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Her fingers tighten weakly. Maybe she hears me. Maybe she is only reacting to my voice.

It is enough.

I move toward the steps instead of the edge. I won’t have anyone drag her over stone when she is already bruised and hurt from saving my daughter once before.

Kirill waits in the shallow end, face pale beneath his usual control. “I can take her,” he says.

“No.” The word leaves me with force.

He steps back, and I climb out with Elara in my arms.

Water streams from her hair, her clothes, my arms, the floor beneath us. She is shivering now, violent tremors moving through her body as she curls instinctively toward my chest.

“Levin,” I say.

“On his way,” Kirill says. “He’s coming up from the clinic.”

I start toward the house. Irina steps into my path. My temper flares.

Elara is coughing against my chest, shivering so violently that I can feel it in my own ribs, and Irina chooses this moment to stand in front of me as if we are in the middle of an unpleasant dinner conversation.

“Nikolai,” she says, her eyes flicking over Elara with open distaste. “You can’t carry her through the main house like this.”

I stare at her. “What?”

“She’s soaked,” Irina says, lowering her voice as if that makes the words less grotesque. “You’re both soaked. Take her to the pool house, or one of the staff rooms. Galina will have to clean the marble, and Anya is already upset enough without seeing⁠—”

“Move.”

Her mouth tightens. “I’m only saying you don’t need to make a spectacle of this woman.”

This woman.

Elara coughs again, her fingers tightening weakly in my shirt, and something in me goes very still. The kind of stillness that usually makes men smarter than Irina step back.

“She saved Anya,” I say.

Irina blinks. “I know that.”

“No,” I say, my voice dropping. “You don’t seem to know it. She pulled my daughter away before she slipped, fell into the pool because of it, and nearly drowned. So, unless the next words out of your mouth are useful, get out of my way.”

Color drains from her face. “Nikolai⁠—”

“I won’t ask again.”

For once, she hears me. She steps aside.

I carry Elara past her and into the house, water dripping from both of us onto the marble floor.

Elara coughs again, and the sound scrapes through me.

“Stay with me,” I tell her, taking the stairs because I cannot wait for the elevator. “You hear me? Stay with me.”

Her head rests against my shoulder. Her breathing is uneven, rough, wet, but it is there. That’s the only thing I let myself count.

By the time I reach her room, she is shaking so badly that I feel it through my arms. I lay her on the bed. The moment I release her, she curls onto her side, knees drawing up, arms folding over her chest as another cough tears through her.

“Elara.”