Serena left the window, walked to the far side of the bed, and sat in the chair. The chair. Elara’s chair. The sacred, precisely measured, do-not-touch-the-patient chair that Elara had been haunting for days like a very committed ghost with boundary issues.

Elara had memorized the distance from the chair to the bed.

Serena was now inside the safe range.

“He really does look better,” Serena said, leaning forward. Her elbows found her knees. Her chin found her hands. Her face was eighteen inches from Gavriel’s blanket-wrapped body, and the eighteen inches were shrinking because Serena was studying his face.

Elara watched the distance close. Sixteen inches. Fourteen.

“Serena, the chair is closer than I usually sit.”

“Is it?”

“Move it back about a foot. For the protocol.”

Serena scooted the chair back without questioning it, because the protocol was Alaric’s.

The protocol. The fake, fabricated, entirely fictional protocol that Elara had been building like a house of cards over the course of several days. Every new rule she invented required three supporting lies, and every supporting lie required its own foundation, and the foundation was made of bullshit.

Close call number two. Survived.

Dex sat on the windowsill with his legs stretched in front of him, his arms crossed, and his posture relaxed. He had no idea that the room he was sitting in was a minefield.

“Do you know what’s wrong with his shoulder?” Dex asked.

Elara’s blood pressure spiked so hard she felt it in her teeth.

“What?” The word came out sharper than she intended.

“The bandage. It’s been on his shoulder since the coma started. The dark veins are gone. His color is back. Everything else healed. Why does the shoulder still need a bandage?”

Elara looked at him. The look was brief, controlled, carrying a neutral expression. Her internal monologue was screaming at a frequency that would have shattered glass.

“Deep tissue damage,” she said. “The dark magic spikes entered through the shoulder. The surface healed but the underlying tissue is still regenerating. Alaric wants it covered to prevent infection during the regeneration period.”

Every word of that was false. Every. Single. Word.

There were no spikes in Gavriel, which Elara thought of after she said it. Whoops. That one was on a clock.

Dex’s brows knit.

“Spikes in Gav? I thought there—”

“Yes,” Elara cut him off. “Something about magical backlash traveling through the nearest muscle group. The physics of it.”

“Magical backlash physics,” Dex repeated.

“Yes.”

“That’s a thing?” Dex asked.

No, it was not a thing. She had invented a field of study in real time to explain a bandage.

“Ask Hyran if you want a lecture. I am telling you what Alaric told me.”

The Hyran card was her ace. She could play it once per conversation, and the playing ended the conversation every single time, because the threat of Hyran Thornfell explaining magical theory was the conversational equivalent of a nuclear deterrent. Nobody wanted it. Nobody called the bluff. The bluff was goddamn bulletproof.

“I’m good,” Dex said.

Close call number three. Survived.

Serena was sore from training and shifted in her chair. The shift sent her right hand drifting over the edge of the bed, directly towards Gavriel’s blanket-covered hand. It was the pure, unthinking reach of a woman going for a friend’s hand… except this particular friend was currently a magical crime scene waiting to happen.

Elara saw it happening in slow motion.

The hand was coming down. The hand was going to land on the blanket, which was covering Gav’s hand, and the blanket was thick but not thick enough to block matebond magic, and the magic would travel through wool the way electricity traveled through water, and the traveling would produce a glow, and the glow would produce a question, and the question would produce the end of everything Elara had been maintaining.

Elara sneezed.

The sneeze was loud and explosive.

Serena’s hand jerked back. Reflex. The sneeze had startled her, and the startling had retracted the hand, and the retraction had bought Elara another thirty seconds of a life she was living on borrowed time and borrowed sneezes.

“Bless you,” Serena said.

“Thank you.” Elara wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She did not have a cold. She did not need to sneeze. She had weaponized a sneeze, and the weaponization had worked, and the working was going to have to sustain her until she could get these two out of this room before the next attempt at contact produced a disaster she could not sneeze her way out of.

Close call number four. Survived.

“We should let him rest,” Elara said, standing. Her voice was bright and casual. “Alaric’s protocol says short visits. We have been here for seven minutes. That’s the maximum.”

“Since when is there a maximum?” Dex asked.

“Since the updated protocol.”

“What updated protocol?”

“The one Alaric issued this morning. The same one that covers contact and temperature and blankets. It’s comprehensive, Dex. The man wrote four pages.”

Dex looked at her. He was suspicious. She could see it. The Crown Prince was running her story through whatever internal bullshit detector his Alpha instincts provided, and the detector was pinging.

“Four pages,” he repeated.

“He is thorough.”

“He is Alaric. Alaric has never written four pages about anything except his opposition to administrative meetings.”

“People change,” Elara said, already moving towards the door. “Alaric is evolving. His paperwork is improving. We should encourage it by following the protocols. Let’s go.”

Serena stood, and looked at Gav one more time.

“Bye, Gav,” she said quietly. “Wake up soon.”

Dex pulled a chair beside the bed. “I’m going to sit with him for a while. You two can go.”

That was worse. Dex alone in the room with Gav meant Dex was going to look under the goddamn bandaid because that was how the universe worked.

Elara burst into tears.

The burst was instantaneous, volcanic, producing a volume of tears that would have been medically concerning if the tears were real. They were not real. They were the most strategically deployed tears in the history of Drakenfell.

“Actually,” Elara said, her voice thick. “I want to stay too. I don’t want to be alone right now. It’s just. The hormones.”

She said hormones. Out loud. In front of Dex. While looking directly at him. A fake slip-up that was not a slip-up at all.

Dex’s face drained of color.

“Hormones?” Serena asked softly. “What do you mean?”

“Just. Stress hormones. From the stress,” Elara pretended to cover up the planted-slip-up with the ease of a woman whose lying had become an art form. “Everything is stressful.”

Serena stood and gave Elara a hug. “Don’t cry! It’s okay. Of course it is stressful.”

Dex was standing. Dex was at the door. Dex was in the hallway.

He left so fast the door didn’t fully close before his footsteps were gone.

Elara stopped crying. She wiped her face. Dry in three seconds.

Serena pulled back, concerned. “That was fast.”

“Hormones are all over the place,” Elara explained.

That’s when she saw Gavriel’s nose twitch. His eyes were closed, his mind was somewhere else, but his body was twitching.

Oh no. Oh fuck. Oh absolutely not. Not now. Not with Serena three feet away. Not after six close calls and a weaponized sneeze. He was not waking up right now. He was NOT.

His mouth opened. Elara stopped breathing. His lips were moving. His goddamn lips were moving. “Serena…”

“I just needed a moment. Can we get fresh air?” Elara asked at the same time, louder. Obnoxiously loud.

Serena blinked a few times, then her face softened.

“Of course,” she replied.

On her way out, Elara turned back to look at Gavriel one more time and thought very clearly, If you wake up before I get back and blow everything up one day before Serena is supposed to retrieve an artifact that everyone’s survival is dependent on, I will personally put you back in a goddamn coma.

The door closed and Gavriel continued being unconscious, contributing the emotional support of a brick.