“Jesus,” a woman’s voice hissed.
Not shocked. Not horrified. Just... resigned. Like she expected exactly this.
The bed dipped as she sat on the edge, and I felt the mattress shift beneath me. Something was placed on the nightstand, glass against wood, with a softclink.
“Alex.”
Kyllian Ward.
I knew her voice. The first old lady of the Brotherhood. Firestride’s woman. The one Morpheus respected.
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My throat felt like it had been filled with concrete.
“I brought you water,” she said. “And some crackers. I know you probably don’t want them, but they’re here if you change your mind.”
Silence.
She didn’t seem bothered by it.
“Morpheus asked me to check on you,” she continued, her tone conversational. Like we were having coffee instead of sitting in the wreckage of my life. “He’s worried. Not that he would ever admit it, but I could tell.”
I blinked. Once. Slowly.
The crack in the wall blurred, then sharpened again.
“Nano’s worried too,” Kyllian said. “Though I’m guessing you don’t want to hear that right now.”
She was right.
I didn’t.
“I’m not here to tell you everything’s going to be okay,” she said after a moment. “Because that would be bullshit, and you’re too smart to believe it anyway.”
Her hand rested on the bed beside me. Not touching, just there. Present.
“I’m here because I’ve been where you are,” she said quietly. “Not exactly, but close enough. And I know what it feels like to think you’ve been broken so completely that there’s nothing left to put back together.”
I closed my eyes.Go away.
“When I chose Firestride,” Kyllian continued, “I knew what I was choosing. I knew what the Brotherhood was. What these men are. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. That it would demand everything from me. My independence, my safety, my sense of control.”
Her voice was steady. Calm. Like she was telling me a story she’d told a hundred times before.
“And I chose it anyway,” she said. “Because the alternative, a life without him, felt worse than anything the Brotherhood could throw at me.”
I opened my eyes again, staring at that crack.
“But here’s the thing, Alex,” Kyllian said, and her tone shifted. Harder now. More direct. “Choosing this life doesn’t mean you stop being yourself. It doesn’t mean you become some hollow shell that just exists to serve a man.”
I felt something flicker in my chest. Small. Barely there.
“You’re broken right now,” Kyllian said bluntly. “I’m not going to lie to you about that. Morpheus told me what happened in that basement, what Nano did, and what Morpheus orchestrated. It broke you. Completely.”
The flicker died.
“But broken doesn’t mean destroyed,” she continued. “It means you’re in pieces. And pieces can be put back together. Not the same way. Never the same way. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be whole again.”
I swallowed. My throat ached.
