothing, my napkin math still crumpled in my pocket like it might rearrange itself into something more forgiving if I just left it alone long enough.

"How bad is it?" she asked, sitting down beside me without waiting for an invitation.

"Bad enough that I've done the same math four times hoping I miscounted."

"I have some savings. Not much, but—"

"No." I said it faster than I meant to, sharper too. "Absolutely not. You're barely covering your own rent. I'm not taking your money because mine disappeared."

"Zéphyrine, I'm offering because I want to, not because I feel sorry for you."

"I know. That's not the problem." I rubbed my hands over my face, trying to find a gentler way to say it. "The problem is if I start taking money from the people who actually care about me, I don't know where that stops. I'd rather figure out the person who's supposed to be handling this properly."

"I mean it, Neriah." I softened my voice further, because none of this was her fault and I didn't want to make her feel like it was. "I'll figure it out. I always do."

She didn't look convinced. Honestly, neither was I. She squeezed my shoulder anyway, the kind of gesture that didn't ask me to feel better, just reminded me I wasn't sitting there completely alone.

• • •

I went home hoping for some kind of answer and found Maevra in the kitchen instead, unbothered, sorting through mail like the world hadn't just tilted sideways under my feet.

"Any luck?" she asked, not looking up.

"No. Nobody has extra money lying around waiting for me to ask for it." I dropped into a chair across from her, exhaustion sitting heavier in my chest than the panic had, at least for the moment. "I don't know what I'm going to do by Friday."

She made a small, thoughtful sound, the kind that sounds sympathetic if you're not paying close attention. "Well. Maybe it's worth looking at where the money's actually going, don't you think? You do spend quite a bit, between the hospital and the university and everything else."

I stared at her. "Everything else being my father's medication and my tuition."

"I'm just saying." She set the mail down, folding her hands with the particular calm she always wore like armor. "Maybe you should stop spending so much on things you can't afford."

Something in me went very still, then very hot, all at once. I knew exactly where every cent of my money went — I'd built my entire life around that accounting, sacrificed sleep and comfort and half my twenties tracking it down to the last dollar. To hear her suggest, so lightly, that the problem was my spending instead of the money that had vanished on her end, felt like being slapped and thanked for standing still.

"I don't spend on anything I can't afford, Maevra. I spend on my father's survival and my own education. That's it."

"There's no need to raise your voice."

"I'm not raising my voice." I was, a little, and I made myself stop. "I'm asking you to take this seriously. Two months of rent didn't just evaporate."

"Things happen, Zéphyrine. Banks make errors. Paperwork gets lost." She said it so smoothly, so reasonably, that for a disorienting second I almost heard myself starting to agree with her, the way I always used to when someone confident enough insisted the problem was smaller than it felt. I caught myself this time. I held onto the two transfer confirmations sitting in my phone, proof that refused to bend no matter how calmly she spoke.

"I have the transfer records," I said. "Both months. The money left my account and went straight to yours. I'm not confused about what happened on my end."

Something flickered across her face — brief, unreadable, gone before I could name it. "I told you, I'll look into it." She stood, already gathering the mail like the conversation had reached its natural end whether I agreed or not. "You worry too much. It's not good for your health."

I sat there after she left the room, staring at the space where she'd been standing, that phrase echoing in a way that made my skin crawl. You worry too much. The same words, almost exactly, that Valerian used to say whenever my concerns became inconvenient enough to deflect instead of answer.

• • •

It was Neriah who found the detail, later that evening, scrolling through some university group chat where half the building's tenants complained about anything and everything.

"Wait." She turned her phone toward me, frowning. "Someone posted this three days ago. About the landlord going around collecting overdue payments."

"Three days ago?" I took the phone, reading it twice, then a third time, hoping I'd misread the date. "The landlord only told me yesterday."

"So if this was already circulating three days ago..."

I didn't finish the thought out loud. I didn't need to. Someone in this building had known the landlord was chasing down payment for days before I found out — days during which Maevra had said absolutely nothing to me, had let me walk home expecting a normal, ordinary evening, had sorted through mail with perfect calm while I remained completely unaware that the ground under me had already started cracking.

I scrolled back further in the group chat, hands unsteady, and found the original post again. A tenant mentioning the landlord had been asking around the building for days, following up on several accounts, mine apparently included. Public enough that half the building seemed to know before I did.

"Maybe she just didn't see it," Neriah offered, though she didn't sound like she believed it either.

"She handles all my rent correspondence. It's her literal job in this house." I set the phone down slowly, feeling something settle into place that I didn't want to look at directly yet. "There's no version of this where she didn't know."

I sat there with Neriah's phone still in my hand, feeling the suspicion I'd been trying to talk myself out of all day sharpen into something I could no longer politely ignore.

She'd known. And she'd let me find out the hard way instead.

Why?