For the first time since he was brought into my house, Heath sleeps without jerking awake every few minutes.
Not peacefully. Not completely. His breathing still catches sometimes, and his fingers twitch against Maya’s palm, but he stays under. Fever has taken the fight out of him for now. Bellini says that will pass by morning if the medicine continues workingand he keeps down fluids. His body is tired. That was the word the doctor used because doctors prefer clinical language.
Erin sleeps curled on the other side of him with the rabbit tucked between them like a guard with poor training and excellent dedication. Her face is still blotchy from crying. One hand is in Heath’s blanket. The other is wrapped around one of the rabbit’s ears as if she doesn't quite trust the stuffed animal to remain at his post without supervision.
Maya has not moved in nearly an hour.
I know because I have been standing in the doorway too long watching her. Omar, of course, clocks my distraction.
He stands in the hall with his arms crossed, expression disciplined into blankness, but I can feel his disapproval from where I stand. He has been doing that more often since Maya arrived. Disapproving. Watching. Thinking thoughts loudly enough that I could punish him for them if thoughts counted as treason.
“She needs sleep,” Omar says quietly.
I do not look at him. “I know.”
“She will refuse.”
“I know that too.”
“Then don’t ask.”
That earns him a glance.
He meets it.
There are very few people in this house who would tell me what to do in any tone, let alone in the hall outside a sick child’s bedroom while the woman complicating every part of my plan sleeps beside him. Omar survives it because he is useful, loyal, and correct more often than is convenient.
Tonight, he is correct.
Asking Maya to leave Heath would wake the argument before it woke the woman. She would say no before her eyes fully opened. She would bare her teeth, brace that tired body between me and the child, and force me to either retreat or prove I can remove her.
Neither interests me.
Not here.
Not with the boy sleeping.
I step into the room.
Maya doesn't wake when I cross the carpet. That tells me exactly how exhausted she is. Even asleep, she is usually too alert. The first night, she woke when Omar cleared his throat in my study. Yesterday, she woke when a guard passed too close to her door. Tonight, she sleeps through my approach because her body has finally taken what she refused to give it.
Rest.
I stop beside the bed.
Heath’s hand tightens slightly around hers as if even fever recognizes the loss before it happens. Maya’s fingers respond in sleep, curling once around his before loosening again.
The motion is small.
It irritates me.
Not because it is tender.
Because it is automatic.
Because she has already made herself into a place these children reach for without thinking, and she has done it inside my house, under my guard, while telling herself she is here only long enough to take them away from me.
Maya Reeves is a complication with a pulse.
