Chapter 197. You Can’t Teach Her to Be Human If You’ve Forgotten How to Be One Yourself
The walk to Catherine’s house had been a blur of mechanical motion. William’s body moved through the familiar paths, but his mind remained trapped in the dusty silence of the Valestria archives.
Every different human and demihuman sounded like whispering ghosts around him, and every shadow seemed to hold the shape of a child left alone in the dark.
"Hey, William!"
When a man called him while waving his hand, he straight up just ignored him, and then the man just lowered his hand. "Poor guy... must be lost with all that training works."
And it’s not just happening with one or two but almost ten, where they literally didn’t hear him calling his name or start a conversation with him because right now... he’s stuck in a discussion with his own thoughts.
By the time he reached the clearing where Catherine lived, his thoughts had spiraled into a dangerous web of ’what ifs.’
’What if Lia never learns to trust?’
’What if the damage is too deep?’
’What if I become another architect of her suffering by trying too hard to fix her?’
He found Catherine exactly where he expected: in the center of the training yard, the afternoon sun catching the sweat on her brow as she moved through a series of fluid, deadly strikes. She looked alive, vibrant, and also real.
She was the antithesis of the cold, hollow perfection he had read about.
"You’re late, William," she called out without breaking her rhythm, her wooden practice sword humming through the air. "And you’re carrying enough gloom to drown a village..."
"Come on~! Spar with me... I can tell that will clear your head."
William nodded dumbly, taking up his own practice blade. "Hm."
But as they began to circle each other, the sparring was a lie. His body was present, and his reflexes were honed to a razor’s edge, but his consciousness was drifting.
Clang.
Their swords met. William parried a thrust with flawless precision, but his mind was already three steps away, imagining Lia’s face when she finally understood that she didn’t have to be perfect to be loved.
Clang. Swish.
Catherine pressed the attack, her movements a beautiful dance of aggression and grace. William blocked every strike, his movements economical and eerily perfect, but he wasn’t truly there.
He was caught in a daydream, a vision of a future where Lia laughed without hesitation, where the Valestria name meant something other than a cage. He saw Catherine laughing with him in this same yard, days from now, free from the ghosts of their pasts.
To Catherine, the session was strange. William was fighting like a man possessed by a demon of pure instinct.
He wasn’t calling out moves; he wasn’t breathing in sync with her. He was simply there, a wall of impenetrable defense. His blocks were unpredictable; sometimes he would catch her blade with a twist that seemed impossible, other times he would simply pivot on a dime, his eyes fixed on some middle distance beyond her shoulder.
He moved with a haunting, almost melancholic elegance.
But then, something changed.
The sunlight shifted, catching William at just the right angle. His hair was windswept, sweat glistened on his jawline, and the grim set of his mouth had softened into something contemplative, something vulnerable.
In that moment, the warrior vanished, and she saw the raw, honest, and deeply feeling man who carried the world on his shoulders.
He looked... devastating.
’William... don’t tell me he..."
Catherine’s next strike faltered. Her grip loosened.
Her heart, which had been racing from exertion, suddenly skipped a beat for an entirely different reason. ’I knew it...’
’Gods above,’ she thought, her throat going dry. ’How did he get so handsome when he’s brooding?’
’It’s not fair...’ Catherine blushed. ’It’s genuinely not fair!’
The wooden sword slipped from her numb fingers, clattering harmlessly onto the grass.
William, still lost in his internal monologue about psychological conditioning and trauma, didn’t even notice. He lowered his sword slightly, his brow furrowed in concentration.
"You’re getting slower, Catherine," he murmured, his voice distant. "Or perhaps I’m--"
He never finished the sentence.
Catherine didn’t attack with a sword; she attacked with herself. She lunged forward, closing the distance in three strides, and threw her arms around his neck with enough force to nearly knock the wind out of him.
"Whoa—Catherine?!" William stumbled back, his training instincts screaming at him to defend against the sudden impact, but his body betrayed him.
He dropped his sword to catch her, his arms instinctively wrapping around her waist to steady them both.
"Shut up about the sparring, William!" she muffled against his chest. "Just shut up!"
Before he could process what was happening, she pulled back just enough to pepper his face with kisses—quick, fierce, warm presses of lips against his cheek, his forehead, and the corner of his mouth.
"Catherine, what... what are you doing?" William stammered, his face flushing a deep crimson.
The ’terrifying warrior’ was gone, replaced by a man who looked like he had forgotten how to function. "We’re in the middle of--"
"I don’t care!" she laughed, her eyes bright with mischief and genuine affection.
She grabbed his face with both hands, forcing him to look at her. "You were doing that thing again..."
"What thing...?"
"That thing where you look like you’re carrying the entire kingdom’s sins on your shoulders... It’s infuriating. And it’s also annoyingly attractive."
"I was thinking about Lia," he admitted weakly, though he couldn’t help but lean into her touch.
"Well, think about this instead." She pulled him down into a proper kiss, one that tasted of sunlight and summer air.
It was warm, lingering, and utterly disarming. When she finally pulled away, she was grinning wickedly.
"You can be a brooding philosopher later... Right now, you’re mine."
William stood there for a moment, blinking rapidly, the heavy darkness of the archives feeling like a distant memory. The cold stone of his thoughts was being melted away by the heat of her skin against his.
"You’re going to make me terrible at training you," he grumbled, though there was no real heat in it as he pulled her closer, tucking her head under his chin.
"Good," Catherine whispered, squeezing him tight. "Maybe then you’ll finally learn how to relax."
The evening descended upon the house like a velvet blanket, bringing with it the kind of profound silence that usually invited William’s mind to start its nightly interrogation of his own soul. But tonight, Catherine had intervened before the first dark thought could take root.
The bathroom was a sanctuary of steam and cedar. A large, stone-lined hot spring tub had been prepared, fed by natural thermal waters that rose from beneath the earth.
The air was thick with the herbal aroma of lavender and eucalyptus, swirling in lazy patterns above the surface of the water.
William sat submerged to his shoulders, the heat seeping into his aching muscles like liquid sunlight. But even here, in paradise, his hands were betraying him.
His fingers kept drifting upward, absently rubbing his chin, his thumb tracing the stubble there as his eyes stared blankly at the steam rising from the water. His jaw was set tight, a habit he couldn’t seem to break even when he was trying to relax.
"You’re doing it again." Catherine’s voice drifted through the haze.
She was seated behind him in the water, her legs stretched out beneath the surface. She picked up a natural sea sponge, lathered it with sandalwood soap, and began to work it across the broad expanse of his shoulders.
"Doing what again... exactly?" William asked, though he knew exactly what she meant.
"The ’I am a statue of eternal suffering’ pose," she teased, though her touch was gentle. "Your shoulders are up to your ears, William."
"If you get any tighter, you’re going to snap like a dry twig."
"I’m fine, Catherine. Just... thinking about tomorrow’s lesson."
"My boyfriend is a bad liar," she whispered.
She moved the sponge down his spine, her fingers applying just enough pressure to knead away the knots of tension that had settled there since his visit to the archives. "Tomorrow isn’t here yet..."
"And tomorrow’s problems won’t be solved by you turning yourself into a human boulder."
She moved closer, her chest pressing against his back as she leaned forward to reach the small of his back. The contact was warm and grounding.
William let out a long, involuntary exhale, his head tilting back slightly.
"I can see it in your eyes," Catherine continued, her voice dropping to a softer, more intimate register. "You’re already planning how to rebuild her..."
"You’re already calculating how to bridge that gap between her and the world." Catherine starts to pat his head. "But William... you can’t pour from an empty cup..."
"If you burn yourself out trying to be her lighthouse, you’ll both end up lost in the dark."
William closed his eyes. "I just don’t want her to feel what I felt..."
"I don’t want her to believe that her worth is conditional."
"Then show her what unconditional looks like by showing it to yourself first," Catherine said.
She abandoned the sponge for a moment, using her bare hands to massage the muscles at the base of his skull. "You can’t teach her how to be human if you’ve forgotten how to be one yourself."