“Dove.”
His voice was barely a croak, but the sound of the nickname that he and he alone called her broke through her stupor, and her face crumpled. Silva closed the distance between them, coming to a stop just before him, her arms reaching out, unable to take that last step.
“Tate?”
He was the one who closed the gap, raising a shaking hand to cradle the side of her face. His arm was bleeding, he was covered in cuts and abrasions, but the press of his palm against her cheek was enough to make her feel as if her spine were melting.
Silva closed her eyes, trembling as his thumb traced the shape of her mouth and over the curve of her cheek, the sob brewing in her chest threatening to shake her apart.Five years. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to pull him into her arms and never let him go. She wanted to take him up on the offer he’d once made of carving his heart out of his chest, so that she could keep it with her always.
Her hand raised to cup his, tracing down the long expanse of his fingers, curling over his bloody knuckles, before he captured it, turning her hand over in his palm . . . and then released a weak, pained sound from his throat.
His ripped, bloodied nail moved over the edge of the stone on her index finger, the ring she wore every day so that she wouldn’t lose it in the move. The unbinding was scheduled, several months hence, Tannar’s family demanding a formal ceremony to do so, as she’d expected.
“How long?” His voice was a pained croak, as if he couldn’t gather enough air beneath his voice to form properly. “How long have I been . . .”
Her tears overflowed, the sob coming out at last, nearly choking her.
“Five years.”
It was his turn for his face to crumple, five years’ worth of pain and misery crossing his brow in just a few seconds. He nodded with a wince, hand coming back up to cradle her head, his bloodied fingers pushing through her hair.
“I’m happy for you, Silva,” he whispered through choked-down tears.
He didn’t sound happy. He sounded wretched, miserable; he sounded the way she had felt for most of those five years.
“Your happiness is all I ever wanted.”
Silva turned her face into his palm, catching his wrist, her tears overtaking her for a long moment. He was wrong in his assumption, but the reaction was typical. He’d been making wrong assumptions from the start. She pressed her cheek against his wrist, forcing herself to breathe, to regain her composure, opening her mouth to clarify the status of the ring on her finger when a panicked little voice came from down the hall.
“Mama?!” Aelin, scrabbling at the locked doorknob, the first time she’d ever woken to find it that way. “Mama, open the door!”
Tate’s hand dropped, a sob choking out of him, his ability to swallow down his pain clearly exceeding its limit. He took a step back, reasserting distance between them as his chest heaved again, evidently no longer able to pretend to behappyfor the scenario he was imagining.
“You don’t understand—”
“I’m so sorry, Silva. I shouldn’t have come back at all.”
She never got the chance to explain, never got the chance to scream at him, to kiss him, to find out what he might say next. Tate wheezed, blood coming out of his mouth like a fountain, dropping to the floor like a stone a moment later.
Silva screamed. She flailed in indecision for a heartbeat, uncertain if she ought to run for the door to shriek for help orcall an ambulance herself, opting for the latter and then doing the former. Aelin was sobbing from inside the bedroom, but she was safest where she was. Silva didn’t want her daughter’s first vision of her father to be unconscious on the floor, covered in blood, dead or dying before them.
Rukh held the back door open, directing the paramedics up the steps when they arrived. Greenbridge Glen sat between Cambric Creek and Starling Heights at a near equal distance. She’d made the decision, the night of her delivery, to be taken to Healers. Multi-species, thorough and adept, able to give proper diagnoses and accurately distribute medication that worked on their patients’ differing physiologies.
“Take him to Starling Heights, if you can,” she begged the paramedic who’d turned to her. She’d had experience with human doctors now, knew they didn’t fully understand or even care how to treat nonhuman patients. She didn’t know what had happened to him. And if it was something that couldn’t orshouldn’tbe explained, the humans would have an easier time overlooking it than the experienced doctors at Healers.
The paramedic asked whether she was family and if she would be riding along. The word lodged in her throat.Are we a family?
“I-I can’t leave my daughter. We’ll have to meet you there.”
The human paramedic clearly heard the hysterical child down the hall, nodding before turning out the door.
The apartment was too quiet after they were gone.
She sat on the sofa with Aelin on her lap, head over her shoulder, still sobbing. “I’m sorry,” Silva breathed into her hair. “I’m so sorry, bunny. Someone was hurt, and you needed to stay out of the way.”
She didn’t know what to do. The floor was covered in blood. Blood from where he’d fallen, blood from what he’d dripped. He was on the way to the hospital with mysterious injuries, and she had no idea what to do.
Five years without him, her life had only just begun moving ahead, double the time they’d been together. Five years of heartbreak, of learning how to be justSilva, of putting herself back together.
