Celeste walks out with me. In the corridor, her shoulder brushes mine.
She looks at me. Her eyes are brown in the corridor light, and the warmth in her skin is visible at the hollow of her throat, and the corridor is empty.
I put my hand against her jaw. Hold it there. Then I let go.
"Go rest," I say.
"You too."
"I will."
I won't. She goes anyway.
I take the corridor toward the medical bay.
Elena is at her desk with a requisition form.
"Ultrasound," she says without looking up. "Portable unit. I can source one through the medical supply account. It can be here tomorrow."
"Do it."
"I also need reference material. Human gestational development. Fetal imaging protocols." She sets down the pen. "I've never had a reason to learn any of this. I'm building from nothing, and I want you to understand that."
"I understand."
"I'll ask Seraphina to check her with magic. See if anything is wrong that my equipment can't find." She pauses. "Celeste's body is doing something no vampire body has ever done. I can monitor it. I can't predict it."
"What do you need from me?"
"Watch her. You've been doing that already. Keep doing it. If anything changes, I need to know immediately. Not after you've run it through your own assessment. The moment you notice."
I nod.
Elena picks up the pen. Sets it down again.
"She's all right," Elena says. "Right now, today, the marker is stable and she's all right."
I open my mouth to say something that isn't operational. Something that belongs to the version of me that stood in our quarters an hour ago with my hand on Celeste's stomach and no language for what I was feeling. The words don't come. They sit behind my teeth and I close my mouth and let them stay there.
There will be time for them. If I do this correctly, there will be years.
"Thank you," I say.
She picks up the pen. I leave.
The corridors empty as dawn approaches. Doors close along the residential wing in sequence. Marcellus's door. Julian's.
Celeste is in our quarters. The bond tells me she's resting.
I walk to the east garden.
The stone bench is cold. The oaks are leaning. The candles in the branches have burned out.
I sit and I wait.
The sky lightens. Gray first, then pale blue at the eastern edge. The compound's automated shutters seal across the residential wing.
I don't move.
