Chapter 9 Ash and Fire

MERCEDES

I change my route to my office. I no longer cross the cypress courtyard; I prefer the library's underground tunnels, where the scent of damp stone and old paper is my only company.

I am fleeing. I know it. I am running from a twenty-two-year-old shadow that seems to have settled into every single corner of this faculty.

It has been three days since we returned from Salamanca.

Three days where I haven't slept more than three hours a night.

Every time I close my eyes, the cathedral fog rolls back in, and I feel the brush of her cheek against my bare fingers all over again.

It is a systematic torture—a divine punishment for allowing chaos to cross the threshold of my mind.

To protect myself, I take measures. Yesterday, I sent Claudia an email with her corrections. Three sterile lines, stripped of any academic warmth:

Miss de la Vega, your theoretical framework requires restructuring. Work on the references from pages 14 to 22. There is no need for an in-person meeting this week; please submit the revised document via this email thread.

A digital safety buffer. A firewall.

Rain hammers against the leaded windows of my office with a gray fury that matches my soul.

I check the wall clock: six in the evening.

The building is starting to empty out. I should pack up my things and go back to my silent apartment, but I sit completely frozen in my chair, my right hand gripping the gold cross beneath my navy silk blouse.

Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. It isn't the polite tap of the dean, or the timid rapping of a freshman. It’s a firm, decisive knock. A knock I know all too well.

My pulse hammers in my throat.

"Come in," I manage, trying to keep my voice steady with professional authority.

The door opens. Claudia steps inside and immediately turns the brass key in the lock. The sharp click echoes through the ceiling beams like a gunshot. She slips the key into the pocket of her damp coat and leans back against the heavy wood, staring at me with an intensity that steals my breath.

She doesn't have her notebook. She doesn't have her innocent smile. Her dark eyes burn with a wounded, dangerous determination.

"What is the meaning of this, Miss de la Vega?" I ask, standing up immediately. My voice sounds tight, a useless defense mechanism as my territory is invaded. "Your behavior is completely inappropriate. Open that door right now."

"No," she answers. Her voice is a raspy whisper, entirely stripped of any academic reverence. "Not until you look me in the eye and tell me why you are doing this to me."

CLAUDIA

Javi asked me about it this morning while we ate breakfast in silence.

"Is something wrong between us, Clau? It feels like you’re somewhere else.

" I told him it was just thesis stress, the pressure of the conference.

I lied. I lied because I couldn't tell him that his touch irritates me, that his kisses on my cheek taste completely bland, and that my brain won't stop looping the split second where Dr. Almeda's lips were a millimeter from mine.

I am losing my mind. Her silence obsesses me; her coldness burns me.

The icy email she sent yesterday was the final straw.

Does she really expect to wipe away what happened beneath the cathedral arches with three lines of academic jargon?

Does she expect me to believe her look in the Guadarrama tunnel was just a mirage?

I won't allow it. Not anymore.

I take three decisive steps toward her mahogany desk.

Mercedes watches me from the other side—rigid, pale, her knuckles pressing into the wood so hard they are white.

She is wearing an immaculate navy suit, but her professor mask is cracking; I can see the subtle twitch of her lower lip and the erratic breathing rattling her chest.

"Open the door, Claudia," she repeats. She tries to make it sound like an order, but the last word breaks, sounding almost like a plea. "This is madness. Just focus on the corrections I sent you. Your approach..."

"I don't give a damn about the thesis approach, Doctor!

" I snap, completely shattering San Griselmo decorum.

The profanity echoes off the walls like something sinful.

"You humiliated me in front of the dean.

You treated me like I was useless on the train.

And now you send me a three-line email banning me from your office.

What are you afraid of? Me? Or what you felt out there in the fog? "

Mercedes swallows. Her gray eyes scan my face with a desolate desperation.

"Nothing happened at the cathedral, Claudia," she lies, her voice a thread of cold air.

"It was a misinterpretation. A moment of.

.. of exhaustion from the conference. I am your mentor.

I am nearly twenty years your senior. This is.

.. this is a transgression that will destroy your life and mine. Leave. I am ordering you."

I take the final step, obliterating the safety buffer between us.

I step around the mahogany desk, invading her line of defense.

Mercedes doesn't move; she seems paralyzed, either by panic or by the magnetic pull dragging us both into the exact same abyss. I stop just inches from her. I can smell her orange blossom perfume again, but now it’s laced with the heat of her own agitation.

"It wasn't a misinterpretation," I say, and my own boldness terrifies me, but the urge to touch her is stronger than logic. "You were shaking, Mercedes. Your fingers burned my skin. And you looked at me like... like I was the only truth in your life."

I raise my right hand slowly, giving her time to pull away, to slap me, to kick me out of the university.

But she only catches her breath. I glide my fingers along the wool sleeve of her jacket, sliding slowly up her arm until I reach her wrist. Beneath her thin skin, her pulse hits frantic, rhythmic, and wild.

Mercedes closes her eyes, a choked moan escaping her lips.

MERCEDES

Lord, save me. Save me because I am drowning.

The contact of her fingers on my wrist is an electric shock that shoots straight down my spine, shattering my resolve.

Her hand is warm, alive, filled with an innocent, ravenous urgency that completely disarms me.

I have tried to pray, I have tried to punish myself, I have tried to build walls of ice.

.. but the second she takes a step toward me, my entire theology reduces to ashes.

No doctrine remains. No decency. Just this internal fire devouring me.

I open my eyes and look at her. Claudia is so close I can see the golden flecks in her dark pupils, the tremble of her burgundy mouth, and the feverish expectation on her face.

She is touching me. A student is touching her professor inside a San Griselmo office with the key turned in the lock.

This is the end of my career. This is the eternal damnation of my soul.

And for the first time in my life, I don't care.

"Claudia..." I moan, and my left hand suddenly abandons the gold cross at my neck.

Instead of pushing her away, my fingers move with a hungry will of their own.

I grip her wrist firmly, stopping her caress, but not to distance her—to pull her against me.

A sudden shift in gravity pulls her against my body, obliterating the last millimeter of air separating us.

Her chest slams against mine; I can feel her frantic heartbeat answering my own in a perfect, fractured symmetry.

Our breaths mingle, hot and fast in the cold chill of the office. The fuse I tried to extinguish with ice in Salamanca just explodes between us with the force of lightning.

"Do you know what you are doing?" I whisper, my lips so close to hers I can feel the brush of her breath. "This is hell, Claudia. For both of us."

"I don't care about hell," she answers, staring at my mouth with an unbearable focus. "I only care about you."

My willpower disintegrates. I release her wrist and my hands slide up her neck, tangling into her dark hair with a savage desperation that terrifies me.

I lean in, finally breaking the laws of both man and God, seeking her mouth with the desperation of someone who has spent forty years dying in the desert.