My mother’s voice goes cold. “Aleksei.”
“No.”
She steps toward me and says, “Think carefully.”
“I have.”
She doesn’t fight them. She just looks at me with this mix of anger and disbelief, like she still can’t accept that I’m not going to bend. “You are making a mistake,” she says.
I look at her and say, “No. I made the mistake when I trusted you.”
That shuts her up. They take her out.
The door closes. I stand there for one second and do nothing.
Then I go to Zatanna. Always her first.
I sit on the edge of the bed and put my hands on her face. “Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head, but she’s crying now. Silent tears. Shock more than pain.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I hate how weak the words sound. I hate that they are true anyway.
She grabs my shirt and says, “You came.”
“Yes.”
Too late, my mind says. I shut that down immediately. “Yes,” I say again.
Behind me, Alena says, “I would really prefer not to stay on the floor for the emotional reunion.”
I look back at Sergei. “Get Alena treated. Keep her separate. No one touches her unless I say so.”
He nods. “Done.”
Then I look at Zatanna again. She is pale, exhausted, shaken, and still here. But still here.
I lean down and kiss her forehead. Then I say the only thing that matters now.
“It’s okay, the worst is over.”
40
ZATANNA
The first timeI hold him without wires in the way, I cry so hard a nurse has to hand me tissues and pretend not to notice.
He’s so small. Not fragile exactly. He’s stronger than he looks, which I’m already told is “a good sign” in the calm, practiced voices hospital staff use when they’ve seen too much and learned how to package fear into manageable shapes. But still. He fits against my chest like he was carved out of all the empty space I’d been carrying for months.
Our son. I still trip over that in my head sometimes.
Not because I doubt it anymore. That part is done. Burned away. Aleksei knows. I know he knows. And somehow the world did not stop when the truth finally stood up in the room.
It just got real.
A few days later, we take him home.
Home is a strange word for Aleksei’s house. It’s too big, too quiet, too expensive to feel like mine, but as I watch the nurse carefully settle our son into the car seat and Aleksei stand therelooking like he’d personally fight gravity if it made the baby safer, the word starts to shift.
