I was spiraling. Each breath felt like an unreachable mountaintop, the next cliff too far away. My vision blurred, and the blackness threatened to drown me once more. The cell looked increasingly smaller, the walls unstable, the ceiling lower. I was losing it, losing all sense of reality.
“Your grace?” Rhyan gripped the cell bars. “Lady Lyriana.”
I couldn’t respond. I clutched my chest, nails digging into my skin. I’d worked so hard to hold it together, to appear strong before the Imperator. But I wasn’t strong. I was weak. I was a seraphim barely concealed behind the mask of a gryphon. I’d let Jules die, and now I was here, and I….
“Lyriana!”
Rhyan was calling my name, but I couldn’t respond. His voice sounded far away, like there were walls between us. Walls that were crumbling, crashing down on me.
“Auriel’s bane. Lyriana!” Rhyan stretched his arm inside my cell. “Take my hand.”
The gesture was so at odds with every interaction I’d had with Rhyan, I stared, incredulous. “What?”
“I’m not having you shatter on me. You need something to hold onto. Now, take my hand,” he said again.
Take my hand.
Rhyan said the words in my mind. A nineteen-year-old Rhyan standing beneath the starlit sky of the summer solstice, his face unmarked by scars, while music swelled around us.
I hadn’t realized I’d taken a crouched position on the ground, my arms like a shield around myself. Shakily, I stood and made my way to the bars. He nodded as I reached for him.
“That’s it.” His fingers closed around mine, calloused but warm. “I’ve got you. Deep breath.” His other hand lay on top of mine, cocooning, soothing. I squeezed his hands, willing my breaths to slow. “Squeeze as hard as you want,” he said. “You won’t break me. Good. Look at me. Look!”
Our eyes met.
“I’m going to breathe with you, all right? Inhale….”
I breathed, inhaling on his command and following his exhale. Again and again.
“Good. Inhale…exhale….”
Moments passed slowly as our breathing synced.
“How do you feel?” he asked, watching me carefully.
“I don’t know. I…tight in my chest…bad….”
“Panic attacks?” he asked quietly.
I nodded.
“Does this happen a lot?”
“For the last two years. Since….” A shudder ran through me. I couldn’t say it. But I could see the understanding in his eyes. Since Jules.
“Right,” he said. “Feel my hand.”
“What?”
“You need to concentrate on your physical surroundings, small details. It’ll help focus you here and now. Tell me what my hand feels like.”
“It feels….” I gulped. “W-Warm.”
He nodded encouragingly.
I shrank my world down to just my hand in his, the feel of his skin, our fingers entwined, the firm steadiness with which he held me. His other hand, a soothing weight, comforting.
“Rough, calloused.”
“Good. Something else now,” he said, and I looked up, trying to find another anchor. “More details.”
“Your eyes,” I said without thinking. “They’re so green, like emeralds.”
His jaw tightened. “Try another sense. Something else you can feel.”
“The…the wind,” I said. “I can hear it blowing. Feel it on my back. Cold.”
“Good,” he said. “Stay with me. You’re safe. All right? Your sisters are safe at home, your father, too. Nothing can hurt you right now, Lyr. Nothing. I’m right here.”
I didn’t know why, but I believed him.
My chest still hurt, but breath came. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“You’d be pretty boring to guard passed out on the floor, and I forgot to bring a scroll to read.” His lips quirked, but the softness never left his eyes. He was trying to distract me. I think…I think he’d been trying to distract me since he arrived.
A long moment passed before I spoke. “Rhyan?”
He leaned his forehead against the bars. “Lyr?”
I exhaled sharply, a tear rolling down my cheek. “I’m scared.”