I press a clean cloth against the wound at her side, watch the blood seep through in slow, crimson lines. My hands move automatically—assess, compress, stabilize. It’s muscle memory. It’s the only thing keeping me upright. The only thing between me and the kind of rage that levels buildings.
“She shouldn’t have been there,” I say finally, voice low. “I told her once that this world eats people alive. That it doesn’t care how good or smart or brave you are. I told her.”
Larkin exhales. “You also told her she was one of the best.”
I look up, meet her gaze, and for a heartbeat the room is too quiet again. “Yeah,” I mutter. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Delilah stirs then—barely—but it’s enough to make my pulse spike. Her hand twitches against mine, fingers curling just slightly, and something deep inside me cracks. It’s tiny. Almost nothing. But it lands like a miracle.
The same way it did when Moe opened his eyes in a room so similar not too long ago.
That was the night I realized what it meant to love something I couldn’t protect.
And now here I am again, sitting in the same place, holding onto someone else who found her way past every line I swore I’d never cross. Someone I should’ve kept at a distance and didn’t. Someone I would burn kingdoms for and lie about after.
Only this time, I know what the cost will be.
And I know I’ll pay it.
Chapter 8
Delilah Barrinheart
I wake up like I’m surfacing through water that’s too thick to push through, my body heavy and uncooperative, my thoughts drifting in and out before I can grab onto them. There’s light—too bright, too white—and it hurts behind my eyes, blooming into a dull ache that pulses in time with something steady and mechanical nearby.
Beeping.
The sound anchors me first. Slow. Rhythmic. Too close. Too clinical. The kind of sound that means I’m being watched by machines because my body has become something that needs measuring.
I try to swallow and realize my throat is dry, my tongue thick, my mouth tasting faintly of metal and antiseptic. When I shift, even just a fraction of an inch, pain flares along my side and steals the breath from my lungs in a sharp, punishing reminder that my body remembers something my mind isn’t ready to touch yet. It’s everywhere if I look for it—my ribs, my shoulder, my face, the ache behind my temple. My skin feels too tight insome places, too loose in others, like I’ve been stitched back into myself badly.
My lashes flutter, vision swimming, the room coming in and out of focus like a camera refusing to settle. Shapes move beyond the foot of the bed. Voices overlap, distorted, as if I’m listening through glass. Someone is talking to me—I think they are—but the words slide past without meaning, syllables dissolving before they reach my brain. The ceiling is white. The sheets are stiff. Somewhere, something disinfected and sterile tries and fails to cover the smell of blood that still seems trapped in my nose.
I turn my head slightly, and that’s when I see him.
Jon stands in the hallway just outside the curtain, shoulders tense, posture rigid in a way I recognize instantly. He’s talking to a nurse, his back half-turned toward me, one hand gesturing in short, clipped movements that tell me he’s trying very hard not to raise his voice. His jaw is tight, his face drawn and shadowed like he hasn’t slept, like he’s been carrying something too heavy for too long and refuses to set it down. His uniform is wrinkled. There’s dried blood on his sleeve. I can’t tell if any of it is his.
For a second—just a second—I feel something warm bloom in my chest.
Relief.
It’s instinctive. Immediate. Stupidly human. He’s here. He came. Some part of me unclenches before I can stop it.
Then it twists into something else.
Why is he here?
The thought lands strangely, sharp where it shouldn’t be. I don’t know how long I’ve been out. I don’t know what he’s seen. I don’t know what he thinks he knows. I don’t know how much of me came back in one piece and how much of me is still stuck in that cell with Mikhail’s hands and the smell of rust and fear. And that lack of control sends a prickle of unease crawling up my spine.
The nurse steps away. Jon turns slightly, and our eyes meet through the narrow gap in the curtain. His expression changes instantly—relief crashing into something rawer, more dangerous, something so naked it almost makes me look away. He starts toward me, then stops short when Larkin steps into view at my bedside.
“Delilah,” Larkin says, her voice clear and calm, grounded in a way that feels unfair when everything inside me is anything but. Her hands are folded in front of her, posture composed, like she walked into this room already knowing she’d have to be the steady one. “Can you hear me?”
I nod. Or at least I think I do. My head feels too heavy to lift properly, my thoughts dragging behind the motion like they’re caught in mud.
“You’re safe,” she continues, and I hate how practiced it sounds, like she’s said it a hundred times to people who didn’t believe her either. “You’re back at Greenport. You’ve been unconscious for a while, but you’re stable.”
Safe.
