Chapter 404

She looked at the room. At the tray with its sedative and rope and chloroform. At Elite, who was standing with the patient readiness of someone who had genuinely nothing else to do and was prepared to be here as long as necessary. At Nina, who had the rope from the cabinet. At Kael, with his rope and his books and his note. At Jordan, who had been at the foot of the bed since early morning and showed no signs of finding another position.

At the books in her lap.

At the note still in her hand.

“I’m not drinking the tea,” she said.

“The sedative is available in other forms,” the healer said pleasantly.

“I’m not taking any sedative,” Ivory said.

“Then you stay on the table for forty-eight hours voluntarily,” the healer said. “Voluntarily is the preferred option.”

“Thirty,” Ivory said.

“Forty-eight,” the healer said. “The arterial wound is the primary concern. Thirty hours is insufficient for the secondary subclavian branch to-”

“Thirty-six,” Ivory said.

“Forty-four,” the healer said.

“That’s not how negotiation-”

“I’m not negotiating,” the healer said. “I’m describing medical necessity. The forty-eight hour recommendation is clinical, not arbitrary.”

“Forty-eight hours with consultation access,” Ivory said. “I consult from the bed. Margo brings me what I need. I review cases and provide guidance without physical involvement.”

“Agreed,” the healer said, before Nina could add conditions.

“And the chloroform goes back to the cabinet,” Ivory said.

“The chloroform remains on the tray as a reminder,” the healer said. “In the interests of clarity about available options.”

Ivory looked at the small bottle.

“Fine,” she said.

“Fine the bed stays,” the healer confirmed.

“Fine all of it,” Ivory said, with the specific exhaustion of someone who had fought every battle available and found them all

1/3

Chapter 404

+20 Free Coins

closed. “Fine the bed, fine the forty-eight hours, fine the consultation-only arrangement. Fine.” She looked at Elite. “You can leave.”

“I’ll stay,” Elite said. “I have nowhere urgent to be.”

“You’re not here for patient management reasons,” Ivory said. “You’re here because you ran forty laps.”

“I’m here,” Elite said, “because you’re my healer and you were shot last night and I’d like to make sure you stay in the bed.” She found the chair against the wall and sat in it with the settled energy of someone who’d located their position for the foreseeable future. “I’m also here because this is the most interesting morning I’ve had in three months.”

Ivory looked at her.

“The benchpress offer stands,” Elite said. “If needed.”

“It won’t be needed,” Ivory said.

“Good,” Elite said. “Then I’ll just sit here.”

The clinic settled into the specific quiet of a place where a great deal had happened and was now resolving into its aftermath. The healer returned the chloroform to the cabinet – far enough from the tray to be nonthreatening but close enough to be remembered – and left the sedative tea on the small table beside the bed in a position that communicated availability.

Kael pulled the chair closest to the bed and sat in it.

Ivory looked at him. At the books in her lap. At the note.

“The root,” she said. “I have a theory about how to find it. It’s not tested and it requires access to materials I’ve been collecting for

“Tell me,” he said.

She told him.

Not quickly and not all at once- the information came in the specific way Ivory delivered things she’d been holding for a long time, carefully, with the precision of someone who’d organized it thoroughly in their own mind and was now allowing someone else access to the organization. Kael listened with the quality he had when he was genuinely receiving information rather than waiting to respond, the stillness of someone letting something fully land before reacting to it.

I sat in my chair and listened and thought about the attacker who’d escaped, and the root still dormant in Kael’s system, and the eighteen months Ivory had spent managing a pursuit alone, and the two years before that tracking a bloodline through old records while the person she was doing it for deteriorated by degrees she’d calculated down to a timeline.

I thought about the bond, and what it had carried down a hillside last night.

I thought about the seven books in Ivory’s lap and the note still in her hand.

Outside the clinic window, Shadowmere continued its morning. Unaware, or maybe not unaware – packs felt things, I was learning, the collective sense of something shifted that traveled through the group without specific words.

Something was coming. The attacker had escaped with information. The root was still there, dormant but present. Whoever had wanted Kael transformed into a weapon knew now that Ivory was here and that the information she’d taken was in Shadowmere.

But right now, in this room, Ivory was in the bed. The books were in her lap. Kael was in the chair beside her, listening to everything she’d been carrying for two years.

2/3

1:45 pm Ppp.

Chapter 404

+20 Free Coins

The rope was in the cabinet.

The chloroform was also in the cabinet.

Elite was in the corner, settled and watchful, running no laps but available for benchpressing if the situation required.

It was, as mornings went, several things simultaneously.

–

I reached into my bag and found the snack I’d packed – some of the kitchen’s morning bread, still warm and set half of it on the table beside the sedative tea.

Ivory looked at it.

“You haven’t eaten this morning,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Margo told me,” I said.

Ivory picked up the bread with her working hand. Ate it with the automatic compliance of someone who’d been managed into eating by a person who had correctly identified a need and addressed it without making it into a conversation.

Kael looked at me briefly.

I looked at the window.

The morning went on.