[Sophie’s POV]

“Stay with me. Sophie, look at me. Stay with me.”

The voice cuts through the dark before I understand where I am, a lifeline thrown into the void I’ve been drowning in. It sounds close and far at the same time, like it’s echoing inside my skull, bouncing off the walls of my consciousness. There’s a sharp jolt beneath me, a rocking motion that makes my stomach twist violently, and then a siren wails so loud it feels like it’s vibrating my bones, rattling my teeth, shaking loose whatever fragile hold I have on awareness.

The world is motion and noise and the sharp smell of antiseptic that burns my nostrils.

“Blood pressure’s dropping,” someone says, brisk and unfamiliar, their voice carrying the clinical detachment of someone who sees emergencies every day. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

I try to answer, but my mouth won’t cooperate. The words are there, trapped somewhere between my brain and my tongue, prisoners in a body that has completely rebelled against my commands. Panic flutters in my chest like a caged bird, desperate and futile.

“Sophie,” Adrian’s voice says again, rougher now, stripped of its usual confidence, raw with an emotion I’ve rarely heard from him. “Hey. Don’t do this. Stay with me, Cinderella.”

That nickname shouldn’t make me want to cry, but it does. He started calling me that months ago, after I kicked off my heels at a faculty party and walked home barefoot through the rain. The memory surfaces unbidden—his laughter, the way he’d carried my shoes, the kiss he’d pressed to my forehead when we finally reached shelter. Such a small moment, but it contained everything I was trying to leave behind.

My eyelids flutter, heavy like they’ve been glued shut, weighted with exhaustion and fear and the impossible effort of staying conscious.

Another hand tightens around mine—different from Adrian’s desperate grip. Firmer. Steadier. The touch of someone who refuses to let emotion compromise function. Cassian.

“We’ve got you,” he says, low and controlled, each word carefully measured, but I can hear the strain underneath, the cracks in his composure that he’s fighting to hide. “You’re not allowed to leave us.”

The command in his voice, even now, makes something warm bloom in my chest despite the cold spreading through my limbs.

I manage a breath that scrapes my lungs like sandpaper, each inhale a small victory against the darkness trying to drag me under. The oxygen mask presses against my face, plastic and cold, fogging slightly with each exhale, proof that I’m still breathing, still fighting.

“I’m here,” I try to say. It comes out as barely a whisper, a ghost of sound that I’m not even sure they can hear over the wail of the siren and the beep of monitors.

“She’s responding,” a paramedic says, and the relief in their professional tone tells me how close I came to not responding at all. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Adrian leans closer, his forehead brushing my temple with a tenderness that contrasts sharply with the chaos surrounding us. His skin is warm against mine, an anchor in the storm. “You scared the hell out of me,” he breathes, the words meant only for me. “Do not do this again. Not without telling me why.”

Why. The word spins through my consciousness like a leaf caught in a whirlpool. Because I was running. Because I was afraid. Because I thought leaving was the only way to keep everyone intact, the only way to prevent the truth from detonating like a bomb in the middle of our fragile arrangement. Because loving them both felt like holding two live wires and waiting to be electrocuted.

Cassian’s thumb rubs slow circles into my palm, a rhythm of comfort that grounds me to the present moment. “Just breathe,” he murmurs, his voice a steady counterpoint to Adrian’s desperate intensity. “That’s all you have to do right now.”

The ambulance swerves sharply, taking a corner too fast, and nausea surges through me like a tidal wave. I gag, panic flaring white-hot as my body threatens to betray me in yet another humiliating way.

“She’s nauseous. Tilt her head.”

Hands move me carefully, professionally, adjusting my position with practiced efficiency. The change helps, slightly, the nausea receding to a manageable roil instead of an immediate threat.

“Easy, Soph,” Cleo’s voice cuts in from across the ambulance, steady despite everything, a rock in the middle of my personal hurricane. “I’m right here.”

I force my eyes open just enough to see her on the bench seat opposite me, knuckles white where she’s gripping the edge so hard I’m surprised the metal doesn’t bend. Her jaw is clenched tight, a muscle jumping beneath the skin, and her eyes are blazing—not with anger at me, I realize with a surge of gratitude, but at the situation. At the unfairness of it all. At the universe that keeps throwing obstacles in our path.

Cassian looks between us, his analytical mind working even in crisis, something clicking into place in his eyes like tumblers falling in a lock. “Cleo,” he says slowly, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. “What aren’t you telling us?”

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