The carriage hit a stone. Pain split him in half. He groaned, but forced his mouth to twitch—half smile, half snarl. Anything, so the boy wouldn’t see only fear.
“You’ll live,” Maisie said fiercely. A command, not a plea. “You have to heal.”
“Bossy,” he rasped. A surgery and stitches at least before he could think of healing.
“Too stubborn to disappear,” she shot back, voice breaking. “That’s why you’ll heal.”
John shifted on the seat, clutching the satchel like it could shield him. His voice came out low, uneven. “At school… I just tell them my parents would come visit. Easier that way. Not sure when but that they will. Makes them stop asking.”
He ducked his head, scuffing the toe of his boot against the carriage floor. “But now—” His throat worked. “Now I don’t have to pretend and yet I fear—” He heaved.
Felix’s chest tightened, worse than the wound. He couldn’t find words. Couldn’t shape them past the ache. All he managed was to lift his hand—shaking, clumsy—and rest it on the boy’s shoulder.
The boy leaned into it without hesitation, shoulders stiff at first, then softening.
Felix forced his voice through the pain, barely a whisper. “You’ve got us. Both of us. That won’t change.”
John sniffed, straightened. “Good. Because Maisie would kill you if you had died taking a bullet for me. That’s even worse than cavities!”
Felix gave a breathless laugh. Weak, but real. “True.”
Maisie let out a broken laugh that twisted into a sob. She folded them both in her arms, shaking.
The carriage rattled on. Streets blurred past—fog, shopfronts, the warm tang of bread somewhere close. But inside there was only blood and pain and the two faces pressed to him. Nails hammered deep. Trust and love. Holding.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The lamps burnedlow at 87 Harley Street, shadows thrown long across the walls. Every room seemed to move at once—doors banging, boots thudding, voices snapping and fading—but in Andre’s surgery the noise thinned to nothing.
Felix sat in the high-backed chair, his leg stretched across a stool stacked with folded linen. The bandage was already blotched through. His shirt clung damp to his chest; his curls stuck to his temple. He looked steady, but only because he forced himself to.
Maisie hovered close. She hadn’t changed from Westminster—the same torn gown, the same streak of dust at her jaw, her hair fallen loose in curls she hadn’t noticed. Her eyes kept darting: his leg, his face, Andre’s hands, back to his leg. As if she could hold him together by watching hard enough.
Andre leaned against the wall, arms crossed, expression flat. “He stays awake,” he said again, to no one in particular. “Awake means alive and fighting an infection.”
On a blanket near the hearth, the little mongrel pup had her head on her paws. She didn’t whimper. Just watched him.
Felix’s gaze slid to Maisie. Her lips parted, soundless. Then: “I thought—” She broke off, shook her head. Started again. “I thought I’d lost you today.” A confession now that they were not terrifying John.
He rasped something like a laugh. “You nearly did.” Heswallowed. “But this house… these people…” His eyes steadied on hers. “And you. You always drag me back.”
The door pushed open. Rachel entered first, her shawl clutched, Deena behind her. Then Raphi and Gideon with coats slung over their arms, and finally John, his satchel left behind, his hands empty for once. He lingered by the door, shoulders square, eyes too old.
No one said anything. The silence itself was heavy enough.
Felix looked at them all—Raphi, Gideon, Rachel, Alfie with lips pressed into a line, Andre grim and waiting as Wendy changed the basin of water for new compresses. They had risked everything. Not for him. For her. Because she had chosen him, and so they had, too.
His throat felt tight. “Miracles,” he muttered, half to himself.
Alfie’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“Is he hallucinating? Feverish?” Nick asked, stepping forward to feel Felix’s forehead.
“No,” Felix’s mouth tugged faintly. “Still here. All of you. Me. That’s a miracle.”
Wendy made a wet sound and pressed her sleeve to her eyes once she’d set the basin of cold water down.
Maisie caught his hand before he could slip further down the chair. Her fingers twined with his, firm. “Don’t make me laugh,” she whispered, though her chin shook.
