I moved through the convent like a ghost of myself.Some days, I barely spoke.Some days, I forgot I was allowed to.But nothing filled the ache inside me.Nothing silenced the fear curdled beneath my ribs or the constant thrum of his name beneath every thought.
I waited.
Every morning, without meaning to, my feet carried me toward the courtyard gate.I stood there, fingers curled around the iron bars, staring down the path as if sheer willpower could summon his silhouette out of the mist.
Every evening, I returned to the chapel.Candles flickered low, stained glass darkening with dusk.I sat alone in the front pew, whispering prayers into the hollow air.Prayers that felt too fragile for a world like this.
Sometimes Sister Ana joined me, sitting beside me in silence.She didn’t question me.She just existed next to me like an anchor - quiet, steady, and unwavering.
But even her presence hadn’t stopped my thoughts from tearing themselves apart.
One afternoon,while we harvested basil in the herb garden, I overheard two of the younger sisters whispering.
“They say the violence hasn’t stopped,” one whispered, her voice tight with nerves.“Tuscany is red this season.”
My spine stiffened.I held my breath.
“And the Cavalho family?”the other asked.
A beat.
“Retaliating,” the first one explained.“As they always do.”
My hands froze in the soil.
Cavalho.Atlas.
The blood drained from my face.My heart stuttered painfully, tripping over itself.Retaliating could have meant he was alive.Or it could have meant someone else was wearing his rage.I didn’t know which possibility terrified me more.
Sister Ana noticed my stillness and squeezed my shoulder gently.“Come,” she whispered.“Take a moment.”
I nodded, though my body felt too heavy to move.Somehow, I made my way to the chapel.The pew groaned under my weight as I sat, folding into myself.I pressed my forehead to my clasped hands.My fingers trembled while my breath shuddered out in broken pieces.
“Please,” I whispered into the quiet.The words tore from somewhere deep, raw, unrefined.“Just let him be alive.”
The silence that followed was thick.Heavy.Merciless.There was only quiet and dread.And the echo of a world that might have swallowed the only person who had ever made me feel like I belonged in it.
I didn’t hear Sister Ana when she took a seat beside me.I didn’t notice her until her hand brushed mine, gentle and warm.
“Hope is painful,” she murmured, her voice wrapping around me like soft wool.“But so is giving it up.”
I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, ashamed of how wet they were.
“I don’t know how much longer I can wait,” I admitted, my voice cracking.“It feels like… like I’m holding my breath, and if I exhale, it will be the end.”
She linked her fingers with mine in a rare show of tenderness.
“Then don’t wait.Live.And if he returns, he will find you living.”
Her words sounded kind.Wise.But they didn’t land.Because I couldn’t live.Not when every breath felt unfinished — suspended, hanging between what was and what might never be.
Not when every night I saw his face right before the sound of gunfire.Not when I heard Zelda screaming at me to run and guilt gnawed at me for leaving.I imagined him lying somewhere cold, alone, bleeding out because I wasn’t there.
And so, in the quiet moments — when the chores were done, when the candles burned low, when the stone walls echoed back nothing but my own heartbeat — I whispered his name into the stillness.
Soft.
Broken.