A nurse saying “she’s in recovery” as if that word could hold anything.


    I nodded and kept walking.


    Bastion was already there. Chair dragged too close to the bed like he dared anyone to tell him to move it. His palm sat on her shin, thumb moving a slow line over the nket—up, down, repeat. Not thinking about it. Not stopping.


    Emilia slept. Color better. The worst of the blood gone from her hairline. An ugly strip of tape above her eye. Oxygen running low and quiet. She looked small under hospital white, and I hated the white for making her look smaller.


    “Vitals?” I asked without looking away.


    “Good,” the nurse said. “Better than good. She needs rest.”<fn0a37> Newest update provided by Find1Novel</fn0a37>


    I took the far side of the bed, the side with her uninjured arm. I slid my fingers around her hand, careful of the IV. Her skin was warm. That helped. Not enough.


    I didn’t sit. I stood where I could see the door, the window, Bastion, the monitors, the skyline through the blind. Sovereign’s east wing faced the river; the ckout had hit it hard. Whole blocks across the water were still dead. My grids were wing their way back.


    “Alexander?” Bastion asked.


    “Not tonight.” I kept my tone t. “His car lost a wheel bearing at the tunnel. Then the tunnel had a maintenance incident. Then his backup car developed an electrical fault. By the time they clear it, it’ll be morning.”


    Bastion’s mouth twitched. “Pity.”


    “I’m devastated.”


    We both watched her breathe.


    The room had the wrong temperature. I adjusted it three degrees down on my phone, then nudged the airflow to silent. The drip set a metronome I didn’t like, so I changed it. The noise went away.


    I checked her chart on the tablet at the foot of the bed. They’d chosen the right analgesic. Good. If they hadn’t, I would have made them choose again.


    A text rolled across my screen—power team asking if they could reroute load from the west end casino to another grid to elerate the hospital ring. I typed back one word: Do. A minuteter, the far skyline came back to life.


    Bastion stroked her shin. Up, down. Repeat. His knuckles were split and bandaged. He hadn’t let anyone clean the ss out until she was under and dered stable. I didn’t argue with him. I understood the math.


    He nced up at me. “You saw it.”


    “I saw enough.”


    “You should see less.” His thumb traced another line. “It sticks.”


    “It always sticks.” I squeezed her hand once. Not enough pressure to wake her. Enough to tell my body she existed. “How long since they settled her?”


    “Thirty.” He didn’t take his eyes off her face. “Forty.”


    I checked anyway. Thirty-seven.


    That was when the fear came. It does that. It waits until you’re not running, ordering, stealing power out of a casino floor to feed a hospital corridor, and then it sits on your chest and whispers you’re toote.


    I looked at the door and imagined Alexander walking through it—voice cold. I saw the way Emilia would make room for him out of old habits and good manners. I pictured a nurse with the wrong badge trying to separate the bed from us with a policy.


    We wouldn’t be okay.


    I could leave a thousand men in the hallway and it wouldn’t fix the feeling. It wasn’t about the number of bodies. It was about being told to go. If someone told us to leave, something in me would break in a clean, permanent line.


    So I made sure no one could tell us to leave.


    Alexander’s route was already burnt. His people were calling Sovereign security; Sovereign security wasn’t answering. Not because I told them not to, but because they were busy remembering who signed their checks. The city lights turned back on in pulses. I watched theme alive in the window and felt the anger rise.


    He didn’t get to arrive tonight. Not into this room.


    The monitor chirped once—artifact. I reached with my free hand and tapped the reset because I needed to touch the thing that made the sound. Bastion didn’t flinch. He was still tracing that same line. Up. Down.


    Sovereign is good at keeping its voice down. The hallway kept a polite distance from our door. I’d made a quiet call in the elevator and given them the rules: no students, no staff with Alexander’s crest, no family except ours. The night nurse pretended not to understand the word ours and then followed it perfectly.


    I watched Emilia’s mouth. She had the kind of mouth that made you think yes before you heard the question. The tape above her eye bothered me. Not the tape—what it implied. Someone had cut into her and put their hands on her face. Medical, necessary, lifesaving. I still wanted names. I wanted to sign theirpetence myself.


    Bastion finally sat back a fraction. “You going to tell me what else you broke?”


    “The tunnel registry for the night,” I said. “Traffic will me the weather. The weather will forgive me.”


    He almost smiled for real. “Good.”


    “I thought so.”


    My phone vibrated again. Not an alert. A message from the power room—Ring three back. Ring two in two minutes. Our city, wasing back to life. One grid at a time.


    I breathed. The breath didn’t fix anything. It just existed.


    Her fingers moved under mine, barely a flex, then still. The fear on my chest got lighter.


    “You can sleep,” Bastion said to her, thumb finding the same path again. “We’re here.”


    She didn’t answer, obviously. That wasn’t the point. He needed to say it. I needed to hear it.


    “We are,” I added. “We’re not going anywhere.”


    I thought about the yacht. About the reunion. The shape of a room we hadn’t walked into yet and the number of people who would think they had a right to speak our names there. I thought about how many exits it had. Fear doesn’t make me smaller. It makes lists.


    A nurse opened the door two inches and saw my face and decided her question could wait. Good. I didn’t want to speak to anyone who wasn’t her.


    Bastion’s jaw flexed once. “He’ll try again at dawn.”


    “He can try.” I checked the time. “He’ll find the pedestrian bridge closed. Maintenance.”


    “What about the helicopter?”


    “Fog advisories.” I looked at the window. The fog advisories were mine. “No pilotnds in it unless he wants his license stripped.”


    “Kind,” he said.


    “I’m merciful,” I said.


    We stood there like that—one hand each on her.


    Fear had less room with the lightsing back. Anger didn’t leave. It never does.


    I checked her IV again. Checked her oxygen. Checked that the line in my phone marked ALEXANDER stayed gray.


    “Luca,” Bastion said, not looking at me. “If they try to move her, you’ll have to stop me from killing someone.”


    “I already have,” I said.


    He nodded once. Understood.


    Her hand warmed more under mine. I felt my heartbeat show up in my fingertips. Stupid, but it felt like proof.


    “Angel,” Bastion said, “We’re here.”


    I didn’t say the word. It isn’t mine. Mine are numbers and doors and cities turning their lights back on because I told them to.


    Still, I leaned closer. “You scared me,” I said in a voice no one else gets. “Don’t make a habit of it.”


    Her mouth twitched like a dream had a sense of humor. It was nothing. It was everything.


    She was okay.


    We weren’t, not really, not if anyone told us to walk out that door and leave her in a room without our hands on her. But tonight no one was walking in with the power to ask.


    Alexander would arrive in the morning to a city that had chosen a side while he slept.


    Bastion kept stroking her leg. I kept her hand in mine. The lights kept returning like a promise I had written and enforced. And for the first time since the buzz in my pocket, I let myself breathe, all the way in and I didn’t feel like I was stealing air from a future that didn’t exist yet.