By evening, the compound has gone quiet in the strained way that follows a day when grief has moved through every room, and nobody has enough words left. The news of Bern’s list has spread to all of them. The emotional overload feels like a weighted blanket. We’ve known about the hate against magic-bloods; Ravenclaw has been fighting purists for decades. But this is different. This is a system.
After dinner, I find Pell leaning against the back wall of the barn, staring out into the darkness.
“Hey,” I say. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He turns to me, his expression set. “She’s not dead,” he says. “Just because her name’s on the list, doesn’t mean she’s dead.”
“You’re right.” I touch his arm. “It’s no guarantee of anything.”
He nods. “We got others out. Lots went in and stayed for years. Like the one you brought back. Folks say he was in there a long time.”
“Exactly.” I keep my hand on his arm. He’s rigid. I don’t point out that the man in the ward came out broken. “I brought you this,” I say, not wanting to linger on these details. I reach into my pocket and pull out a small pouch of leaves. “It’s valerian. And chamomile. It’ll help you sleep.”
“I don’t need to sleep,” he mutters. “I need to think. I need to do something.”
“Pell, everyone is doing everything they can right now. And you’ll be no good to her if you’re a wreck when they find her.”
When they find her.
He looks at me, then gives a curt nod, reaching for the pouch. “You’re right. She’ll need her father.”
“Exactly.” I smile, feeling like a fraud, but knowing he needs this more than hard reality right now. If nothing else, a decent night’s sleep will help him cope with whatever’s on the horizon.
He manages a smile back before heading off in the direction of the cabins.
I watch him go, then glance back at the compound, where the lights on the healers’ wing are glowing. The twelve-hour vitals check is mine. Brenna mandated full protocol, and full protocol means round-the-clock monitoring for the first forty-eight hours after a dose adjustment. It’s a legitimate reason to walk back into the wing at ten o’clock at night with my kit in my hand and my notebook under my arm.
Inside, it’s nearly dark, only the low corridor lamp burning at half-strength. Dara is asleep. Tomas is not, but he is pretending well enough that I let him keep the pretense. Dane has been released from observation and is almost certainly somewhere he shouldn’t be, doing something I told him not to do.
The locked room is at the end of the corridor.
I press my ear to the door. Silence. Steady breathing. I unlock it, slip inside, and check his vitals by lamplight—pulse, pupil response, temperature, respiration rate. Everything is where itshould be. The sedation is holding. His face is slack, his hands loose. The bruise on his cheekbone has already faded to yellow.
I write the readings in my notebook. Date, time, values. Below them, in the corner of the page, I have written the number once. 3-0-6-7-0. The only thread I have to pull.
I stare at it. Then I cross it out.
The pencil line tears the paper.
I close the notebook, slip out, and lock the door behind me.
The vitals check is done. The professional obligation has been met. I should go to my room.
Instead, I sit in the chair outside his door. Wooden, hard-backed, not made for comfort. I put the notebook on my lap and the pencil on top of it, and I tell myself I’m just writing up Arden’s notes while they’re fresh. That is reasonable. That is something a healer would do.
I close my eyes for one minute.
Just one…
I wake to a voice through the door. Not a snarl. Not the broken sounds I have heard from him in sedation.
A voice. A man’s voice, low and rough with disuse. But there’s something underneath the roughness—a depth, a warmth that has no right being there after what they’ve done to him. My wolf lifts her head before I do.
I straighten slowly so the chair doesn’t creak. The notebook has slipped sideways on my lap. The pencil is on the floor. My neck aches from the angle of sleep.
For a second, I reach for the key. Full protocol suppresses the dream cycle. A wolf under this dose doesn’t talk in his sleep; he doesn’t have the neural activity for it. I checked his levels when I got here. Everything was where it should be.
He shouldn’t be speaking.
