CHAPTER 14

Friday arrived with two men I didn't recognize carrying my bed frame down the hallway.

I stood frozen in the doorway of what used to be my room, watching strangers wrap their arms around my mattress like it was furniture nobody had ever slept in, ever cried into, ever needed. My nightstand went next, drawers hanging open, my things sliding loose onto the floor in front of anyone who happened to be walking past — a hairbrush, a folder of assignments, the small framed photo of Ephraim from before he got sick, all of it scattering across the hallway tile like it meant nothing to anyone but me. One of the movers stepped over the photo without looking down, his boot missing the frame by inches, and I had to swallow hard against the urge to scream at a stranger for something that wasn't even his fault.

A neighbor two doors down stood in her own doorway watching, not even pretending not to stare.

"I'm sorry," the landlord said, and to his credit, he actually looked like he meant it. "I gave you the time I could. I've got my own obligations."

"I know," I said, though the words felt like they belonged to someone else. My whole body had gone strange and distant, watching my life get carried past me box by box, like I was observing someone else's disaster from a great distance instead of standing directly inside my own.

That was when Maevra arrived.

• • •

She came up the stairs like she was arriving at a garden party, not a single hair out of place, and stopped dead at the sight of my belongings stacked in the hallway.

"What is going on here?"

"You know exactly what's going on," I said. "This is what happens when rent doesn't get paid. Twice."

"Don't you dare put this on me." Her voice climbed, sharp and public, loud enough that the neighbor two doors down leaned further out to listen. "I have done everything for you, Zéphyrine. Everything. And this is the thanks I get? Accusations, in front of all these people?"

"I'm not accusing you of anything you didn't already do."

"You ungrateful girl." She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume, sweet and expensive and completely wrong for the moment. "Do you have any idea what I've sacrificed for this family? And you stand here, humiliating me, instead of showing an ounce of gratitude. You should be on your knees thanking me for everything I've done, not making a scene like this."

"Kneeling. That's what you want from me right now."

"Don't twist my words. I'm saying a little humility wouldn't kill you." Her eyes were cold despite the sympathetic angle of her mouth, a performance built for anyone watching rather than for me. "You've been given a roof, an education, opportunities most girls in your position never get. And this is how you repay it — accusing me, in public, instead of begging me for a little more patience while we sort this out."

Something in me wanted to laugh, wild and disbelieving. She was standing in the wreckage of my evicted life, somehow positioning herself as the one who deserved an apology, the one owed gratitude and mercy, while my mattress sat propped against a stranger's wall twenty feet away.

"I don't owe you gratitude for stealing my rent money."

Her face went hard, all pretense of warmth gone in an instant. She turned to the landlord instead, her voice shifting into something reasonable, almost pitying.

"I'm so sorry about all this. She's been under a lot of pressure. Financial troubles, poor decisions." She shook her head, the picture of a long-suffering guardian. "I've tried to help her manage her money, but she doesn't always listen. I hope this doesn't reflect poorly on the rest of the family's standing with the building."

The landlord shifted uncomfortably, clearly unsure whether to engage with the sudden performance in front of him. "I just need the account settled, ma'am. That's all I'm concerned with."

"Of course. Of course." Maevra reached out and patted his arm, warm and reasonable, already recasting herself as the responsible party managing an unfortunate situation. "You've been more than fair. I hope you'll remember that, going forward, in case anything like this comes up again with her."

I stared at her, stunned into a silence I couldn't immediately climb out of. She wasn't just deflecting. She was actively rewriting the story in real time, in front of a witness, turning her own theft into my irresponsibility, planting the idea that I was the problem tenant so smoothly that even I almost lost my footing on which version of events was true.

"Wow." Virelle's voice came from behind Maevra, arms crossed, watching my belongings pile up with an expression that wasn't quite gloating, just carelessly cold. "I guess this is what happens when you can't keep up."

She said it the way you'd comment on weather, no real malice behind it, which somehow made it worse. She didn't even care enough to enjoy my humiliation. It simply didn't register as something that mattered.

I didn't even have the energy to respond to that. I just stood there, humiliation and fury tangling together in my chest until I couldn't tell which one was louder.

• • •

Rhydian arrived twenty minutes later, out of breath like he'd run most of the way. Neriah must have called him. He stopped short at the top of the stairs, taking in the scene — my mattress leaning against the wall, boxes stacked haphazardly, Maevra still hovering nearby with her performance of concern still fully intact for anyone new who arrived.

He didn't say anything to her. He didn't even look at her for more than a second. He just crossed the hallway straight to me.

"Hey." His voice was quiet, steady, cutting cleanly through the noise still ringing in my ears. "I'm here."

I don't remember deciding to cry. I just remember the sound coming out of me before I could stop it, sharp and humiliating in front of everyone still watching, my legs giving out from under me until I was sitting on the floor beside my own overturned nightstand, surrounded by everything I owned scattered like it meant nothing.

He crouched down immediately, one hand finding my back, steady and warm, rubbing slow circles that asked nothing of me in return. He didn't tell me to stop crying. He didn't tell me it would be fine. He just stayed there, close, his other hand finding mine and holding on, grounding me back into my own body while the hallway kept existing around us.

"I've got you," he said quietly, just for me, nothing performed in it at all. "Just breathe. I'm right here."

At some point he shifted so I could lean fully against him instead of sitting alone on the cold tile, one arm wrapped around my shoulders, his hand smoothing gently over my hair the way you'd calm something frightened rather than something broken. The hallway noise — Maevra's voice, the landlord's low apologies, Virelle's careless commentary — all of it seemed to fade into something distant and unimportant, replaced by the steady rhythm of his hand against my back and the simple fact of not being alone in the wreckage anymore.

I don't know how long I sat there, my forehead nearly against his shoulder, his hand steady against my back the whole time. Eventually the sobbing slowed into something quieter, exhaustion settling in where the panic had been, until I felt hollowed out and strangely calm, like a storm that had finally used up everything it had.

He didn't reach for his wallet. He didn't mention money once, not the way Valerian might have, turning generosity into a debt I'd owe him later. He just stayed exactly where he was, present in a way that asked nothing and offered everything.

By the time I could sit up on my own, the anger had burned itself down into something flatter, quieter, almost peaceful in its emptiness. I looked at the hallway like it belonged to someone else's life — the boxes, the mattress, Maevra's voice still murmuring somewhere nearby. None of it felt sharp anymore. It just felt like a fact I'd have to deal with eventually, once I found the energy to feel anything about it at all.

Eventually, when I could breathe evenly again, he pulled back just enough to look at me properly, his expression gentle but serious.

"Where are you going to sleep tonight?"

I looked at the boxes. At the mattress leaning uselessly against the wall. At Maevra, still murmuring something sympathetic to the landlord a few feet away, like none of this had anything to do with her.

I didn't have an answer.

I just sat there on the cold hallway floor, everything I owned scattered around me in pieces, and let the question hang in the air between us — unanswerable, enormous, the only honest thing left in a night built entirely out of other people's lies.