She noticed, backing off. "That makes sense. You know, I think I'm going back to the theater next week. You could come one night."
"Probably," he said, not noticing her expression. "They're going to be looking for me here. If they find me, they can break me."
"It's probably better if you get somewhere safe," she said with a small frown, her tone sad as she tried to conceal it.
He glanced up. His eyes were darker than usual, his face closed off from the tiredness. He fell silent for a moment, watching her. "You might need to lay low too," he said after a moment, taking her empty plate back to the sink. "He knew something to do with ballet."
He frowned, letting the water run over his hands. "When I first met Romero, I had to grow used to his mind-melding. It's... it's a terrible thing, Fleur. Your brain is engulfed in fire. You can't breathe, you can't think... there's nothing you can do." He shut off the water but still stared off into space, as if remembering. "It took me years of being under the scope. There is no part of me that Romero doesn't know."
"Well... after years and years of dealing with this, I began to find a way to change it. Not make it better, not even make it bearable, but... I began to be able to follow the channel back and look into his mind. See some of his most surface-level thoughts. Most of them were nothing. Things that were related to the reason that I was being punished, you know? But this time, when I looked in, I just heard one thing. One thing being repeated over and over again."
Fleur took off her necklace staring at it in thought before getting up and approaching him. "This necklace belonged to my grandmother," she explained, holding it up. "My grandmother's name is Alyona, Ferris."
