Chapter 292: The Cost of Waking

Orion stared at Sophia as if she had just smacked him with one of those extremely heavy books they normally found in the library. Offended didn’t even begin to cover what he felt from her words. His eyebrows flew up, his mouth parted, and his entire posture stiffened like she’d personally insulted him—and not in the cute way she usually called him an oaf or an ogre or even dumb. This was different.

"Let me get this straight—you are glad that I left you? That I left you alone, is that it?" Orion asked Sophia.

She lifted a hand, palm outward. "There’s a reason I said that. Calm yourself down."

He folded his arms. "Oh, I’m not sure I can be calm until you explain what it is you just meant. And it better make sense."

"Don’t threaten me," she told him.

"I asked for an explanation; I’m not threatening you. And I really need to hear that explanation," Orion told her.

Sophia drew in a slow breath. She was this close to hitting Orion, but she understood that he was reacting this way because he was scared for her.

"When I was... hallucinating," she began, "or recovering my memories—whatever we want to call it—there was a point where you were with me every time."

Orion blinked. Confusion cracked through the offense, but only just. "Of course I was. I wasn’t going to leave you alone while you were trapped in your old bedroom with your abusive mother."

"I know," she said gently. "And I appreciated it. More than you think."

He opened his mouth, probably ready to argue anyway, but she continued before he could interrupt.

"I appreciated it because I was terrified. Every part of me kept expecting her to walk into the room at any point. But even with that, I didn’t want her anywhere near me. And every time she approached, you were there. You were shielding me from her. It was because of you that I even... you helped me, Orion."

Orion’s expression shifted.

"But," she went on softly, "that’s the problem."

He stared. "How does me protecting you from her become a problem? Why does it even have to be a problem?"

Sophia looked down at her hands, trembling slightly—not from fear now, but from the weight of understanding what she was about to say.

"The memory recovery took longer because of you."

"Wow. Who would have thought trying to help you would be a cause for blame?" he said with an eye roll.

She almost snorted. "Let me finish. You kept her out. And that helped me, emotionally... but it also trapped me in there. Like I was stuck between two worlds. Limbo."

"Limbo?" Orion asked her with a frown. "That’s like being stuck in a place with no way out, right? Like you’re just existing."

"Yes," she said immediately. "In the best way, you protected me. When you were there, she couldn’t get into the room. But if she never came back in, I wouldn’t have woken up. I needed one more presence—hers. One last trigger. That final confrontation."

"Surely that’s not how it works, right?" Orion asked with a deeper frown on his face.

"It actually is," Lysander told him.

"I’m confused," Orion told them.

"Sophia only recovered the memory of the room because her mind anchored itself to a specific trauma point. The rain and fever were the catalyst for the trauma, but an important figure—the one that determines if she gets to move forward or not—was her mother," Lysander told him. "Without the final visit, the loop couldn’t complete."

"If you had stayed, Orion, then right now, you’d still be holding my hands and begging me to come back. I wouldn’t be awake right now," she told him.

He sucked in a breath like he’d been punched.

Lysander continued gently, "There’s a reason the visitation itself was important. That moment held the final piece. The piece her mind refused to let her see until she was forced to."

Sophia nodded again. "It was after that last visit that everything... broke. And healed. Like I said—she almost killed me during it. But it was also the moment she finally let the healers intervene without giving them a specific timeframe. She stepped back. She made them bring me back from the brink of death."

Orion bristled. "You know, the more you keep on talking about this woman who’s supposed to be your mother, the more I hate her."

"I hate that you had to go through any of this. I hate that she put you in that room. That she was supposed to protect you and instead—" He cut himself off, throat working.

Sophia’s gaze softened. She reached out before she even realized she was doing it, her fingers brushing his. Orion looked down at their hands like they’d just appeared there by magic.

Then she intertwined their fingers once more. She did it gently, like the movement itself was an apology.

"And I hate that you have to feel that way," she whispered.

His eyes flicked up, meeting hers. All the anger in them didn’t vanish, but it melted along the edges, replaced by something steadier—something vulnerable he almost never let anyone see.

Sophia raised their joined hands, brought them to her lips, and kissed his knuckles softly.

The gesture was small but reassuring, and it calmed Orion a bit.

It wasn’t until Sophia had done it that she realized there were people in the room with them and that their relationship was supposed to be a secret.

She immediately dropped his hand as if it had been lit by fire. She removed her hands from his and cleared her throat awkwardly.

Orion just watched her with a faint smile on his face.

"Um... ah... the thing is," she said awkwardly. "You don’t need to stress yourself too much and then worry yourself into a concussion. It’s ehn..."

Someone chuckled, and Sophia froze, wishing at that moment that the ground would swallow her up.