I would be happy when Kiernan woke up. Until then, this would have to do.
We walked through corridors that blurred together. Oliver reached for my hand somewhere between the waiting room and the lifts, and I held on without looking at him. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. In the distance, a phone rang. The world continued as if nothing had changed, but everything had.
Kiernan might die. The surgeon hadn’t said he would live. She’d said the next forty-eight hours would tell them more. She’d said his heart never stopped, like that was supposed to be comfort. As if the bar for hope had dropped so low that a beating heart was victory enough.
I forced myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The way they’d taught me duringtraining, when they were teaching me to stay calm under fire. This was worse than fire. Fire, I could run from.
The intensive care unit was quieter than the emergency department. Softer lighting, slower rhythms, machines that beeped in steady intervals rather than urgent alarms. A nurse led us down a corridor lined with glass-walled rooms, each one containing a patient surrounded by monitors, tubes, and the apparatus of medical intervention.
Kiernan was in a room at the end of the hall.
The nurse pushed the door open and stepped aside. “Ten minutes. No more than that,” she said.
Callen walked in first.
It was dim, lit only by the glow of equipment and the faint light filtering through the blinds. Kiernan lay in the center of the bed, motionless against white sheets. A thick bandage covered his left shoulder and wrapped across his chest. IV lines snaked from his arm to bags of clear fluid hanging above him. A monitor tracked his heartbeat—proof that he was alive, that his heart was still pumping, that the bullet hadn’t won.
He looked wrong.
This was the man who commanded every room he entered. Who controlled scenes with nothing but his voice and his presence. Who had taken charge of Oliverand me from the moment we’d arrived at Greymarch, directing and demanding and dominating until we couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Seeing him like this—pale and still, reduced to a body in a bed—made my chest ache.
Callen crossed to the left side of the mattress and gripped the rail. He didn’t speak. He stood motionless, staring down at his oldest friend, and the grief on his face was naked in a way I’d never seen from him.
I crossed to the chair on Kiernan’s right side and lowered myself into it. My hand found his, the one without the IV, and I wrapped my fingers around his palm. His skin was cool. Not cold, but not warm either. The pulse at his wrist beat against my fingertips, steady enough for me to count the rhythm.
Oliver took the chair beside me. He reached out and laid his hand over mine, over Kiernan’s, connecting all three of us. The warmth of his palm seeped through my skin, and I realized how numb I’d gone. Running on nothing but fear and fury and the desperate need for Kiernan to open his eyes.
“You bloody fool,” Callen said quietly. The words came out ragged.
Kiernan didn’t respond. His chest rose and fell in the shallow rhythm of sedated sleep.
“Thirty years.” Callen’s grip on the rail tightened. “Thirty years, I’ve known you. And you still think throwing yourself in front of bullets is an acceptable solution.”
The anger in his voice matched what I’d been carrying since the basement. He understood. He’d probably watched Kiernan do this before—sacrifice himself, put his body between danger and the people he loved, refusing to let anyone else carry the weight.
“He saved Oliver,” I said, hating how much it sounded like an accusation.
“That’s who he is,” he said. “He puts himself between the people he cares about and whatever’s coming. He’s been doing it since we were children.”
“It nearly killed him.”
“It has before.” His jaw worked. “When we were twenty-three, an op went wrong. He took two rounds in his vest pulling me out of hostile territory. Refused medical attention until the field medic had finished with me.” He paused. “He’s never mentioned it since. Not once.”
I stared at Kiernan’s face, stripped of the control and command I’d come to associate with him. This was the man who would bleed out on foreign soil before lettinga friend go untreated. Who would put his body between danger and the people he loved because the alternative was unthinkable.
He would destroy himself to protect us. He would burn down to ash if he thought it would keep us warm.
And we were supposed to accept that?
“No. I’m not accepting it.” My voice was steady now, the anger crystallizing into resolve. “He doesn’t get to make those decisions for us. He doesn’t get to throw his life away and call it protection.”
“You think you can change him?” Callen asked.
“I think he’s going to learn that we’re not standing behind him anymore.” I held his gaze without flinching. “We’re standing beside him. And if that means tackling him to the ground before he can throw himself in front of another bullet, then that’s what we’ll do.”
Callen’s expression shifted, and the corner of his mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but close.
“Good,” he said. “He’s going to need people who won’t let him push them away.”
