He set down the pen.
The door to his suite opened without warning. Vigdis didn't knock.
"You've accessed Session Two four times," she said.
Meric didn't answer immediately. There was no point constructing a defense — she had full system access. She knew the timestamps.
"The integration pattern is accelerated," he said. "The Cadence requires adjustment."
Vigdis said nothing. She waited — the silence that invited the person across from her to fill it, and the patience to let them fill it badly.
Meric did not fill it.
"Session Three is scheduled for Day Ten," he said. "The methodology is intact."
"I'm sure it is." Vigdis stood. Her hand rested briefly on the back of the chair — the only pause before she moved to the door. "You'll log your access rationale in the clinical file."
It was not a question.
"Of course," Meric said.
She left.
Meric listened to her footsteps in the corridor until they were gone.
Meric sat alone in the lamplight, his journal closed, the locked box untouched beside him. He pulled the tablet toward him. The specifications were precise. Day 10, 20:00. Three mirrors at calculated angles. Standard restraint options available. The progression moved from Surrender Articulation through self-observation to physical escalation — manual, then penetration, the client maintaining visual contact with herself throughout.
Post-session processing question: What did you see?
He'd written the clinical rationale in three sentences. CBT background. High metacognitive awareness. Disconnect from somatic experience. Forcing visual observation of her own pleasure would bridge the divide.
It was sound. Every word of it was sound.
That was the problem.
Meric closed the tablet and returned his attention to the journal in the drawer. He'd written the truth there, at least. The admission that surveillance couldn't record:
I can't stop watching her face.
The problem wasn't that he'd watched Session Two four times. The problem was that he wanted to watch it again. And the session after that. And every moment she existed within the Institute's walls. He wanted to know what she was thinking when she walked the Outer Circuit alone. Whether she'd slept after Session Two or spent the night as wakeful as he had. If she understood that the tremor in his hand hadn't been accidental but the first visible crack in his control.
He wanted her to understand.
And that desire—the need for her to see his compromise, to recognize that she affected him as deeply as he affected her—was the most dangerous boundary violation of all.
Because Praxists didn't need their clients. Praxists served their clients. The work existed for transformation, not connection.
Except Aethelreda had asked the one question no client had ever asked before: For me or for you?
And he'd lied when he'd answered.
Meric sent the Session Three notification at 00:23. Brief. Professional.
He set the tablet down.
Through the window behind his desk the fjord was invisible, swallowed by December's darkness. He could hear it, though — the faint rhythm of water against rock, constant and patient and without any interest in what happened above it.
He opened the journal drawer. Did not take the journal out.
Closed it.
He was lying.