Nothing answers.
Cold sweeps through me so fast, it feels like falling.
No.
I swallow, throat raw, and press harder as if I could feel proof through bone and skin. The last thing I remember clearly is saying the word out loud.My baby. Save my baby.I remember Cillian’s eyes changing when he heard it. I remember the way his mouth formed my name.
What if I was too late?
The thought lodges in my chest and splits something open. Tears come before I can stop them, sliding sideways into my hair as I stare at the sea and imagine a future that vanished in a corridor I never saw. I have survived men with guns, I have survived my father’s expectations, I have survived exile and fear and the long nights alone counting weeks in secret, but the idea that I carriedher this far only to lose her on a polished lobby floor makes my breath hitch in a way that feels like suffocation.
I close my eyes and whisper, “Please,” though I am not sure who I am speaking to.
The door opens softly behind me.
I do not turn at once. I do not want to see a nurse with a careful face and practiced condolences. I do not want to see pity. I do not want to see confirmation in someone else’s eyes.
Footsteps cross the room, measured and familiar.
“Saoirse.”
My eyes fly open.
Cillian stands a few steps inside the room, jacket gone, shirt changed, hair still carrying the imprint of hands dragged through it too many times. He looks like he has not slept. He looks like he has been carved down to something sharper overnight.
He sees the tears immediately and crosses the rest of the space without hesitation.
“What is it?” he says, and his voice is low but strained in a way I have never heard before. “Where does it hurt?”
“My stomach,” I whisper, and the words barely make it past the knot in my throat. “I can’t feel anything. I don’t know if she?—”
He is at my side before I finish, one hand closing around mine where it presses against my abdomen, the other coming up to cradle the back of my head as if I might break apart if he does not hold me together.
“She’s alive,” he says, and the certainty in his voice cuts through the panic like light through fog. “Fallon checked twice. Strong heartbeat. No distress. They monitored you both through the night.”
I stare at him, not trusting myself to believe too quickly.
“She’s okay,” he repeats, slower now, eyes locked on mine. “You’re both okay.”
A sound leaves me that is half sob and half laugh, and my body sags back into the pillows as relief crashes through me so violently, it almost hurts. My hand tightens around his, and I press it harder against my stomach as if I can anchor the truth there.
He sits carefully on the edge of the bed, close enough that his knee brushes the mattress, and he does not look away.
“The sea,” I say after a moment, my voice unsteady. “Where are we?”
“You’re in a private Byrne family medical facility,” he answers. “And you’re safe.”
I glance back toward the window, at the water that seems so wide and calm for the life that waits outside these walls.
“I thought…” I begin, and the rest dissolves in my throat.
He leans closer, forehead almost touching mine. “I know what you thought,” he says quietly.
And for the first time since the bullet hit, I let myself breathe. The relief leaves me weak, and for a while I just lie there with his hand wrapped around mine, staring at the sea and letting the steady beep of the monitors anchor me to something solid.
Cillian watches me in silence until the tremor leaves my fingers, and then he shifts slightly on the mattress and studies my face as if he is trying to decide whether to press or wait.
“I need the truth,” he says at last. “All of it. No edits. No protection.”
