20. Barely Holding On
Casimir
I was rinsing my hands at the sink when I noticed something that sent a chill down my spine: Zane hadn’t moved in over ten minutes.
For most people, that wouldn’t be alarming. For Zane, it was catastrophic.
My middle brother stood between the two patients, his back straight, shoulders rigid. Only his eyes moved, darting between Foster and Seri in a rhythmic pattern. Left, right. Left, right. Checking. Always checking. The rest of him might as well have been carved from stone.
That was not good, the stillness. In all our years, I could count on my fingers the times I’d seen Zane go completely motionless, and that included our childhood. He was perpetual motion made flesh. Fingers drumming, knee bouncing, mouth running. Even in sleep, he twisted and turned and murmured nonsense.
When Zane went quiet,truly quiet, it was a major red flag warning.
Koa caught my eye from where he was adjusting Foster’s gauze. His gaze flicked meaningfully toward Zane, then back to me, one eyebrow raised in silent question. I gave a subtle nod. We both knew what that silence meant.
Foster’s huge wolf body shifted slightly, his breathing shallow, but steady. His ears twitched. A good sign.
“His body temperature’s stabilizing,” Ko reported. “Devil’s Breath’s completely extinguished.”
Zane didn’t acknowledge the update. He just stood, statue-still, his gaze continuing its mechanical sweep.
I dried my hands and moved closer, careful not to startle him.
“He’ll be okay, Z. So will Seri.”
No response. Not even a twitch.
In our childhood, King Lucian’s training methods had broken each of us in different ways. I’d become rigid, controlled, hypervigilant. Koa had turned his emotions inward, becoming a pressure cooker of restrained feeling. And Zane had developed a shell of performance to keep everyone at arm’s length. When that performance stopped, when the jokes and fidgeting disappeared, it meant the cracks had reached too deep for him to paper over. It meant he was just barely holding on.
The silence around him was loud. Not the usual kind, not the one he filled with smartass comments or shitty jokes. This one was brittle.
Ko tapped Morse code against the metal frame of Seri’s cot with his wedding ring:Want me to intervene?
I responded with one sharp head shake:Let me go first.
We didn’t lecture or even touch him at first. Because Zane wasn’t being slippery, or loud, or flinching from consequences. He had done exactly what we’d asked of him, had aided in a successful rescue and brought our girl back, and was now standing vigil over two injured people who mattered to us.
A muscle in his jaw twitched, the only sign he was still flesh and blood.
“Zane.”
His eyes flicked toward me. Just that. No words. No excuses. No deflection about how he’d almost gotten our beloved killed or how Foster looked like he’d been dragged through nine circles of hell backward.
“You did what we asked.”
His mouth twitched like he meant to say something stupid and just didn’t have the strength to pull it off. The effort of holding himself together was visibly exhausting him.
“You didn’t freeze. You didn’t fold.” I took a careful step closer, not enough to crowd, just enough to be there, and Zane’s throatworked like he was swallowing something sharp. “You didn’t run. You didn’t quit.”
He blinked. Once. Then again. His lips parted, breath shallow, shoulders hunched like he was trying to make himself smaller without moving at all. Not a pest now. Not a menace. Just a kid who’d walked through hell with someone else’s blood on his hands and still thought he could’ve done more.
“You got them both here,” I said. “Alive.”
“You protected her,” Ko added. “Kept yourself between her and danger.”
“Not enough. Not fast enough.” Zane’s breathing hitched. His gaze drifted to Seri’s bandaged hand. “I should have stopped her—”
I finished crossing the distance very slowly and laid a hand on his shoulder. Not to steady him. To let him lean.
