Sigh.

The Holy Maiden let a soft breath fog the glass, then watched the rain smear the world into gray brushstrokes beyond the window.

Why spar with a crybaby at all? Weariness rolled in like low thunder before reason even formed. Blaming her own conduct felt neat on the surface, yet the true cause curled in the knot between them.

No—Melvina doesn’t like women. Her heart’s compass doesn’t swing that way.

The pane mirrored the Holy Maiden’s eyes, her lids fluttering like a winter fly with torn wings, quick and brittle.

Melvina feels nothing special for her own sex; her heart is a closed lake, flat to mirrored faces.

Otherwise, in our childhood hours, she would’ve shown it—some tremor, some color. I skimmed memory like fingers over old ink and found nothing. That emptiness speaks louder than proof.

She stared into the glass. Rain streaked across her reflected brow like water poured from a crown. Look closer: her pale outline turned thin, almost transparent, floating inside the flow of weather.

“What kind of feeling do you hold for Selina?” The Holy Maiden turned, eyes drifting to Hedi on the bed.

Hedi kept her eyes shut. The dim room couldn’t dull her fair skin, white as paint soaking into a canvas. Her round nose rose like a gentle hill, lending warmth to her face. Her lips were faintly cracked, worry-picked at the edges, yet to a glance she still kept the tender fullness of a young girl.

The Holy Maiden moved with quiet grace to sit beside her, kneading Hedi’s gray-white curls the way moonlit sand shifts under the hand.

“You can hear this,” she said, twisting the copper lamp on the nightstand. Soft yellow spilled into a corner like poured honey, and Hedi’s features lit, smooth and balanced. “Even in a coma, the body still listens at the shore of the unconscious.”

“If Selina truly matters to you, your magic will answer me back.” Her voice dropped, as steady as rain on eaves. “You work with Dark Magic, and it still feels as restless as ever.”

A crisp sound snapped down the corridor—like little ice pellets hitting the floorboards. Selina pushed the door open and stood in the frame, soaked through. Water threaded off her clothes and hair in bright strings, merging with the blackness behind her.

The Holy Maiden folded herself sideways, a crooked glance toward the doorway’s shadow. “Wood floors swell and die in water.”

“Give the Professor back to me…” Selina murmured, voice muddy with effort. Her body stood like a clay mold, rigid and cold. A vein trembled along her temple, then sank out of sight. Speaking looked hard, like lifting stone with bare hands.

“What did you say?”

“Give her back…”

“Could you speak up? At least enough to beat the rain.”

“Give the Professor back to me!”

The Holy Maiden raised her left hand and held Selina’s gaze. “So what if I do? If she doesn’t like you, the river will cut you apart sooner or later.”

“The Professor said even if our gap is huge, she hopes I’ll bridge it with work!”

“Anyone can say that. It’s stage talk.”

“The Professor wouldn’t lie to me! Letting your words sway me—such a fool!”

“She told you about Dark Magic too?”

“Of course! If you read Dark Magic, you can’t venerate the Priest—”

The Holy Maiden shook her head, a small laugh breaking like a thin wave. “Still not what she told you.”

“Then what is it?”

“Study. She told you to read. The result writes itself.”

“Even so… it was for me…”

“Truly?”

“Because I’m her follower!”

Selina took a deep breath and stepped inside. A moment ago, she’d stood like rock; letting go left her oddly tired, like a string snapping mid-performance. Under the Holy Maiden’s eyes, she pushed herself into composure, calm stitched from frayed edges.

“That proves a gap between you.” The Holy Maiden gave Hedi a lazy glance, then set her look back on Selina. “If Melvina really liked you, she wouldn’t hide anything.”

“That’s not it.”

“What is it then?”

“You’re forcing the Professor from your memory onto who she is now. People change.” Selina’s eyes dimmed with fretful dusk. “Is it because I exposed the impostor, so you—”

“It has nothing to do with that. The moment I pretended to be Melvina, I could see this day walking toward me.”

“I’m sorry… I didn’t think about your feelings… If she pretended, the Professor must have reasons she can’t say…”

“Even with your apology,” the Holy Maiden said, shifting in a swift ripple, left leg over right, her little white sneaker idly rocking on her toes, “the fact stands: Melvina doesn’t like you.”

“I’ll hear that from the Professor herself!”

“She won’t say it.”

“If she’s afraid I’ll be hurt, isn’t that proof she likes me?”

“Melvina hates trouble. She won’t refuse you to your face. She’ll slip away without a sound—just as she revered John the Priest, yet chose, on the day he passed…”

Selina wrung water from her hem, then walked up to the Holy Maiden. “You think the Priest’s death was… a hassle to the Professor?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“If she heard you, how much would it hurt!”

The Holy Maiden touched her lips, knowing she’d stepped in something cruel, crunching across Melvina’s feeling for this place. She let out a long breath. The sigh mingled with the stale room air and cycled back into her chest. Deep inside, she heard faint bubbles in her lungs pop like breaking foam. Breathing snagged, and she had to turn the thread. “I don’t know how to wake Melvina.”

This time, Selina didn’t cut her sharp. She followed the lead. “In the Dark Realm of Shattered City, the Professor had something like this.”

“She went into the Dark Realm too?”

“With me.”

“What exactly happened?”

“A coma… and not quite a coma… even her heart stopped…”

The Holy Maiden rubbed her jaw, doubt rough as sand under her thumb. “What did you do?”

“It wasn’t me!”

“I’m asking about after she fell under.”

“Lots and lots…” Selina flushed, shy rushing up like a girl caught by her crush. “All kinds of things…”

“If you’re telling the truth, this time isn’t the same.”

“Of course I’m telling the truth!”

“I think Melvina cast a ward on herself against mental magic.”

“No.”

“That sure?”

Selina nodded, blunt as a stone. “Because the Professor would put the same ward on me.”

“Then tell me what’s blocking my healing.”

“I can’t.”

The Holy Maiden lifted a brow, surprise flicking like a match.

“This must be said by the Professor herself. No one can replace her.”

“What now? Without that, how do I treat her?”

“Do what I did to the Professor in the Dark Realm.” Selina lowered her head. Heat washed her cheeks like invisible fire, rising until the sky went white. “Maybe she’ll wake.”

“Try.”

Selina edged toward Hedi, the stiffness now a brittle shell. She wrapped that small, soft body in her arms and breathed in the citrus from her neck and the threads of hair. Then she set Hedi’s head gently and, with all her heart gathered like hands around a flame, kissed her.