"I'm sorry." I packed each wound with antibiotic powder. "I know it burns."
"Don't apologize. You're keeping me from dying of infection."
I moved to the talon wounds on his back, pouring antiseptic onto gauze and pressing it to the first wound. I worked through each one methodically, cleaning out dirt and grass and fragments of glass.
"Almost done."
I threaded the surgical needle. The first stitch went in rough, but it held. Lorenzo made no sound, just gripped the mattress tighter. I worked my way along the deepest wound.
Seven stitches in the first wound. Five in the second. Three in the third.
When I finally tied off the last stitch and reached for the bandages, my hands were covered in his blood. Lorenzo had gone completely still beneath me.
Too still.
"Hey." I stroked my fingers through his hair. "You still with me?"
"Yeah, just tired."
I wrapped the bandages in silence. When I was done, I sat back on my heels, and my hand lingered on his ribs before I made myself pull away.
"Move over," I said quietly.
His eyes opened. "What?"
"Move over. Carefully. I'm not letting you sleep alone tonight."
He shifted slowly, wincing. The bed was small, barely big enough for one person, but I didn't care. I climbed in beside him and carefully pulled him against my chest.
His back pressed against me, the bandages rough under my palm, his body warm and solid and alive against mine.
We lay there in silence, his breathing gradually evening out. My hand rested on his stomach, feeling each inhale and exhale. Outside, wind moved through the trees.
Then the adrenaline crash hit me, and my hands started shaking. The tremors spread up my arms.
Constantine's voice echoed in my head, calm and cultured, saying, "It wasn't personal, Father Oliveira. You were simply... convenient."
Convenient. The word lodged in my chest like a shard of glass.
I wasn't special, wasn't chosen, and wasn't even worth hating. Just there, available, easy to manipulate.
"Rafael?" Lorenzo's hand reached out, fingers brushing my wrist. "What's wrong?"
I ran my hands through my hair. "Every choice I thought I was making, every path I thought I was following, what if it was all Constantine? What if none of it was real?"
"Does it matter?" he said softly. "Whether Constantine engineered it or not, you still made choices. You still chose to help people."
"But what if I was never really choosing?"
Lorenzo was quiet for a long time. Then: "I was seven when Dionysus bought me out of the cage. Every skill I have, he put it there. Shaped me into what he needed. So I get it, Rafael. I understand what it feels like to look at your life and wonder how much of you is actually you."
He shifted slightly, wincing. "But here's what I know. Constantine engineered your recruitment. Fine. He manipulated Azevedo. Fine. But Constantine didn't make you grab my hand in that field. Didn't make you choose to stay when you could have walked away. Thosechoices were yours. We're both weapons someone else made. The question is what we do about it now."
"What do we do?"
"We survive. We fight back. We prove we're more than what they tried to make us." He paused. "And we watch Constantine bleed for what he did."
The venom in his tone surprised me. "You're angry."
