Her mouth twists.
Then she comes at me like a thrown knife.
“You son of a bitch,” she says.
I stop because I deserve that, and worse.
Her hand strikes my chest with almost no force. She is shaking too hard to hit properly. “You son of a bitch.”
“Where is she?”
My voice does not sound like mine.
Nara turns sharply. “Kauss.”
“Where is she?”
The physician looks up at me, assesses my species, size, state of contamination, visible injuries, and probable violence threshold in less than a second. “Are you family?”
“Yes,” I say.
“No,” Darlene says at the same time.
The word hits.
Darlene closes her eyes as if she regrets it instantly, but she does not take it back.
Nara steps between us before I can speak. “He’s her emergency contact on file after the last incident. Let him in.”
The physician hesitates. “She’s post-operative and heavily sedated. No agitation.”
“I will not agitate her.”
Darlene laughs once, broken and furious. “Look at you, saying impossible things again.”
“Darlene,” Nara warns.
“No, he needs to hear it.” Darlene points at me, her finger shaking. “She fell from a third-story window after your war came through her door.”
The corridor narrows until only those words remain.
Your war.
My war.
I cannot deny it.
The old soldier in me wants to correct details. Ron came. Ron broke in. Ron shot her. Ron drove her through the glass. But every path that led him there passed through me eventually. Through the zoo. Lenrog. My silence. My refusal to stay. My decision to put myself between syndicate and gang while Evie stood in the place everyone knew mattered most to me.
“I know,” I say.
The admission strips something from Darlene’s face. Her anger remains, but grief floods through it. “She kept asking for you before they put her under.”
My knees almost fail.
Only training keeps me standing.
Mira’s expression softens despite everything. “She’s alive.”
