The cold was a fact, not a feeling. It was a truth that traveled from the polished white Italian marble, through the thin fabric of Yanna's trousers, and into the bones of her knees. A deep, anchoring cold that was the bedrock of this reality. Outside, thirty stories above a drowning Metro Manila, the sky vomited rain. The typhoon hammered against the panoramic window of the master bathroom, the sound a frantic, percussive counterpoint to the glacial stillness within. The city lights were a smeared, bleeding watercolor, a drowned galaxy. Here, inside, the only sounds were the storm, the faint hum of the ventilation, and the whisper-soft slide of Yanna's fingers retrieving a sterile wipe from the first-aid kit.
The kit itself was a monument to their arrangement. Not a family box of cartoon plasters and expired ointment, but a clinical, professional-grade case with neatly organized compartments for gauze, sutures, coagulants, and antiseptics. It lived under the sink, always ready. It had been used three times before. This was the fourth.
Camille Navarro sat on the closed lid of the toilet, a queen on a porcelain throne. She was clad only in a pair of black silk shorts, the fabric a slash of darkness in the sterile white. Her posture was one of relaxed, absolute dominion. Even wounded, she was a study in power. Tangles of black ink coiled around her torso and arms—dragons, chrysanthemums, and geometric patterns that shifted with the subtle flex of muscle. And on her left bicep, a disruption. A fresh gash, deep and angry, blooming a slow, thick carnation of red against her olive skin. It wasn't bleeding freely anymore, just a sluggish, syrupy ooze that Yanna knew meant the worst of it had already happened somewhere else.
Yanna's focus narrowed to that wound. The world shrank to the size of this four-inch tear in perfect flesh. Her face was a carefully constructed mask of neutrality, a placid lake over a chasm of screaming nerves. This was the first rule: you do not show. You do not react. You simply perform the task. Her hands, however, were not neutral. They were steady, efficient, their movements economical and precise. A muscle memory born of terror and necessity. She peeled open the foil packet of the antiseptic wipe. The chemical scent—sharp, clean, and painful—cut through the low, coppery tang of blood.
"You should have let me call your doctor," Yanna said. The words were perfectly flat, delivered to the gash itself, not the woman it belonged to. It was an offering of protocol, nothing more. A ghost of a suggestion she was required to make.
A low chuckle, dry as old bones. "And have Dr. Reyes ask questions I don't want to answer? No." Camille's voice was dark honey laced with ground glass. It slid into the air and filled the space with its texture. Yanna felt it on the back of her neck like a cold touch. "You're better. You don't ask."
Yanna's fingers tightened on the small, damp square of the wipe. She knew what came next. She knew the way muscle would jump under her touch, the sharp intake of breath that was the only concession to pain Camille ever allowed herself. She brought the wipe to the edge of the wound. The skin there was hot, inflamed. The ink of a dragon's tail swirled right up to the ragged lip of the gash. She pressed down.
Camille's reaction was a lightning strike in the silent room. A sharp hiss of breath through clenched teeth. Her entire body went rigid, the muscles of her abdomen and chest cording into sharp relief. A tremor, violent and immediate, shot through the bicep, and Yanna felt it travel up her own arm, a jolt of shared, illicit sensation. Shame was a hot, familiar liquid in her throat. She hated that she felt it. She hated more that some dark, buried thing inside her cataloged it, savored it. The crack in the facade. The brief, blinding proof that the goddess before her was made of meat and nerve, just like anyone else. Yanna kept the pressure steady, her movements methodical as she wiped away the half-congealed blood, cleaning the raw, parted flesh. Each stroke was a violation. Each stroke was an act of service. The paradox was a hook in her soul.
The cleaning done, she tossed the bloodied wipe into the small, waiting waste bin. Next, the butterfly bandages. Her fingers, deft and quick, plucked three from their paper sleeves. This was the most difficult part. It required proximity, a touch that was more than clinical. She had to pinch the edges of the wound together. Her thumb and forefinger would have to press into Camille's skin, to feel the heat and the impossible density of her.
A good girl doesn't flinch. A good girl doesn't tremble. A good girl pays her debts. The mantra looped in her head, a rosary of self-effacement.
She leaned closer, the scent of Camille's skin—a clean, expensive soap warring with the primal notes of sweat and blood—filling her senses. Yanna placed her thumb on one side of the gash, her index finger on the other. The skin was taut, warm, alive. Beneath it, the bicep was a solid ridge of power, hard as packed earth. She squeezed gently, her fingertips pressing into the muscle, urging the weeping lips of the wound closed. For a heartbeat, her fingers brushed against the raw, wet interior. A shiver, tiny and traitorous, traced its way up her spine. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard, tasting her own blood as a penance.
One by one, she applied the bandages, her movements economical. First the center, then the two sides, her fingers working with a surgeon's focus. The small white strips were stark against Camille's skin, a fragile bridge over a red canyon. The bleeding stopped. The job was done.
For a long moment, Yanna remained there, head bowed, her hands hovering just above Camille's arm, waiting for dismissal. The silence stretched, pulled taut like a nerve. The only sound was the storm's relentless assault on the glass. She could feel Camille's eyes on the top of her head, a physical weight. She did not dare look up. She focused on the pattern of the marble tiles, on the way the gray veins spiderwebbed through the white. Anything but the suffocating presence inches away.
Then, a slow movement. Camille's uninjured hand, the right one, lifted. Yanna tensed, her whole body a coiled spring of anticipation. She expected a shove, a dismissal, a tap on the head that meant go. Instead, fingers brushed against her chin. They were not gentle, but they were not rough. They were firm, deliberate, and undeniable. Cool from the air, calloused from things Yanna didn't let herself imagine. The hand cupped her jaw, a grip of absolute ownership, and began to tilt her head upwards.
Yanna's neck was stiff with resistance, a final, futile act of rebellion from a body long since colonized. But the pressure was steady, patient. It did not force, it simply insisted. Her head rose, centimeter by centimeter, until her gaze was dragged from the safety of the floor. She met Camille's eyes.
They were the color of dark, old amber, and they held no warmth, no gratitude. They held a chilling, possessive amusement. They held the calm certainty of a collector admiring a prized, and broken, possession. Yanna's mask of neutrality fractured, the placid lake cracking to reveal the terror churning beneath. Her breath hitched.
Her own voice was a stranger to her, a thread of sound in the heavy silence, addressed to the floor she could no longer see.
"Is the debt paid, then?"
The whisper was a desperate, pathetic thing. Camille's thumb stroked slowly over Yanna's jawline, a gesture that was almost tender and all the more terrifying for it. The amusement in her eyes sharpened, hardened into something predatory. Her voice, when it came, was a low, dangerous growl that vibrated through her hand and into Yanna's bones, a promise of endless falling.
"Don't be stupid. You know a debt like yours is never paid in full. This was just… interest."