I nod.
Step toward the door.
Pause.
"Ms. Chen?"
"Yes?"
"If I make it—if I get the scholarship, if I leave—" The words catch in my throat. "Will you remember me? Not as the crazy Omega with the body count, but as... as someone who danced? Someone who tried?"
Her eyes soften.
Something that might be tears glistens at the edges.
"I'll remember you as one of the most remarkable young women I've ever had the privilege of teaching," she says quietly. "And when I see your name in lights someday—because Iwillsee it, Seraphine, I have no doubt—I'll tell everyone who will listen that I knew you when."
The sob that escapes is small.
Contained.
But it's real.
I cross the threshold.
Turn back one last time.
"Any last advice?"
Ms. Chen's smile turns into something fiercer.
Prouder.
"Survive like you have been, Seraphine."
CHAPTER 19
Misfits And Monsters
~SERAPHINE~
The door clicks shut behind me.
The sound is soft—barely audible over the ambient noise of the academy hallway—but it feels like a punctuation mark. The end of one conversation. The beginning of... something else.
One-two-three-four.
My fingers flex at my sides.
One-two-three-four.
I take a breath.
The corridor stretches out before me, grey and institutional, lined with doors that lead to offices and classrooms and the endless bureaucratic machinery that keeps Ruthless Academy running. Students pass by in small groups, their conversations washing over me like white noise—meaningless syllables that don't quite penetrate the fog in my brain.
Scholarship.
Dance school.
