"Not about cookies." He took another bite, bigger this time, maintaining eye contact. "This is the best cookie I've ever eaten."

"Now I know you're lying because that cookie is objectively a war crime against baked goods and I say that as the person who made it with my own two hands and watched it come out of the oven looking like a meteorite."

Phei almost choked.

Actually choked—cookie crumbs going down the wrong pipe, coughing and laughing at the same time while Maya made panicked sounds and slapped his back way harder than necessary.

"Oh my god, I killed you. I killed you with my terrible cookie and my worse joke. This is how I die—arrested for manslaughter by baked goods—"

"I'm fine." He coughed, laughed, coughed again. "Just—wasn't expecting 'meteorite.'"

"It does though! It looks exactly like a meteorite! All cratered and burnt and—" She stopped, realizing she was not helping her case. "Okay, I'm going to stop talking about how bad my cookie is while you're actively eating it."

"Probably smart."

"I have those moments sometimes. Smart moments. They're rare but they happen."

The fire crackled between them. Maya was close enough that he could smell her shampoo—something floral and soft—and see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose that her makeup almost hid.

She wasn't calculating.

That was the thing.

Sierra weighed every word before she spoke, measured every gesture for maximum impact. Maddie performed confidence like a Broadway show, every movement choreographed for an audience.

Even the other Academy Belles moved through the world like chess pieces, always aware of their position, always planning three moves ahead.

Maya just... existed. Rambled when she was nervous. Made terrible cookies. Changed her hair because she'd seen him glance at a picture.

It is refreshing.

It was dangerous.

"Can I ask you something?" she said, setting down the apple slice she'd been nervously shredding.

"You just did."

"Ha ha, very clever, using my own rambling energy against me." She rolled her eyes but she was smiling. "Okay, real question. And you don't have to answer if you don't want to. I'm just curious. And when I get curious I ask questions and then I can't stop thinking about the questions until I get answers and it's a whole thing and—"

"Maya. Ask."

She hesitated. Bit her lip. Twisted a strand of silver hair around her finger—a nervous habit he'd started noticing.

"Has there ever been someone special to you? In this school, I mean." Her brown eyes met his, purple catching firelight. "Before this week. Before Sierra and the others. Was there anyone you actually... cared about?"

The question landed like a stone dropped into still water.

The fire kept crackling. The imported bird kept singing. The world kept turning like nothing had changed.

But something in Phei's chest went very, very still.

Was there anyone?

Yeah.

Yeah, there was.

One girl. One person in this entire gilded hellscape who'd seen him—actually seen him, not through him or past him or as furniture or a punching bag. She'd looked at him and seen a person worth knowing.

She'd sat with him in empty classrooms when neither of them could face the crowds. Shared her lunch when she noticed he didn't have one. Laughed at his jokes that weren't even that funny. Told him secrets she'd never told anyone else. Held his hand when everything got too heavy.

For two years, she'd been his person. His anchor. The only light in a world determined to crush him.

And then—

Don't.

The memory tried to surface. He shoved it back down. Locked it in the box where he kept all the things that could break him if he looked at them too long.

"Phei?"

Maya's voice, soft with concern. She'd leaned closer without realizing it, one hand hovering near his arm like she wanted to touch him but wasn't sure if she should.

"You went somewhere," she said quietly. "Just now. Your whole face changed."

He looked at her—this girl with her silver hair and her burnt cookies and her complete inability to hide a single thing she was feeling—and something twisted in his chest.

"Yeah," he said. "There was someone."

Maya waited. Didn't push. Didn't pry. Just sat there in the firelight, present and patient, like she understood that some things took time to surface.

"What happened?" she finally asked. "To her?"

Phei opened his mouth.

Closed it.

The memories were right there—sharp-edged, painful, ready to cut him open if he let them. A face he'd tried so hard to forget. A voice he still heard in dreams. Hands that had held his like he mattered.

And then the pain.

The one that had hurt worse than anything Brett or Danton or the entire fucking Maxton family had ever done to him combined.

"I'll tell you," he said slowly. "But not today."

Maya nodded. No disappointment. No frustration. Just quiet acceptance.

"Okay," she said simply. "Whenever you're ready. I'm not going anywhere."

She picked up the last apple slice and held it out to him.

"Here. You didn't eat enough. And don't argue with me because I will ramble at you about nutrition until you give in just to make me stop."

Phei took it from her fingers. Their hands brushed. Neither pulled away.

"Maya?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks. For the food. And the cookie." He gestured vaguely at the fire pit, the forest, the ridiculously beautiful setting. "And this."

Her smile was slow and warm, spreading across her face like sunrise over the manicured trees.

"Anytime," she said. "I mean it. You can call me at 3 AM if you need to. I'm usually awake anyway because I have terrible sleep habits and I watch too many cooking shows even though I can't cook and honestly the irony of that is not lost on me—"

"Maya."

"I know." She laughed, and the sound was like wind chimes—light and bright and completely unguarded.

For a moment, everything else faded. Sierra. Maddie. The system. The missions. The plans within plans within plans.

Just this.

Just her.

Just firelight and bad cookies and someone who looked at him like he was worth looking at.

Sitting there across from her, watching her smile dim slightly as she noticed the shift in his expression, Phei filed away a single thought for later:

She's different.

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