The message had arrived on Day 7, three days after the Quiet Suite.
Session Three scheduled: Day 10, 20:00. Theme: Reflection. Review Section 5.2 of the Guidelines before attendance.
I'd read Section 5.2 four times, each reading revealing less comfort and more dread.
Session Three employs visual self-observation techniques to bridge the disconnect between cognitive self-perception and somatic experience. Clients will be positioned to maintain continuous visual contact with their physical responses throughout the session. This may include mirror placement at multiple angles. The objective is integration of fragmented self-concept through forced confrontation with embodied reality during surrender.
Translation: I would have to watch myself.
Now, standing outside the brushed steel door marked SUBTERRANEAN ACCESS, I felt my chest tighten with something that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite anticipation. The past seventy-two hours had been an exercise in controlled avoidance—I'd stayed in the East Wing, walked the Outer Circuit alone, read clinical texts in the library without absorbing a single word. Anything to avoid thinking about Meric's admission in The Quiet Suite, the way we'd almost kissed, Vigdis's warning that we were destroying ourselves.
Complete the work you came here to do.
I descended the twenty steps to the Subterranean Sessions Chamber.
Meric was waiting.
He stood near the platform—the same waist-height, padded surface I'd experienced in Sessions One and Two—but everything else had changed. The room felt different. Colder, despite the climate control maintaining its precise 68 degrees. More exposed.
Three full-length mirrors had been positioned around the platform in a triangle formation, each angled to provide a different perspective. I could see myself reflected from the front, both sides, and—based on the angle of the third mirror—from behind as well if I were positioned correctly on the platform.
There was nowhere to hide from my own image.
"Dr. Kaelen," Meric said. His voice carried the same controlled tone I recognized from our first session, but I heard the strain beneath it now. The effort required to maintain clinical detachment after what had happened between us three days ago.
He was in Praxist black again. No navy sweater. No softness. The uniform was deliberate—armor against whatever we'd started to become in The Quiet Suite.
"Meric." I used his name intentionally, a small rebellion against the professional distance he was trying to reconstruct.
His jaw tightened slightly. "We should begin with Surrender Articulation."
I moved closer, hyperaware of the mirrors tracking my movement. My reflection fragmented across three angles—front, side, behind—and I immediately looked away, focusing instead on Meric's face.
"The theme is Reflection," he said. "Session Three's objective is to confront the dissociation between how you perceive your body and how it actually exists in space. You've spent most of your adult life treating your body as a tool—functional, mechanical, something to be controlled and optimized but not inhabited or experienced."
The clinical accuracy of his assessment landed with uncomfortable precision. He'd read my psychological profile. He knew.
"And the mirrors," I said quietly, "force me to see what I've been avoiding."
"To see yourself as you actually are during surrender. Not as you imagine yourself to be. Not as the controlled, analytical observer watching from inside your own head." His pale gray eyes held mine. "But as you exist when you choose to feel rather than think."
My pulse accelerated. "This feels more invasive than blindfolds and restraints."
"It is," Meric said. "Restraints hide you from the world. Mirrors force you to see yourself in it. And during Praxis—during moments of complete psychological vulnerability—that confrontation can be transformative or devastating."
"Which will it be?"
"That depends on what you choose to see." He gestured toward the platform. "Tonight's session will progress differently than the previous two. Manual stimulation will occur, but we'll also engage in full penetrative intercourse. The mirrors will remain positioned throughout. You'll be required to maintain visual contact with your own reflection at specific moments I designate."
The word intercourse landed with precision, but my body's response was anything but clinical. Heat crawled up my neck, and I felt the now-familiar anticipation tightening in my core—the same physiological arousal pattern I'd experienced before Sessions One and Two, magnified by the knowledge that this time, Meric wouldn't stop at the edge.
"Consent?" he asked.
"Yes." My voice was steadier than I felt.
"Specifically," Meric continued, moving through the Surrender Articulation protocol with practiced efficiency, "do you consent to: positioning in front of mirrors, commands to observe your own physical responses, verbal description of what you see, penetrative intercourse, and permission-based climax?"
"Yes to all," I said with barely any hesitation.
He paused, and for just a moment, the clinical mask slipped. I saw the man from The Quiet Suite—the one who'd admitted I made him want to break every rule, who'd pulled away because he valued my transformation more than his desire.
"Aethelreda." He said my name, soft and careful. "Three days ago, I told you that if circumstances were different, I would have kissed you. That hasn't changed. But we're here now, in this room, under the Protocol we both signed. So I need you to understand: everything I do tonight is designed to serve your psychological breakthrough. Not to satisfy anything I want."
"I know."
"Do you?"
I held his gaze. "You designed this session to create distance between us. To prove you can maintain control by pushing me harder. Mirrors, penetration, forced self-observation—it's all meant to be clinical. Therapeutic. A way to hide behind the methodology."
His expression flickered—surprise, then something that looked like resignation. "You see through everything."
"You taught me to," I said quietly. "You taught me to look for the places where control is effortful rather than natural. And right now, Meric, you're working very hard to convince yourself this is just another session."
"It has to be."
"I know." I stepped onto the platform, the leather cool beneath my bare feet. I'd undressed in the adjacent preparation room, leaving my clothes folded neatly on the bench, and now I wore only the simple white robe provided—standard Protocol for sessions involving full nudity. "So let's do the work we came here to do."
"Take off the robe." Meric's voice cut through the silence, commanding and precise.
I untied the sash, let the fabric slide from my shoulders, and stood completely naked in the center of the three mirrors.
And saw myself.
The shock was immediate and visceral. I'd avoided looking—kept my eyes on Meric, on the floor, anywhere except the reflections surrounding me. But now, confronted with the inevitability of my own image tripled across three angles, I couldn't look away.
I looked... small. Vulnerable. My skin was pale under the low lighting, my posture uncertain despite years of clinical training teaching me to project confidence. My body was lean, functional—I'd always described it that way, as if I were cataloging medical equipment. Adequate cardiovascular fitness. Sufficient muscle tone. No significant abnormalities.
But seeing myself naked, reflected from three perspectives simultaneously, I realized I'd never actually looked at my body as a coherent whole. Never integrated the fragmented pieces into something that existed beyond utility.
"What do you see?" Meric asked.
"I see..." My throat tightened. "I see someone who's afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of being seen. Of existing outside my own control." I forced myself to maintain eye contact with my forward-facing reflection. "I see a body I've spent thirty-two years treating as transportation for my brain."
"Look at your hands."
I did. They were trembling slightly, fingers curled inward as if trying to hide.
"Look at your chest."
My breathing had quickened, visible in the rise and fall of my ribcage.
"Look at your face."
I met my own eyes—pale gray, the same shade as Meric's—and saw the conflict there. The war between the therapist who understood exactly what was happening and the woman who was terrified of surrender.
"Now," Meric said, his voice closer though I hadn't heard him move, "tell me what you feel."
"Exposed," I said.
"Good." He was standing just outside my peripheral vision, close enough that I could feel his presence but not see him in the mirrors. "Exposure is the point. You can't integrate what you won't acknowledge. And you've spent your entire life avoiding acknowledgment of your body as anything except a tool to be controlled."
His hand touched my shoulder blade—warm, firm, deliberate.
"Watch," he commanded.
I did.
In the mirror, I saw his hand trace down the curve of my spine, the contrast of his darker skin against mine, the way my body reacted involuntarily—a small shiver, the slightest arch toward his touch.
"Describe what you see," Meric said.
"I see..." My voice wavered. "I see myself responding to you."
"How?"
"My body is... leaning into your hand. Even though I didn't consciously choose to."
"Because?" His hand continued downward, settling at the small of my back.
"Because my body knows what it wants even when my mind won't admit it."
"Yes." The single word held approval. "Keep watching."
His other hand appeared in the mirror, reaching around to rest against my stomach, just below my ribs. The gesture was possessive and tender simultaneously—holding me in place, grounding me in my body rather than my thoughts.
"I'm going to guide you onto the platform," Meric said. "You'll be positioned on your knees, facing the forward mirror. Your hands will rest on the platform surface. You'll watch yourself throughout. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Good girl."
The praise sent heat pooling low in my abdomen—the same Pavlovian response I'd experienced in Session Two when he'd finally granted permission to climax. My body had learned to associate his approval with pleasure, and now even those two words triggered arousal.
He guided me down, his hands firm on my hips, positioning me exactly where he wanted. Kneeling. Palms flat on the leather platform. Facing my own reflection with nowhere to hide.
The angle was devastating.
I could see everything—my face flushed, my pupils dilated, my lips parted as my breathing quickened. And I could see Meric behind me, still fully dressed in black, the visual contrast emphasizing the power dynamic we'd negotiated.
Dominant and submissive.
Clothed and naked.
In control and surrendering.
"Tell me what you see now," Meric said.
"I see..." I swallowed hard; the admission was difficult. "I see someone who wants this."
"Be specific."
"I see a woman kneeling before a man she—" I stopped, the word I'd almost said too dangerous to voice. "A man she trusts. A woman whose body is responding to him even though her mind is terrified of what that means."
"Why is your mind terrified?"
Because I'm falling in love with you. Because this isn't just Praxis anymore, and we both know it. Because in seven more weeks, I have to walk away from you, and I don't know how.
"Because," I said carefully, "I don't know who I am without control."
"You're about to find out."
His hands slid down my sides, over the curve of my hips, and I watched the movement in the mirror—watched my reflection respond with a small gasp, watched my back arch involuntarily, watched the woman in the glass become someone I barely recognized.
Someone who wanted.
Someone who needed.
Someone who was about to surrender completely.
Meric's fingers traced the inside of my thighs, and I felt the touch everywhere—not just the physical sensation but the psychological weight of it. His controlled breathing. The way he watched my face in the mirror with the same analytical focus I used on my own patients.
"Spread your knees wider."
I obeyed.
The adjustment changed the reflection—made me more vulnerable, more exposed. I could see the flush spreading down my chest, the way my breathing had become shallow, the trembling in my arms as I held myself upright on the platform.
"You're beautiful," Meric said quietly, and the words weren't clinical. They were personal. Raw. "Do you see that?"
I looked at the woman in the mirror—naked, kneeling, aroused, afraid—and for the first time in my adult life, I didn't see a body to be controlled or optimized or perfected.
I saw a woman choosing to be vulnerable.
Choosing to be seen.
Choosing to surrender.
"Yes," I whispered. "I see it."
"Don't look away."