The Shape of Broken Mirrors, Part 1

VP and BP Standings
Erin 63 VP - 2300 BP - 1 Achiev
Claire - 55 VP - 5200 BP - 2 Achievs
Marissa - 52 VP - 2800 BP - 1 Achiev
Liesa - 48 VP - 1400 BP - 2 Achievs
Emi - 36 VP - 4750 BP - 1 Achiev
Norah - 28 VP - 2550 BP - 1 Achiev
Dawn - 26 VP - 3000 BP - 1 Achiev
Sam - 22 VP - 2300 BP - 1 Achiev
Chloe - 12 VP - 1475 BP - 1 Achiev

The elevator’s door hissed shut on its own, soundless and final, leaving Andy in the foyer with nothing but the soft rumble of the elevator receding down the shaft. He stood there, blinking in the dimness, until he realized he was still in his pajamas, bare feet cold on the floor. The clock on the wall read 8:08. Challenge Day. And he was wrapping his head around the previous night, with Chloe.

He padded to the kitchen, made coffee, and tried to ignore the way the silence felt sharper than usual. The cup was too hot; he sipped anyway, scalding his tongue. For a while he just wandered, following the seam in the tile all the way around the suite. He was circling the painting without meaning to, a moth to a flame that never lost its heat.

Katherine’s painting hung over the mantel, as usual, her hair swirling down to her ankles, her eyes watching everything. For a second Andy almost asked her if she’d slept well. The words made it to his lips before he remembered—she never slept. She just… existed.

He set his mug down, folded his arms, and faced her. “You probably know what I’m going to say,” he said, feeling a little ridiculous for talking to a painting before breakfast, but not enough to stop.

She lifted an eyebrow.

Andy took a breath. “I’m probably supposed to give a speech today. To the girls. Rah-rah, go team. But every time I try to write it in my head, all I can think about is…” He trailed off, then started again, softer. “I don’t want to lose any of them. Not now.”

Katherine shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Katherine’s lips curved, infinitesimal, at the edge. Encouragement or sympathy; hard to tell.

He began to pace, the way he always did when the stakes got personal. The habit was an old one, predating even the first time he’d been left alone with his own indecision. It wasn’t the measured, professional pacing of his old boardroom days, but the mindless, restless circuits of a man haunted by the certainty he’d miss something if he ever sat still. “I know, I know. We’ve been here before.” He shot a sideways look at the painting, as if Katherine might roll her eyes at his lack of progress. Her expression remained suspended in that ambiguous equilibrium—somewhere between amusement and critique, as though she’d seen every flavor of human indecision and found it all quaint.

He pressed on, feeling the words press out of his chest in a rush. “Last week—before the challenge, I mean—I was freaking out. I thought I’d be the one holding it together, keeping everyone focused on the goal, but honestly, Claire and the others were the ones who had to keep me from bolting. I just kept thinking, what the hell am I doing here? Why am I the one making these calls?” He exhaled, and the memory of that shame—raw, unfiltered—flooded back. “Then, after the challenge, after Herman and the maintenance ‘glitch’, I thought I had it all mapped out. But this time…” He let the rest hang.

Katherine’s face frowned, and he felt her following, a warmth that flickered from the canvas whenever he turned away.

He circled back to the living room, hands shoved deep in his pajama pockets. “You ever notice how the second you think you understand something, it just… changes?” He let the hypothetical hang in the air. Maybe talking to Katherine was less about answers and more about hearing the question out loud, cutting through the endless recursion.

He kept going, voice gaining momentum, tangling itself around every memory that had been gnawing at him. “I keep replaying the last few days. Erin and Marissa—didn’t see that one coming, by the way.”

He paused with a faint smile, remembering the mineral pool's steam rising around Erin's bare shoulders, how Marissa had drifted over with that mischievous glint in her eye, fingers trailing the water's surface. The way they'd exchanged that look—half challenge, half invitation—before closing in on either side of him, their laughter echoing off the stone walls as hands explored beneath the bubbling surface and inhibitions dissolved like salt in the warm water. “Or how Claire would be okay sharing her first time with Erin.” That was another one. He’d expected nerves, maybe even tears. Instead, she’d shown a calm he’d never seen in her, a trust that bordered on spiritual, and a generosity that no one had the right to expect.

He shook his head, amused and a little awed. “Dawn and Emi—who knew they’d click? I mean, those two are supposed to exist in separate universes. But now it’s like they’re the only ones who understand each other.” He tried to picture what it would have looked like in high school: Dawn’s relentless optimism and Emi’s perpetual shyness drawing each other into orbit, the whole thing as inevitable as a chemical reaction. “Sometimes I wonder if any of us really change, or if we’re just revealing what was buried in the first place.”

Katherine cocked her head, silent as ever, but the lines around her mouth softened. She radiated an energy that was half bemused, half clinical, like a shrink watching a rat finally push the right lever. Andy huffed, set his mug on the coffee table.

“You know, I figured I’d have an edge today. Veto in my pocket, all the old tricks. But I can’t shake this feeling that I’m not going to outsmart the system this time.” He paced a short circuit from couch to window and back, then made a sweeping gesture at Katherine. “Arabella won’t give me another opportunity to rig the vote. Even if she sent Herman in the first place, it’s too dangerous if I game the system twice, particularly twice in a row. But I don’t want to be the kind of person who lets any of these women get cut loose without a fight.”

She met his gaze with the infinite patience of someone who’d watched several Masters before him, most of them probably more arrogant, more broken, and far less prone to speeches.

He ran his hand through his hair. “The veto’s a poisoned chalice, isn’t it? I mean, sure, I can save someone. But that means the next girl out knows I could have saved her, and didn’t.” He found himself talking faster, like if he kept up the momentum he’d finally get to an answer that felt right. “And if I don’t use it? Then the girl who gets eliminated knows I could have saved her, but didn’t.” He paused, then slumped into the couch, elbows on knees. “Feels like no matter what I do, I end up screwing someone over.”

Katherine let out a sigh, but it was more visual than audible—her shoulders dropped, her lips pressed into a thin line. It wasn’t quite judgment, but it wasn’t sympathy, either. She raised her hand, index finger out, and slowly tapped her temple, once, twice, three times, in a pantomime of “use your brain.” Then she flexed her hand, palm open, as if to say, “but also your heart.”

Andy couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re starting to sound like my therapist. I guess we both know how well that worked out.”

At this, Katherine let her expression go a little sharper, arching an eyebrow. He took the point.

He sat back, arms crossed, and watched her for a while. The painting was as beautiful and as disconcerting as ever, her black hair spilling down in impossible waves, skin a perfect, glowing contrast to the muted riot of painted wildflowers behind her. But the real magic was in the face, the micro-movements: the flicker of amusement, the flicker of challenge, the warmth that sometimes crept in when she forgot to be a stoic immortal.

He said, “You ever get tired of it? Watching people try and fail, and try again?”

Katherine shrugged, then lifted both hands in a kind of ‘what can you do’ gesture. Her huge breasts jostled, a reminder—maybe deliberate—of how little autonomy she actually had. Then she leaned forward, fixing Andy with a gaze that was suddenly a little too intense.

He swallowed, tried to keep his tone light. “Okay, let’s be honest. I’m stalling. The whole point of this is to talk about what’s next.”

She nodded, then, after a pause, reached out with a single finger and mimed turning a page. Andy felt a flash of embarrassment—he was being told to move the story along by a literal work of art.

He straightened, found his focus. “Here’s the thing. I’m not ready to let any of them go. Every single one of them—” He ticked names off on his fingers. “Erin. Claire. Dawn. Emi. Marissa. Liesa. Norah. Sam. Chloe.” He stopped, surprised at the lump in his throat.

Katherine lifted her hands, cupped them together in front of her chest, then spread them wide, as if to say, “let go.” She looked almost sad, and for a second Andy wondered if he’d ever seen her do that before.

He said, “You think I’m being a coward?”

She shook her head. Then, with a sly little smile, she tapped her heart twice, then pointed at him.

Andy grinned, despite himself. “You want me to trust myself, huh? That’s a tall order.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, mug growing cold on the coffee table as he hunched toward the painting with the confessional posture of an addict. “I still don’t know what to do about you, you know,” he said, voice lower now. His hand gestured weakly at Katherine’s portrait, then dropped between his knees. “You asked to be in my room, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. About you. I mean, not in a—” He felt his cheeks flush, the blood rising so fast it made him dizzy. “Okay, maybe in that way too.”

Katherine’s body language stilled in an instant. The brushstrokes seemed to tighten, her shoulders squared as if to brace for impact. Her eyes scanned left, then right, then centered on him with a kinetic clarity he had never seen in her before. Her lips parted, just a sliver, as if she might break the rules of her reality and speak aloud. Her hands moved to her sides, fingers splaying, knuckles whitening with preemptive tension.

Andy was aware of how ridiculous this all looked—man in pajamas, bedhead wild, conducting relationship therapy with a canvas. He stifled a laugh at himself, but when he looked back up, Katherine’s gaze caught him with such intensity that the urge died in his throat. The air was charged, an ionized field between his chest and her painted form.

He took a long, steadying breath. The air in the room was thick with the residue of all the conversations they’d never had, and maybe never could. Still, he pressed forward, voice softer now, like he was afraid of breaking something fragile.

“When you first… told me about what Arabella did to you, I didn’t get it at all.” He hunched forward, knuckles white around the mug. “The voyeur thing, I mean. The transformation.” He tried to keep his tone clinical, but there was nothing clinical about the way his heart jogged in his chest. “I thought maybe it was a joke. Some trick, or a way to mess with me. Maybe you were testing me?” He shrugged.

Katherine’s face took on a look that was the canvas equivalent of a mortified wince. Her eyes narrowed defensively, lips pressed together, but she didn’t glance away. Not for a second.

He pushed onward, the words coming faster. “I mean, I get why you’d, uh, want to keep it to yourself. It’s not exactly a normal thing to admit.” He tried to match her gaze, as if he could conjure up even a tenth of the vulnerability she projected. “I just—when I found out, I didn’t want to be the kind of guy who… did that to you.” He waved his hand, as if the mess of guilt and desire and old-fashioned embarrassment could be physically dispersed. “I mean, if it makes you happy, sure, but—” He trailed off, realizing, belatedly, that he was probably making it worse.

Katherine shook her head so vigorously the movement shuddered through the entire painting, an afterimage of blue-black hair rippling in the air. She cut him off with a wild “no, no, no” motion, hands slicing through the negative space. Then she paused, exhaled (or did the best impression of it possible for a collection of oils and pigment), and met his gaze squarely.

He realized, then, how hard she was fighting to be understood. It wasn’t just a matter of pride or exhibitionism. There was an honesty to it, a need as basic as hunger. Maybe more basic.

Katherine squared her shoulders, back straightening with deliberate elegance. She planted her hands at her hips, fingers fanned in a pose that was—objectively, unavoidably—sexy as hell. Her spine arched just enough to accentuate the impossible geometry of her chest, the brushwork around her collarbone catching the golden spill of imaginary lamplight. Her face was resolute, eyes steady and unflinching. If there was a word for what she was projecting, it wasn’t seduction, but “want.” She wanted to be seen. Not just as a curiosity or a symbol, but as a woman, a partner, someone completely alive to the moment.

He stared, mouth suddenly dry. There was a vulnerability in her that almost hurt to watch. But layered over the vulnerability was a confidence, too—a dare, almost. A silent command: Don’t look away.

He wondered, for a drifting moment, if this is how the other girls felt during a transformation: the disorienting collision of shame and pride, terror and thrill. Was this what Arabella wanted? For him to see each woman (and Katherine, too, in her impossible way) in all her contradictory fullness, to peel back the fear and find the truth underneath?

He set the mug down, fingertips throbbing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never wanted to make you feel like—like a thing, you know?” He tried, and failed, to keep the apology from sounding like a plea.

Katherine’s gaze softened, just a little. She reached up and, with the delicacy of a dancer, traced the outline of her own face with two fingers. Then she pointed at Andy, then at herself, then back at Andy, drawing an invisible thread that connected them.

He felt himself flush, the heat rising in his face and ears. His mind flashed back to the night he had first encountered her in his suite, and how she’d watched every conversation and confession with that mix of amusement and rigor. If he’d ever doubted her sentience, or her agency, that doubt was long gone now.

He ran a hand over his face. “Half the time, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I wing it. But you, you always know how to—” He broke off, embarrassed, then **** himself to finish. “You always know how to make an impression.”

Katherine’s lips curved in the faintest smile, then she rolled her eyes—an exaggerated, theatrical arc, like a frustrated cartoon cat. She pointed at her own mouth, then pantomimed zipping it shut.

Andy managed a laugh and shook his head in wonder. “Jesus, you’re good at this. If you could actually talk, you’d have me dancing circles in five minutes flat.” He let his shoulders relax for the first time since entering the room. Katherine softened in response, the tension in her painted form ebbing as her expression reverted to a complicated mixture of mischief and vulnerability and—he caught it now, unmistakably—hope. There was something in the way she held his gaze, a challenge and a plea at the same time, and Andy felt a pang in his chest so sudden it might have been physical.

It was strange, he thought, how easy it was to forget the duration of her exile when she looked so alive. He **** himself to remember the details of her story—not just the salacious bullet points, but the time. The endless days. The boredom. The horror of being both present and invisible, for fourteen years, a prisoner of someone else’s whim. It was the sort of fate that would have driven Andy insane in a week.

He tried to imagine it. The way the others talked about their transformations made it clear that humiliation and pleasure were tangled up with each other, mutually amplifying. But Katherine—she had been denied both. Unable to touch, unable to be touched, **** to witness a generation’s worth of romance and heartbreak and lust from the sidelines, unable to participate. It was the thought of that emptiness, not the sensual spectacle of her body, that finally made Andy’s throat close up.

He cleared his throat, feeling suddenly unworthy. “Look, I know you’ve been stuck like this for… what, fourteen years?” He winced at how trite it sounded. But Katherine only nodded, not breaking eye contact. She was still, except for the faint trembling at the corners of her mouth. “And I know you can’t even, uh…” He made a vague gesture. “You know. Take care of yourself. Or touch anyone. That’s…”

****, he wanted to say. It sounded melodramatic, but he couldn’t conjure a better word. The silence stretched. He realized, then, that Katherine was waiting for him to finish the thought, to say the thing outright.

He tried. “That’s ****.”

She didn’t flinch. Instead, her jaw set with a pride he hadn’t expected. The smile she wore was fragile, but not defeated. She had survived, was surviving, and she wasn’t asking for pity. He could see it now—the raw willpower it took to remain sane, to remain herself, to not let the bitterness turn her into something hollow. It was an act of rebellion, every time she smiled.

Andy found himself staring, and not in the way he had when he first encountered the portrait. Back then, it had been raw animal attraction, the involuntary rush of dopamine that came from seeing something so flawless and forbidden. Now, he was looking at the person behind the paint. At the mind that had endured more than he could fathom. The body—stunning, yes, unchanging and immortalized—but also a cage. It was the mind that drew him, the soul that looked out at the world and refused to break.

He wanted to comfort her, to do something physical and immediate—a hand on her shoulder, a hug, even a chaste stroke along the arm—but that was the one thing Katherine could not have. The thought made him ache with impotence. He wondered if other contestants had felt this way: not just attracted, but moved. Changed, in spite of themselves, by the gravity of another’s honesty.

The only thing he could offer was the truth. So he said, “I don’t pity you.” He meant it. “But I think I’m finally starting to get it.”

The silence was charged, but not uncomfortable. Katherine nodded, her eyes shining with a warmth he hadn’t seen before. For a moment, Andy almost believed that the connection was mutual, that some real understanding had passed between them—something that was more than performance, more than the rules Arabella had written into Katherine’s existence.

He wondered if that was what it meant, to be a “Master.” Not the cartoon version, all whips and declarations, but the kind that actually took responsibility for seeing people as they were, not as what they were scripted to be. Maybe that was all Katherine had ever wanted from him: not pity, not rescue, not even sex, but simply to be seen and believed.

He sat in the hush for a long time, watching her. She didn’t break the gaze, didn’t look away, and slowly Andy felt the tension in his chest unwind. It was, in its own way, as intimate as any of the physical encounters he’d had in the Hotel. There was no pretense here, just two people—one real, one painted—trying to bridge an impossible distance.

When the moment threatened to turn saccharine, Andy tried to lighten it. He **** a smile. “So, what’s the protocol? I mean, do I bring your painting into the bedroom and…” He trailed off, embarrassed, but tried to keep it light. “I don’t know if I could do that with you, like… watching. It’s weird. Even for me.”

He meant it as gallows humor, maybe. But as soon as the words left his mouth, the absurdity of the idea snapped into focus: the two of them, locked in a cycle of mutual observation and yearning, neither able to actually reach out and take what they wanted. Katherine, the immortalized beauty, forever gazing out from her gilded cage; Andy, the master with all the privilege of flesh but no way to share it with her, not really.

Katherine blushed, or approximated it. Her cheeks flushed with a swift, almost luminous burst of carmine, the pigment brighter than any color in the rest of the painting. Her eyes flicked away, then back to him, as if she were weighing the risk of being honest. She raised her hand, two fingers to her eyes, then one finger pointed at him, then pressed both hands against the space above her painted heart, the gesture trembling but determined.

He laughed, nervous and unconvincing. “Wait, is this about me, or is it just the whole ‘Master’ thing?” He meant to keep it light, but the question hung in the air like a dare.

Katherine shot him a look so loaded with withering scorn and longing it ought to have shattered the canvas. Then slowly, with the gravity of someone breaking centuries of silence, she cradled an imaginary bundle in her arms, rocking it with infinite tenderness, then lifted her hands, palms open, in a gesture of surrender or offering. Then she touched her heart, and gestured as if she were surrendering it too.

Andy’s throat closed. He’d never been good with overt declarations of feeling—not from himself, not from others. Every time he’d stumbled into a moment of confessional intimacy in his life, his first instinct had always been to parry it away with a joke or a tangent. But Katherine was utterly defenseless. There was no parry here, no riposte. Only the infinitely gentle, terrifying truth of what she wanted to give him.

He took a step closer, absently reaching out as if he might be able to touch her through the paint. His fingers hovered over the surface of the canvas, not quite making contact. “You… you love me?”

Katherine nodded, the motion as slow and absolute as the movement of planets. It wasn’t theatrical, this time. The gesture was so raw in its vulnerability that Andy felt the air in the room thicken. He expected her, on some level, to play coy, to break the tension by rolling her eyes or giving him a look that said, “You already knew this, idiot.” Instead, her painted shoulders pulled in, and for the first time since their conversation began, Andy saw fear in her eyes.

Not the shallow kind, not the frightened-virgin act that Arabella sometimes insisted upon. This was the real thing: the terror that he might laugh or, worse, turn away and leave her to rot on the wall forever.

His own smile died on his face. The joke was gone. Instead, all he felt was a wave of guilt so deep it almost knocked him over.

“Oh, Katherine,” he said, voice gone wobbly. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

She started to retreat, her body pulling in on itself, but Andy shot up from the couch, hands out.

“Oh, Katherine—” The words caught in Andy’s throat and dissolved, leaving a ragged silence. His voice had gone strange and reedy, and he stood there for an unmoored second, heart see-sawing, feeling sixteen again, on the threshold of some adolescent disaster or miracle.

She shrank back instantly, a flinch of shame so perfectly executed it felt rehearsed, like she’d spent centuries studying the choreography of rejection. The painted hands fluttered at her clavicle, as if trying to stitch herself closed. Andy couldn’t bear it. Instinct overrode sense—he surged up off the couch, arms splayed, the way he might approach a cat that had just caught a mouse: “No, wait—don’t. I mean—God, I care about you, too. I… I don’t know if I can call it love, I barely know you. But I do care about you, Katherine, I really do. I just didn’t know it until now.”

His voice came out unfiltered, raw, so loud it seemed to vibrate the floorboards. Katherine froze. Her lips parted in a small, helpless O. The hope that radiated from her face was so arresting, so childlike, that for a moment Andy felt as if time had looped and he was once more in his childhood living room, confessing his dumbest secrets to Laura in a hushed after-midnight haze.

He let out a laugh, half-cough, half-sob. The surreal stupidity of it hit him all at once: this was real, this was happening, and the recipient of his confession was not merely a woman, but a work of art, a literal painting. “I know it’s insane,” he said, gesturing helplessly at the walls, the floor, the world. “You’re a painting, and I have… a harem. I guess.” He realized, suddenly, how little he’d interrogated the basic aburdity of his new existence. He’d simply tumbled from event to event, letting desire and shame and the logic of the Hotel carry him along, without ever pausing to think: Does this make sense? Is it fair to anyone, especially the ones I care most about?

Katherine’s eyes flicked, nervous and greedy, over his every word. He took a half-step closer, emboldened by her longing, and then decided: fuck it, all in. “I’m not even sure what’s real anymore. But if you want me—if you want this—I’ll move you into my room. Hell, I’ll move you into my life.”

He meant it, every syllable. The words landed between them—like a stone hurled at a glassy pond, rippling out through both their existences. For a second, nothing happened, and Andy’s heart squeezed with the dread that he’d misunderstood something essential, misread her desperation for a different flavor of need.

But then everything—every atom, every brushstroke—changed at once. Katherine’s face detonated with joy. The **** of it was a sunrise to the face, a white-hot star erupting in the dark pocket of the room. She went very still, as if afraid the smallest movement would shatter the moment, but her whole body radiated the kind of ecstasy Andy had only ever glimpsed in the aftermath of truly disastrous sex: a gratitude bordering on religious awe.

She leaned forward, pressing her painted palms against the invisible glass, trying to launch herself out of the canvas and into the open air. Her eyes locked to Andy’s, wide as moons, and for a moment—just a moment—he felt the borders of his own reality dissolve. The room was gone. The Hotel was gone. There was only the clean, impossible distance between two people.

He tried to think of what to say, but nothing felt worthy. So he just stood there, allowing the moment to ring out, feeling it ripple through the marrow of his bones. Katherine was crying now, the paint running in delicate, glimmering rivulets down her cheeks, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

She reached out—uselessly, gloriously—toward him. Andy closed the distance, standing so close that they were separated by only millimeters of canvas and miles of regret. He raised his hand, hovering it over the surface. For once, he wasn’t thinking about what this looked like from the outside, or whether he was being observed by Arabella or any of the thousand invisible eyes in the Hotel. All that mattered was that, for the first time in their long acquaintance, Katherine didn’t look lonely.

He rested his forehead against the cool frame, and for a second, he could swear he felt heat radiating from her side. It was almost enough.

They stayed there, breathing together, for a span of time that might have been minutes or hours. Andy let the silence stretch, trusting that Katherine, of all people, knew how to fill it. When he finally stepped back, the room felt softer, the light gentler. Katherine’s face was raw and radiant. The little smile was back, but it was different now—less a mask, more a promise.

He cleared his throat, awkward again. “I’m, uh, not great at this stuff. I kind of wish you could, you know, tell me if I’m screwing up.”

Katherine’s response was a flicker of mischief: she mimed a zipping motion over her mouth, then pointed at him and gave a little nod, as if to say, You’re doing fine, for a rookie.

Andy laughed, the tension lifting. He looked at her, really looked, and saw not the painted skin or the impossible proportions—but the woman, stronger than anyone he’d ever known, staring out at the world with undiluted hope.

He wiped his eyes, embarrassed, and tried to recover. “Is it enough, though? Watching? I mean, I’m never going to be able to hold you.”

Katherine shrugged, then nodded. She mimed a little picture frame with her hands, then pointed at herself, then at him. Then she cupped her hands together in front of her chest, heart-shaped, and smiled.

Andy smiled back, shaking his head at the sheer absurdity of it. “Well, if you ever change your mind and want me to stop—just glare at me, okay?”

She nodded, then giggled—an entire laugh, expressed in the crinkle of her eyes and the flush of her cheeks.

They sat like that for a while, just looking at each other. Andy felt the weight in his chest melt away, replaced by something lighter, something that might have been hope.

He stood, stretching the tension from his back. “I’ll move you to the bedroom after coffee,” he said. “You can supervise my wardrobe decisions.”

Katherine grinned, then arched an eyebrow. Andy poured himself another coffee, then lingered a little longer, just to be sure she was still there.

She always was.

He wondered if, in some other universe, he’d been the painting and she the Master.

He moved the painting before he could chicken out.

He’d planned to set her up in the corner, by the window, but Katherine shook her head, adamant. She wanted to be hung facing the bed, directly in Andy’s line of sight, which made sense once he thought about it. He fumbled with the hooks and wire, trying not to shake, and when he finally stepped back, panting a little, Katherine’s entire posture had shifted. She stood with her feet perfectly together, her hair cascading forward over one shoulder, her hands at her sides in a parody of military attention—but her eyes were wide, and her mouth parted in anticipation.

Andy realized, with a jolt of embarrassment, that he was still in pajama pants and the sort of threadbare T-shirt that, back in high school, he would have exclusively reserved for nights alone at a computer. The pants had a faded Batman logo—ironic, he supposed, since he didn’t feel remotely like a hero at that moment. He made a face and gestured at his getup, but Katherine’s only response was a small, dismissive shake of the head, her eyes glinting with a conspiracy of amusement and anticipation.

“Right now?” he said, voice rising an octave as he suddenly wondered just what exactly she wanted. He’d assumed there would be a gentle, slow-burn progression—more conversations, maybe late-night whispers, a kind of slow conversion from art appreciation to something messier. Instead, Katherine’s painted eyebrow arched in a gesture so wickedly confident it could have been lifted from a femme fatale in a noir film, and she nodded once, sharply, as if daring him to say no.

But she blushed so forcefully that it seemed to saturate the paint of her cheeks, as if even her artist had not planned for this level of mortification. Andy, cut entirely adrift from reality, felt a ridiculous urge to bow, or salute, or otherwise mark the moment with some gesture of solemnity, as though entering an ancient church. Instead, he just gawked at her, then let out a laugh — half nerves, half the kind of adrenaline you get when you realize you’re about to do something that will change everything.

“You’re incredible, you know that?” he said, trying to steady himself with humor, but it didn’t land. The words, once spoken, seemed to fill the room and make a mockery of what little self-possession he had left. Katherine only stared at him, her hunger so raw and so unguarded that it frightened him—not because he was afraid of her, but because he was afraid of what it might demand of him in return.

Her eyes had always been the focal point of the painting—a ridiculous, impossible green, with layers of sadness and sympathy and, sometimes, a flash of pure joy. But now they were different, alive in a way that made Andy’s throat tighten. He had the sudden, disorienting sense that if he looked away, even for a second, he’d lose her. That she’d melt back into the paint and become just another artifact, a regret nailed to his wall.

He tried to make a joke: “You know, in high school, this would have been my ultimate fantasy. Now it’s just… terrifying.”

Katherine rolled her eyes, but the gesture was tender, almost forgiving. She mimed taking a deep breath, then pointed at him and nodded in what he could only interpret as an invocation to keep going. It was the kind of encouragement usually reserved for children learning to ride a bike, or grown men learning to confess their feelings.

Andy felt his face flush. He looked down at his hands, then at the carpet, then back to the painting—always back to the painting. He realized he was trembling. Not from fear, exactly, but from the weight of being truly seen. He’d spent years building walls—literal, emotional—and now all it took was a look from a woman who technically didn’t exist to reduce them to rubble.

He crossed the space between them, closing the gap with tentative steps. As he drew nearer, he saw that Katherine’s posture had changed completely from even a moment ago; the rigid, almost comic self-possession was gone, replaced by something childlike and ****. Her hands, which had always been rendered by the artist as elegant and languid, now pressed against the invisible barrier of the canvas, palms flat, fingers splayed.

For a second, Andy wondered if the whole thing was a trap—a test engineered by Arabella, or some sick joke by the Producers. But no: Katherine’s longing was too genuine, her eyes too wild. She was ****, not for sex or even love, but for a moment of connection so real it would break her out of her frame. It made Andy’s own desires feel crude by comparison. He wanted to comfort her, to rescue her, to be the person she imagined him to be.

He stood in front of her, heart rattling around his chest like a racquetball, and reached out to touch the painting—not the way a collector might, but the way you’d touch a friend’s shoulder after a long separation. His palm hovered just shy of the frame, afraid that the contact might shatter the illusion. Instead, he leaned in, letting his forehead rest against the cool, lacquered wood, the closest he’d ever come to a true embrace.

Katherine’s painted chest heaved, her breasts rising with each impossible breath, the nipples drawn so hard and prominent it almost hurt to look at them. Fourteen years of wanting, of waiting, of never being able to reach out and touch, or be touched in return.

He sat on the edge of the bed, facing her. For a moment, he just looked at her—at the way her arms, always perfectly at her sides, seemed to tremble now; the way her breasts lifted with each painted breath, the nipples as hard and prominent as if they ached for touch. She was so much more than a pornographic fantasy—she was a person, and she’d been denied every physical sensation for fourteen years.

He slipped a hand inside his waistband and drew himself out, not daring to look away from her. His cock stirred, lengthening, and for a second he worried he wouldn't be able to perform—too weird, too on the spot. But then Katherine cupped her breasts from below, lifting them slightly, her thumbs brushing near the painted nipples in a gesture both innocent and devastating.

He stroked himself, slow at first. Katherine watched his hand, mouth dropping further, then—shyly—she bent her knees ever so slightly and pressed her thighs together. She slid one hand down her stomach, stopping at the edge of her pubic hair, fingers splayed as if reaching for something just beyond her grasp. Her other hand traced the curve where her hip met her waist, a pose that somehow managed to be both **** and deliberately enticing.

He picked up the pace, watching her reaction. Her face flushed as she arched her back, turning slightly to offer him her profile, the perfect curve of breast and hip framed like a renaissance masterpiece. Her breath grew shallow (or at least her chest moved as if she were hyperventilating), and she darted her tongue out, wetting her lips with ****, helpless hunger.

He wanted to slow down, to make it last, but the sight of her—so naked, so needful—undid him. He gripped his cock tighter, and as he approached the brink, Katherine started to rock on her feet, her knees wobbling, her hands curling into fists at her sides. Her nipples stood out in sharp relief, and she arched her back until her hair hung almost to her calves.

He came, hard, a sudden white flash. At that instant, Katherine’s whole body spasmed. Her head tilted back, her mouth opened in a silent scream, and her entire frame quaked from the inside out. For one impossible moment, Andy thought he could feel her orgasm—the raw, shuddering need of it, the relief so intense it bordered on holy.

When it passed, she crumpled, folding to her knees (as much as the constraints of her painted world allowed). Her hair fell over her face, her shoulders shuddered, and when she looked up, there were tears—real, wet, impossible tears—tracking down her cheeks.

Andy stood, tucking himself away, and crossed the room in three strides. He pressed his hand to the glass, palm flat, wishing he could reach through.

Katherine pressed both hands to the other side, her painted flesh pushing against the barrier. She smiled, tremulous and pure.

He leaned his forehead to the glass, and saw her touch her chest and give him her heart.

They stayed like that for a long time, hands pressed together, the world outside the bedroom a thousand miles away.

Eventually, Andy straightened, running a hand through his hair. “You good?” he asked, voice hoarse.

Katherine nodded, then wiped her cheeks, laughing at her own emotion. She mimed blowing him a kiss, then waved, as if to say, go on, you’ve got a day to win.

He grinned. “Good. Because I just realized what I need to do today. For all of them.” He shot her a mock salute, and headed for the shower.

Behind him, Katherine sat on her invisible meadow, hair still wild, eyes shining like morning after a storm.

Andy grabbed another coffee, then shared his plan for the day with her. He thought he understood, now. It wasn’t only about responsibility. The thought had come to him, paradoxically, as he watched Katherine feel pleasure for the first time in fourteen years. The thought that being the Master didn’t mean just taking responsibility for failures, or being ready to comfort one of the women if she needed him. It meant being the man they all deserved, and being the center they needed today, when they all shared the fear that one of them would go.

Katherine approved, smiling brightly. She blew him a kiss, and he grinned, pretending to catch it. He had work to do in the Annex, if he was right. And if he wasn’t, he was sure Mildred could reach Arabella for him.

With a last smile at the painting, he left the Suite. Finally ready to be the Master the women needed today.

The Banquet Hall’s windows were open, letting in a bright, clear light that made the buffet gleam like a jewelry display. The place was nearly full—every contestant had staked out a corner, a chair, a little patch of sunlight in which to be nervous. All the women were there: Erin, Claire, Emi, Dawn, Sam, Liesa, Norah, Marissa, and—at the very end of the table, holding a mug of tea in both hands—Chloe.

Dawn had gotten there first, hours ahead of schedule, because her body insisted on sunrise every day, and she was always so full of energy she couldn’t just lounge there. She’d spent the morning meditating, then undoing her bun and redoing it every fifteen minutes, convinced that every stray hair would somehow tip the scales of fate. When Emi arrived, trailing the scent of green tea and sage, Dawn felt her stomach unclench a little. Emi smiled at her, soft and dreamy, and took the chair beside her, folding all six arms into her lap in a way that was at once self-conscious and oddly elegant.

“Morning,” Emi said, voice a lilting hush, as if she was afraid to break the spell of quiet in the hall.

Dawn smiled. “Morning.” She poured a cup of coffee for each of them, careful to avoid the little pool of sugar at the bottom of the carafe. The two of them were silent for a few minutes, sipping and watching the slow creep of sunrise over the courtyard. It wasn’t an awkward silence—just the kind that comes when you know words would only get in the way.

“Did you sleep?” Emi asked, voice a whisper.

Dawn shook her head, a rueful little smile on her lips. “Not really. You?”

“Some,” Emi admitted, “but my dreams kept… waking me up. It’s silly.”

“Nothing’s silly here. Tell me?”

Emi hesitated, eyes unfocused. She had a habit of turning her face away when she was nervous, like a flower closing up at dusk. “Well, there’s the dream where you, Chloe and I… um. I’m pretty sure that’s my transformation.” She turned beet red. “Um, I’d like to… keep that private.” Dawn felt herself flush as well, and giggled nervously, nodding. “But… I get these dreams where it’s always evening. I’m in a house I don’t recognize, and I’m waiting for someone, but I can’t remember who. Every room is empty except for me. Sometimes I hear voices in the next room, but when I go there, I’m alone again. I keep looking out the windows, expecting somebody to come home, but they never do.”

Dawn listened in the way that only someone well-practiced in grief could listen, quietly, hands still, attention unwavering. She didn’t try to diagnose or fix Emi’s dreams, or say something glib about how it would all make sense in the morning. Instead, she just nodded, letting the sadness of it settle between them like an extra seat at the table.

“My mom used to get sad dreams like that,” Dawn said, after a moment. “She’d tell me about them over breakfast, every detail, like she was convincing herself the dream wasn’t real by speaking it out loud. She always said it helped.”

Emi smiled, the barest flicker, then reached for the bowl of strawberries between them and plucked one free. “It does help,” she said. “Just to say it.”

They sat together in companionable silence, working through the strawberries. Dawn would slice off the green tops, eating them with a kind of ritualistic focus, while Emi would roll the berries between her fingers, sometimes splitting one down the seam with a thumbnail, before eating it in two perfect bites. Every now and then, Emi would glance at Dawn’s hands, as if she wanted to ask something but couldn’t quite risk it. When she finally did, her question took Dawn by surprise.

“Do you think anyone’s actually ready for this? The, um, the challenge?”

Dawn considered. She didn’t want to lie; the truth was, she’d never felt less ready for anything. But Emi’s question deserved more than a platitude. “Maybe not. But I think that’s the point. Being ready means you’re expecting it, and nothing about this place has ever matched anyone’s expectations, right?”

Emi laughed, sudden and soft, like the pop of a soap bubble. “You’re so calm. I wish I could be calm.”

Dawn shrugged. “I was a wreck five minutes ago. Now I’m just… here.”

“Thanks,” Emi said. “For listening.”

“Of course,” Dawn replied. “I’m glad you said something. That’s what friends do, right?”

Emi nodded, and for a while, that was enough.

Claire sidled in at the precise moment no one was looking. Her shoulders were bunched, ears flattened into the blue-black shock of her hair. She wore a black T-shirt printed with a tiny, cryptic symbol at the breast; the jeans, too, were so dark they faded into shadow behind her. But no camouflage on earth could hide the quick, involuntary flick of her tail as she scanned the room, weighing the social calculus of every single empty seat.

Dawn caught Emi’s eye, and a silent, instantaneous exchange passed between them. Dawn’s gaze: Should we? Emi’s subtle nod: Yes, we should.

Dawn made the first move, careful and gentle as a hospice volunteer entering new territory. “Mind if we join you?” she offered, not waiting for permission as she crossed the hall, her chair scraping softly. Claire startled—her hands recoiling from the table as if she’d touched a live wire—but after a frozen second, she nodded.

“It’s good to see you,” Dawn said, settling beside Claire. The catgirl shifted, tail wrapping around her thigh like a seatbelt.

Emi hovered for a moment, then sat across from them, arranging her six arms on the table in a neat, layered lattice. It looked like an origami display or a particularly elegant spiderweb. She slid her mug forward, keeping her eyes on Claire without pinning her down.

There was an awkward triangle of silence—three women, three directions to look, all watching each other and not watching at the same time. Dawn, ever the gentle catalyst, kicked things into motion.

“I’ve barely talked to you since…” She trailed off, grimacing at her own clumsiness. “Since last week.”

Claire’s tail went perfectly still, like a ruler balanced on a fingertip. She shook her head, eyes wide, then waved her hand as if to clear away Dawn’s apology from the air itself.

Emi noticed the little notebook in front of Claire, the one she carried everywhere, battered and bristling with color-coded tabs. “What are you writing?” Emi asked, her voice barely above the hush of the air conditioning.

Claire froze. For a second, Emi thought she’d crossed a line, but then Claire scrawled something on the open page, then spun the notebook so both could see. Words I like. I copy them when I’m nervous.

Dawn leaned in, reading upside-down. The page was a dense garden of words, some underlined, some circled, all in the most meticulous script Emi had ever seen. “Saudade,” “hiraeth,” “petrichor,” “radamancy,” “limerence.” There were notes in the margins: “Portuguese, melancholy,” “Welsh, longing for a lost home,” “smell of rain on dry earth,” “mutual love",” “intense infatuation for another person.”

Emi was transfixed. “Like a ritual?” she asked.

Claire blushed—an actual, visible blush, her cheeks going from porcelain to the color of a ripe peach—but nodded.

“It’s beautiful,” Dawn said, and she meant it. There was something priestly and earnest about the way Claire curated her little lexicon, like she was assembling her own private rosary of words.

Emi reached over, just the nearest hand. “What’s your favorite?” she asked.

Claire hesitated, then wrote: Syzygy. It means a conjunction or opposition, particularly of celestial bodies.

Dawn laughed, delighted. “That’s perfect! I love that.”

Claire’s blush spread down her neck, and she looked up, really looked, for the first time. She pointed at Dawn, and tilted her head with a questioning look.

Dawn considered. “I think it’s ‘sonder.’ The realization that everyone has a story as deep and complicated as your own.” She shot Emi a shy smile. “I like ‘sonder’.”

Emi’s turn. She thought for a second, then said, “I like ‘halcyon.’ It’s a story about a bird, but also a kind of peace that comes after a storm. Like, for a few days, the world just… calms down.”

The three of them sat there, their words hanging in the air like wish lanterns. Claire’s tail resumed its gentle twitch, and she wrote something else in her book—maybe a note about her friends, maybe nothing at all.

That odd, fragile triangle started to feel more like a team.

Norah, Marissa, and Chloe took over the next cluster of seats, sliding into seats at the next cluster of tables as if they’d been colleagues for years. There was something about the way they arranged themselves, backs not quite to the wall but not quite exposing their flanks, that suggested a mutual wariness that was also, paradoxically, the root of their comfort. Norah, all lean lines and kinetic energy, staked her claim with a deliberate clatter of her tray, then immediately upended the social order by offering the first croissant to Chloe instead of taking it for herself.

Chloe was hesitant, as if she suspected the pastry might be bait in some elaborate prank, but she accepted it with a soft “thank you” and tore off the smallest conceivable piece. Norah flashed a crooked grin as if to say, Relax, I only bite when provoked.

Marissa was the last to sit, but she wasted no time in asserting her authority over the coffee urn, which she manned with a precision that suggested years of running on caffeine and crisis. Her hair was scraped back in a bun so tight it looked as though her thoughts had to pass a security checkpoint to get out, and her blouse, while technically a standard-issue professional white, was cut just low enough to invite friendly speculation about the intent behind the tailoring. She poured for all three with the confidence of a field medic, delivering each mug like a crucial transfusion.

“Black, right?” she said to Norah, who nodded, busy peeling the gold foil from a chocolate croissant. “And for you, Chloe?”

Chloe hesitated. “I’ll have whatever you’re having. If that’s okay.”

Marissa smiled, a little surprised at the answer. “It’s very okay,” she said, and poured two mugs identically. Chloe smiled back, the shyness melting a little with every minute she spent in their company.

“Do you think they’re going to make us fight, or what?” Norah asked, eyes darting to the door.

Marissa didn’t even glance up from her mug. “Maybe. Or maybe it’ll be worse. Something psychological.”

Chloe’s knuckles were white on her mug. She said, “I hope it’s just trivia. I’m really good at trivia.”

The three of them laughed, and for a second, it was easy to believe that the whole miserable spectacle was just a game show, and that none of them were actually in danger of being transformed, eliminated, or otherwise ground into emotional hamburger.

On the other side of the great breakfast hall, Sam and Liesa had claimed the only table with a direct view of the ocean beyond, and it was already chaos before the pastries even hit the table. The window was frosted from last night’s air conditioning marathon, the sunlight outside struggling to get a foothold, and the two of them pressed side by side—Liesa in a powder-blue sundress, Sam in her favorite black tank and shorts—dragging napkins and cutlery into a demilitarized zone between them.

Liesa immediately started pulling faces: sticking out her tongue, then making her left eye go cross while the right tried to hold steady, or tucking the tip of her nose between her thumb and pointer finger like a pincer. Sam did her best to keep a straight face, but the giggles snuck through anyway, little hiccups that bounced around the empty seats and caught the attention of the entire buffet staff. Their game—“who can make the other laugh first”—had begun as a distraction, a way to avoid talking about the fact that they would both almost certainly be pitted against each other in tonight’s challenge. But as with so many things in the HH, what started as a joke took on its own weird momentum.

Liesa drew a napkin toward her and, with a pen fished from behind her ear, started sketching a rapid-fire caricature of Norah. She gave her a nose that could cut sheet metal, eyebrows that stuck out like exclamation points, and a mouth that was one part wolf, one part know-it-all. Sam looked at it, pursed her lips, and then snorted anyway, unable to contain the laugh. Liesa cackled in triumph and promptly began caricatures of the other contestants: Chloe with enormous, worried owl eyes and a beak-like mouth, Emi with six noodle arms and a halo of question marks, Marissa drawn as a perfect, frowning sphinx, Claire as a panther with a thousand-yard-stare and a tail that spelled out “meh.”

While Sam was so busy losing the laugh-off that she almost inhaled a croissant crumb, Liesa leaned in to whisper something. Her breath was cool and ticklish against Sam’s ear, which made Sam’s skin tingle all the way down her arm.

“You’re cheating,” Sam said, but her voice was thick with affection. “That’s not fair—you know how I get when you talk like that.”

Liesa only grinned, gave Sam’s thigh a casual squeeze under the table, and sketched the blue-haired barista, a mohawk made of tiny espresso cups, a grin that spanned three-quarters the width of her face, and hands so fast and blurry they were just scribbles at the ends of her arms. She slid the napkin to Sam, waiting for judgment.

“You forgot something,” Sam said, and in a neat, deliberate scrawl, she added a tiny heart on the sleeve of the drawing’s left arm. They both laughed, that quiet, unmistakable joy of people who had discovered each other at exactly the right time.

It didn’t go unnoticed.

Erin, who had been pretending not to watch with the skill of a seasoned air traffic controller, had picked a booth just close enough to overhear, just far enough to be plausibly “reading” the hardcover book open in front of her. The book, in truth, was upside-down. She couldn’t have recited a single sentence from the page. She watched Sam and Liesa with a soft, aching pride—a pride that was new, unexpected, and, for the first time since her own arrival, not tinged with the usual bitterness.

She’d been wary at first. The idea of loving two people was supposed to be a betrayal, or at least, that’s what the world had made her believe. So she had not been initially comfortable with the thought that Liesa might choose both Andy and Sam. But the look that passed between Sam and Liesa wasn’t possessive, or competitive. It was like a relay race, each of them handing off a baton of affection, then cheering for the other to sprint.

For a while, Erin just watched. She watched the way Liesa would draw Sam’s attention with the smallest gesture—a flick of the napkin, a tap of her foot under the table. She watched the way Sam, so unflappable and self-possessed everywhere else, went faintly pink at the cheeks whenever Liesa made a new joke or gave her that look. She watched the way they sat, always touching, always orbiting, as if they were magnets **** together by some cosmic prank.

Erin let herself lean back, arms folded, and smiled. She could root for this. She could want it, even if she would never admit it out loud. The realization made her feel both lighter and heavier at the same time.

In the window, the reflections of her friends merged with the ocean, a single blue-and-black blur.

For a while, the table was quiet except for the gentle clatter of forks and the occasional slurp of coffee. The world outside the tall windows was blindingly bright, the ocean’s surface wrinkling and re-wrinkling as if it couldn’t decide what face to wear. Sunrise inched across the table, making a silent progress from Chloe’s shaking hand to the lip of Emi’s juice glass.

It was Emi who broke the spell, though she didn’t mean to. She reached for the carafe of orange juice at the same moment she tried to pour herself another cup of coffee, but she was distracted by her conversation with Dawn, and her two hands collided in midair. Juice splashed onto the tabletop, and she yelped, then instinctively tried to catch the spill with her third hand—which only managed to tip the carafe further. A small waterfall of juice went off the end of the table, spattering Chloe’s lap. Emi froze, mortified, then started babbling apologies: “Oh no, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—I’ll clean it up, here, let me—”

Chloe, who had been bracing herself for the next emotional gut-punch, startled so hard at the cold sticky splash that she gasped, then broke into a fit of giggles. Emi, abashed but relieved, started laughing too, and soon Claire, the observer at the end of the table, was silently shaking with laughter—her shoulders up around her ears and her hands pressed over her face in a futile attempt at composure.

Dawn, who’d been sipping from her mug, nearly spat her coffee but managed to swallow it with a heroic effort. All four women dissolved into laughter, the kind that starts as a hiccup and then spirals into helplessness. Emi, bright red, started mopping the table with napkins, her three arms a blur of apology and determination, but every time her gaze met Chloe’s, they both started snickering again.

Claire, after she caught her breath, pulled her notebook closer and wrote for a while. When she finished, she tore out the page and slid it toward Emi, who hesitated before picking it up. The note was written in her usual small, unadorned script:

I think your arms are beautiful. I wish I had more of them, sometimes.

Emi stared at the page, then looked up at Claire, who gave a self-conscious shrug and ducked her head. There was a long pause. The light caught in Emi’s hair, in the strange color of her irises, in the little beads of sweat at her temples. She smiled, a real, full-bodied smile that started somewhere in her sternum and radiated out, and said, “Thank you. I think you’re beautiful too.” Her voice was soft, but everyone at the table heard it.

Claire’s blush returned, but she didn’t look away. Instead, she tapped her pen twice and underlined the last sentence before sliding the page back. Emi folded it into a neat origami crane and set it in the center of the table.

Erin watched the exchange with something like awe. She’d grown up in a house where tenderness was rationed, where the few compliments she’d ever received were instantly snatched back by some unkindness. It was still strange and moving, maybe even a little confusing, to see people just… say nice things to each other, with nothing owed and no strings attached.

“First time in a while I’ve seen a table this happy,” she said, half to herself.

Chloe nodded, her smile shy but persistent. “I’m glad I’m here,” she admitted, and for once she didn’t sound like she was trying to convince herself. She looked at the others. Not quite friends, not yet, but maybe something even more durable: witnesses, the only people on earth who truly knew what this felt like.

Emi, emboldened by her moment of vulnerability, spoke up. “I know this is going to sound weird, but I actually like the challenges.” She looked down, embarrassed. “Not the scary parts, but the part where we all have to do something together. Nobody else would ever believe what it’s like except you guys.”

Claire wrote: It’s like a club. Except we didn’t get to choose the membership.

“Stockholm Sisterhood,” Chloe suggested, and everyone giggled again.

The breakfast went on, slow and meandering, with breaks for seconds and thirds, for fresh coffee and new juice, for a round of “guess the next challenge” that devolved into a contest of worst-case scenarios.

“I bet you five BPs we have to eat something disgusting,” Emi said. “Like, a Fear Factor thing.”

“I bet it’s a talent show,” said Chloe. “But with a mean twist, like, you’re not allowed to do your actual talent.”

Claire wrote: Or we have to perform talents as each other. Chloe, you’d have to draw. Emi, you’d have to teach kindergarten.

Dawn shuddered. “No, please. I’ve had enough of babysitting grown adults for one lifetime.”

They laughed, and the sound of it filled the room, echoing off the marble columns and the high ceiling. The buffet staff, who’d been tiptoeing around since sunrise, started to relax; a few even smiled, charmed by the incongruously wholesome energy coming from the table.

Erin dared herself to speak up, to join the banter instead of sitting alone. “I had a cat when I was little,” she said, her voice rough but steady. “She was mean. She used to stalk me through the house and attack my ankles. I was convinced she wanted to eat me if I fell asleep.”

“Cats are like that,” Chloe agreed. “Dogs want love, cats want your soul. It’s why I’m a dog person now.”

Dawn nodded. “My mom never let us have pets. She said they were too much work for ‘girls who can barely pick up after themselves.’” She smiled, a little rueful. “So I decided I’d get a cat as soon as I could. I have a bunch now.”

Emi said, “I had a goldfish. He lived for three years, then one day I came home and he was gone. My dad said he’d gone to the ocean to find his family, but I watched the neighbor’s cat licking its lips for a week afterward.”

Everyone winced, but then Claire started laughing, and it was infectious. The table leaned into the story, one-upping each other with tales of lost iguanas, mysterious turtle deaths, and the time Chloe’s neighbor’s parakeet had escaped and lived for a year as a wild bird before being recaptured—and promptly dying of shock, “as if the real world ruined him for domesticity.”

That was as close as they came to talking about The HH itself. Nobody mentioned the next elimination, or what would happen at the scoring, or if the “punishment” for failure was something worse than even Arabella herself could dream up. It was as if, by mutual consent, the group had decided to protect the fragile warmth of the table from the chill that waited outside.

At the end of breakfast, there was a moment of awkwardness as everyone realized they didn’t want to leave. Usually, these meals ended with a hurried retreat to the garden or the pool, the contestants scattering to their corners to prepare for whatever came next. But today, nobody moved. Even when the coffee ran out, and the plates went cold, and the staff started clearing away the empty platters, the four of them just sat. It was as if some unspoken law had been passed: Stay as long as you can. You never know when it will end.

No one said the word “family,” but it was there, in every gesture and every glance. Even with the challenge looming, they faced it together—each woman carrying her own fear, her own hope, but ready to fight for every minute they got to spend here, with each other.