Chapter 257: The Woman Returns

The room swam the moment Sophia opened her eyes. Shapes slid at the edges of her vision; the single window had become a pale, oiled circle and the stacks of books on the chair were little more than smudges of gray.

Her head throbbed in time with a distant, furious drum. The pain was so intense that even staying awake was difficult.

Her nose felt clogged; she could not draw the warm air she wanted—only a thick, warm churn that tasted faintly of iron. It had been two days; she had been counting.

She watched the window and took note of when the sky turned dark and when it turned bright.

She knew it was only a matter of time before the woman came. It had been two days, after all. The woman was bound to come.

Sophia had rehearsed it in a fevered haze.

The way she would stand when the woman arrived, how she would keep her face steady, how the woman would test her, but she wouldn’t falter. She would stand. She would show the woman she was better. That she could be better.

She pushed herself to sit. The linen stuck to her spine, cool and clammy. She tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed. The room tilted and threatened to throw her back onto the mattress. But she didn’t give up.

She tried again, the muscles in her thighs trembling as if they belonged to someone else. The air dragged along the inside of her chest; each inhale felt like a small theft. She pressed her palms to the mattress and hauled her weight forward until she found her feet.

The room spun around her. For a moment she swayed, every step a whisper of vertigo. Her dress clung to her damp skin. Her knees complained and her ankles bowed, but she kept moving, breath shallow, each movement felt like she was battling for her life. Her legs wanted to give out; her mind willed them not to. She could do it. She could hold on, she told herself. And just in time, she did so. She stood upright even though she wanted nothing more than to lie on her bed.

Footsteps came before the door opened. Sophia already knew who was approaching without being told. She knew who was coming. She knew it was the woman.

The footsteps were measured and intentional, as if making noise just so Sophia would know she was approaching.

The door swung inward and the woman stepped through. For half a heartbeat Sophia could not make out the contours of her face; the heat and the pain and whatever the fever did to her eyes turned the figure into a smear of dark hair and a hard outline.

But familiarity was merciless: even blurred, the woman’s presence was known. The woman’s hair fell black and heavy down her back, the same long sweep Sophia remembered and recognized instinctively. The air snapped tighter around Sophia’s ribs as the woman took in the sight of her standing.

The woman leveled Sophia with a stare. She wore a blank look on her face. Sophia couldn’t make out the woman’s features, but she knew the feeling instinctively.

The woman sat on the stool as she always did, the wood groaning under her weight in a sound that made Sophia almost flinch due to how loud it was in her ear. The woman’s gaze slid over her up and down as if cataloguing failings.

"Are you ready to stop being sick?" the woman asked.

Sophia swallowed. Her mouth was dry—extremely so. She hadn’t had a drop of water after all.

"Yes," she managed as she nodded.

But that movement was a mistake she would come to regret. The world betrayed her: the effort of the gesture made her dizzy and she staggered. The spell of steadiness unraveled, and her knees hit the floor with a sound muffled by wool and the hollow of the room.

The woman’s upper lip curled—an expression of disgust that stung sharper than any hand. She rose in a slow, deliberate movement and crossed the space between them in three strides. Sophia wanted to move away, to create space between them. She knew she had made a mistake. She should not have fallen. She shouldn’t. She knew that, but she couldn’t help it. It was out of her control.

She opened her mouth to apologize, but the woman closed on her before she could do anything.

The slap landed across Sophia’s cheek with a sharp, bright shock. The woman didn’t care that Sophia was weak and sick. Sophia’s eyes blurred with tears as the slap registered. But she didn’t let them fall. She could not let them fall.

One thing the woman hated more than seeing Sophia sick was seeing her cry. And if Sophia did both, then she was signing herself up for torture.

So she steadied herself. She controlled her breathing even though it was extremely difficult to do so. She wasn’t going to cry. It was all her fault, after all. She shouldn’t have gone under the rain. It didn’t matter the reason.

The woman struck again, without hesitation or mercy. Each slap felt like an accounting, a payment for offenses Sophia had committed.

The hand that struck was hard and practiced, as if built to do this and do it cleanly. When the woman finished, she took a cloth from somewhere — a square of rough linen — and rubbed her hands. Sophia’s skin was clammy and she hated that she even touched skin like Sophia’s. When she was done, she flung the cloth onto Sophia’s chest.

Then, without warning, the woman stepped close and folded her arms around Sophia in a constricting hug. For a heartbeat the fierce, cold pressure made Sophia’s spine straighten as if to stand in obedience. The woman’s voice was near her ear, and though she had struck only moments ago, she now softened in a way that made Sophia’s stomach twist.