His soft weight anchors me. His quiet breaths torture me.
Because this, this fragile, perfect, impossible little life, could have ended tonight.
Both of them could have left me tonight.
And I would have gone with them.
I stand beside Nellie’s bed, one hand gripping the rail so tightly my knuckles go white.
The medic approaches Gore, voice gentle but firm, “She’s stable for now. We're monitoring her blood levels, but the transfusion took well. She’ll sleep for several hours.”
Several hours.
It feels like a lifetime too long.
Gore edges in front of me with that expression he gets when he’s about to be irritatingly bossy. “Sit,” he orders.
“No.”
“You’regoingto sit, Billy, or I’m going to put you in a bed next to her.”
“No.”
“You’re holding a newborn who weighs less than the guilt in your chest. If you fall, you’ll crush him. So, sit.”
I freeze.
Then slowly, grudgingly, lower myself into the chair Bram places beside her bed.
Rune looks infuriatingly pleased with watching me take orders, “See? Logic.”
“Shut the fuck up, Rune.”
He smirks, but his dark eyes flick to my back, tightening in concern.
“You need to be stitched,” Gore informs me clinically after cutting open the sodden shirt sticking to my flesh.
“No.”
“Billy-”
“Later.” My voice is steel. “When she wakes up and looks at me. Not before.”
He sighs in defeat and drags a stool beside me. The rest of them doing the same, all five of us sitting in wait, supporting me without asking, just being here.
For the first time since she collapsed, the room quiets. The storm calms and the frantic movement ceases.
It hits me, the stillness, the horrifying silence after panic. Now there is nothing but breathing to listen for.
Penelope’s.
The baby’s.
And mine in between, ragged and uneven.
I stare at her face, look over every inch of her, every wire, every smear of dried blood.
My throat tightens, the lump forming larger and larger the more I try to swallow around it.
