I raised my hand to knock again.
It hovered there, shaking.
Before I could touch the door, footsteps echoed down the hallway.
"Hope?"
I turned.
Seraphina stood a few steps away, holding a notebook against her chest, a pencil tucked behind her ear like she'd been pacing and forgot why. Her smile faded the moment she saw my face.
"Oh," she said softly. "Hey. I was just—uh—do you have a pencil? Mine disappeared. Again."
She stopped.
Really looked at me.
My eyes burned. My throat tightened.
"Hope?" she said again, quieter now. "Are you okay?"
The door clicked open.
Xylan stepped out, confusion already written across his face. "Seraphina, if you're here for another pencil —"
Then he saw me.
He froze.
"Hope?" he said.
That was it.
The dam broke.
"I—" My voice cracked instantly. I pressed my lips together, but it didn't help. The words spilled out anyway, messy and fast and shaking. "I shouldn't have come here. I'm sorry. I just—I didn't know where else to go."
Seraphina was already beside me. "Hey, hey—okay. It's okay," she said gently, guiding me inside before my legs gave out. "Sit. Just sit."
Xylan closed the door behind us.
I didn't even make it to the chair.
"I'm not their daughter," I blurted.
The words hung in the air—sharp, ugly, impossible to take back.
"They're not my real parents."
The room went dead silent.
"What?" Xylan said.
I laughed once. It came out wrong. Almost hysterical. "They found me. Near the sea. In a basket. After a storm." My hands shook so badly I had to clench them together. "They were never going to tell me. I just heard them."
Seraphina's eyes filled instantly. "Hope…"
"I don't belong anywhere," I said. "Not there. Not here. Not anywhere." My breath hitched. "And the sea—" I swallowed hard. "The sea keeps taking things from me."
Xylan didn't say anything.
He just moved closer. Slowly. Like I might shatter if he rushed it.
"Hey," he said quietly. "You're not nothing. Okay? You hear me?"
That only made it worse.
I broke down.
Not quietly. Not gracefully. My shoulders shook as I tried to cover my mouth, tears soaking into my sleeves, my chest aching with every breath.
Seraphina panicked. "Why are there never tissues when you actually need them?"
She spun around, checking the desk, the shelf, the bed. "Why do boys not own tissues? This should be illegal."
"I'll get some," she said suddenly. "I'll be right back. Don't move. Don't disappear. I swear, if I come back and either of you is gone—"
She rushed out before either of us could stop her.
The door clicked shut.
Silence rushed in.
I wiped my face with my sleeve, embarrassed and exhausted and empty all at once. "Sorry," I muttered. "I didn't mean to—dump all of that on you."
I could swear the sea was listening."You didn't dump anything," Xylan said.
He sat down across from me, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together like he was holding himself in place.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
The quiet wasn't awkward. Just heavy.
"You already know about my mom," he said finally.
I nodded.
"When you said there was a storm," he continued, eyes fixed on the floor, "I stopped hearing you for a second."
My chest tightened.
"That happens," he added, almost like an afterthought. "Sometimes."
His fingers twisted into the fabric of his sleeve, slow and tight.
"I used to think," he said quietly, "that if I stayed awake long enough… she'd come back."
The words hit harder than anything else.
"Like the sea just borrowed her," he went on. "Like it would give her back." "Like it would get tired of holding onto her and give her back."
He exhaled softly.
"It didn't."
He was quiet again. Long enough that I thought he was done.
Then he looked at me.
"And when you talk about it," he said, "you sound like that."
"Like what?" I whispered.
He hesitated. His jaw tightened.
"Like you're still waiting," he said. "For something to return what it took."
I felt it then—the truth of it. Sitting heavy in my chest.
"I didn't even know I was waiting," I said.
He nodded once. "Yeah."
"You have that look," he added. "Like you don't know exactly what you lost yet—only that it's gone."
Tears spilled over again, quieter this time.
"I don't want the sea near me anymore," I whispered. "But it keeps pulling. Like it remembers me."
Xylan didn't answer right away.
"It remembers me too," he said finally.
We sat there like that—two people shaped by the same silence, listening to a world that had already decided we belonged to it.
The door creaked open.
Seraphina burst back in, arms full of tissues. "Okay," she said briskly—then stopped. "Oh. I missed something big, didn't I?"
She handed me the tissues anyway.
I took one. My hands were still shaking.
And somewhere, far beneath us—
Something was awakening