"You woke up," he says. "In my experience, that's the only part that matters."
It isn't comforting exactly. It's truer than comforting. An ex-priest's cadence, but no preaching in it.
Seraphina is behind him. Dark curls escaping from where she's tucked them back, warm brown eyes reading the room in one sweep. She's carrying containers stacked in her arms, and she crosses to the side table and sets them down. When she opens the first one, the smell of onions and garlic cuts through the antiseptic air like something from a different world. Warm, the deep earthiness of tomatoes, something sweet underneath. Real food. In a hospital room.
Gabriel reaches for one of her containers without looking.
"You ate before we left," Sera says, also without looking.
"That was an appetizer."
"That was a meal."
"It was small. Spiritually."
She slides the container two inches further from his hand. He sighs and goes back to standing still.
She touches my arm, brief and warm.
"Tougher than you look," she says. Then she glances at the arm brace, the bandage at my temple, and adds: "Your body's already done the hard work. The rest is just waiting."
I look at Logan beside me. He's watching me, and I see it again — the guilt threading through the relief.
"Stop," I say, quietly enough that only he hears it.
He looks at me.
"Stop looking at your hands like that."
Like they've done something wrong. He stills his hands and smiles at me.
More voices outside. The door swings wider and Marisol arrives — golden hair, couture that belongs in a different zip code, the energy of a woman who generates weather wherever she goes. Subdued tonight, but still herself. She sweeps to the bedside and looks at me, then at Logan still gripping my hand, then at the blood dried dark on his shirt.
Something moves through her face. Quick. Gone.
"Your timing," she says, "is genuinely spectacular. Most people pick a weeknight for a dramatic crisis. You went Sunday."
Nico follows her in. He scans the room before he's fully through the door — exits, threats — and then positions himself behind Marisol's chair, one hand resting on her shoulder. His eyes move to me: injuries, position, level of consciousness. He nods once. Assessed. Filed.
Marisol reaches up without looking and moves his hand from her shoulder to the back of her neck. He lets her. Thirty seconds later he moves it back to her shoulder. She moves it to her neck again. He waits, then moves it back.
"Trajectory was bad," he says.
“There was no trajectory. It was my shoulder."
"You talk too much, Mari."
"You don’t talk enough, horse man."
I look around the room. Gabriel by the window eating from one of Sera's containers without apparently having been offered it, Sera watching him do this without comment. Marisol perched on the edge of a chair like she might take flight, Nico a steady wall behind her. Logan at my bedside, covered in my blood, still holding my hand.
La Sirena closed an hour ago at least. They should all be exhausted, going home, decompressing from whatever Sunday is in their world.
"Why are you all here?" My voice comes out rough, ragged. "It's past visiting hours. They shouldn't have let you in."
Marisol stares at me like I've said something in the wrong language.
"Because it's family dinner," she says. Matter of fact. Like the answer is obvious.
