My Pleasure, Darling

12: She Still Stands

I let myself sleep in. Not because I am entirely reassured that the lady downstairs won't rat us out, not because I trust Felix that much, not for any of that. I let myself sleep in because I am exhausted.

And when I wake up, I realise this is a bad, bad idea.

I can be slow on the wake. Groggy. Sleepy. Aches and pains all over. I never realised how much being in a car too long can hurt. My neck, my butt, my legs. Why do my legs hurt, I've barely moved? I don't bother making up my bed – the other beds certainly weren't made once emptied.

Beds empty.

Beds empty.

Beds empty.

Beds empty.

Beds. Empty!!!!!

I am out of there faster than I know what I'm doing, throwing the bathroom door open. Empty. I don't even bother with clothes or shoes: I'm racing, frantically, feet hitting the floor hard, harder than three days ago when the Chancellor sounded the general alarm in the barracks to call the mountain to siege, harder than the exams in basic training. My lungs are already hurting with how hard I'm breathing, but it doesn't matter.

Down the stairs, pushing, faster, faster. They can't have been taken far. It can't be that late in the morning. Hakkat is a big city, but they can't have taken them very far. I can still find them, I can still find them if I hurry.

I'm through the bar and my hand on the handle of the door, throwing it open, before a voice stops me.

"Lois!"

I turn. Felix and Andrea are sitting at the bar, she's eating a bowl of cereal, our hostess behind said bar. They're all looking at me.

Felix and Andrea. Felix and Andrea are here, and they are safe, and they haven't been silently taken away in the middle of the night. Felix is simply an idiot who doesn't think about how other people experience the world and never thought to concern himself with how I would feel waking up entirely alone.

I slam the door shut again, but remain where I am standing for a moment of silence. Then suddenly, I'm on the floor, with my head between my knees – as close as can be, at least – gripping myself, trying to slow my breathing. Oh, God. I'm going to be sick.

After a few moments, a tiny hand is on mine. When I look up, Andrea puts her little arms around my neck and gives me a quiet hug to comfort me. I hug her back with one arm, comforting her back. Felix is looking at me with an unreadable expression. I wonder if he is trying to grant me some slack in his own mind, like I try to do with him; whether he realises that my life has crumbled to pieces just as much as his has, and that maybe, he shouldn't be too hard on me, either.

I rub Andrea's back a little, and she lets me go. "Looks like you've got some yummy breakfast there, Andrea. You finish it? No? Better go finish up, hm? You need to eat right."

She returns to the bar, struggling to clamber up onto the seat. Felix, however, has paused.

"You get some kind of nightmare or something?" he asks flippantly, as if he is not the designer of my panic, as if his inability to give me adequate notice is not the reason for the adrenaline rush and I am standing here in ill-fitting pyjamas the Chancellor packed me.

The venom in my voice is poorly veiled. "Yeah. Something like that." I pull myself up off the ground and head back up the stairs.

Another hot shower, this one in an attempt to rinse off my rage. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had been sorry. If he had looked sheepish and admitted he just hadn't thought about what I would do if I woke up and they were gone. But for him to try and blame an overactive imagination?