Chapter 263 I'm Standing Here
ELIJAH
The first thing I was aware of was weight.
Something warm and solid resting against my arm — small, breathing. Around it, at a distance I couldn’t quite calibrate, were voices. Leo’s voice. The overlapping register of the twins talking at the same time. Beneath all of it, a low continuous hum that I recognized after a moment as the medical equipment.
I’d been hearing things for a while. Not clearly but close enough to make out the emotional content without always catching the specific words.
I opened my eyes.
The ceiling. Our room. The configuration of light and cornice that had been the last thing I’d seen before everything went dark, now the first thing I was seeing on the other side of it.
I breathed.
The weight on my arm moved slightly and I turned my head and looked at my youngest daughter sleeping against me and something happened in my chest that I didn’t have a word for.
Lana was bigger. Noticeably, undeniably, heartbreakingly bigger than the infant I remembered.
I pressed my free hand over my face and gave myself a moment that I didn’t let go on longer than it needed to. Then I shifted, and every joint in my body registered the weight of complete stillness simultaneously with a series of sounds that were frankly undignified, and Leo’s head came up from the chair across the room like a startled animal and we looked at each other.
He was on his feet immediately. “Dad.”
“Water,” I said, because my voice wasn’t working properly and pointing at the glass was more efficient than trying to explain that.
He got it to me fast and I drank and felt more human. At the foot of the bed, Elijah junior and Liam were both awake now, sitting up, staring at me with the wide-eyes. Lorain had appeared from wherever she’d been sleeping and was standing with the same look
.
“Is there something on my face?” I asked. My voice was still rough. “Why are they looking at me like that?”
“You have a beard,” Leo said. “A significant beard.”
I touched my face, shocked by the discovery. How long have I been out?
Leo answered before I could voice the question.
“Seven months.”
Seven months? I looked at Lana on my arm. Seven months of her life that were simply gone from me, that I would never get back, that existed only in whatever accounts other people would give me later.
Lana, for her part, had no concerns about the beard. She grabbed a section of it with both hands and pulled with impressive conviction, and something about that broke something open in me that I sealed back up quickly and saved for later.
Leo had talked the twins off the end of the bed and they’d approached cautiously and were now standing close enough that I could put my hands on their heads, which I did, and they leaned into it the way they used to when they were smaller and still wanted that without admitting it. Lorain came to my side without being invited and put her hand in mine and said nothing, which was the most Lorain thing she could have done, and I held on.
“Where’s your mother?” I said.
The shift in the room was immediate. Leo’s expression changed. The relief and the complicated emotion of the reunion compressing into something focused and urgent.
“She’s upstairs,” he said. “In Lana’s room. Mum—” He stopped and started again, talking fast, giving me a summary of what was going on.
“Damien is innocent,” I said.
“Dad. That’s not the priority right now.”
He was right. I pulled the IV from my hand, and I moved to sit up and the room tilted significantly and I waited for it to resolve before attempting anything else.
Getting to standing took Leo’s arm and rather more effort than I would ever admit to anyone. My legs remembered their job after a moment of negotiation. The dizziness was present but manageable. I was upright and I intended to stay that way.
“Stay in this room,” I said, looking at all of them. “Keep the door locked. Nobody opens it until your mother or Hazel comes for you.” I looked at Leo specifically. “You know what to do.”
“Last time you said you’d be back,” he said quietly.
The weight of that sat between us for a second. “I know. This time I mean it.”
I took a knife from a guard outside the door. He recovered from seeing me faster than expected, which I noted approvingly and I went up the corridor and up the next flight of stairs using all the available strength I had left.
The guards at the top of the corridor stopped me.
“The Queen gave orders—”
“I know what the Queen gave orders.” I looked at the nearest guard evenly. “Fall back and hold on standby. When I call, come immediately.”
They looked at each other and stepped aside.
I moved along the wall toward Lana’s room. The door was open. I could hear voices inside, Adriana’s, tight and controlled, and a man’s voice underneath hers.
I stopped just outside the frame and heard the remnants of their argument. Something in me hardened. It gave me the rest of the strength I needed to step into the doorway.
“Who are you calling a vegetable?”
The room stopped.
Hazel’s face went through shock and then something that was relief and terror simultaneously. Adriana hadn’t turned yet.
Thomas Gray had turned toward me from the chair and his expression was moving through calculation at speed, working out what my presence meant for the plan he’d walked in here with.
I saw his hand start to move behind him.
“I wouldn’t,” I said. I held up the knife so he could see it clearly and see that my grip was steady despite everything. “Seven months of lying still is apparently good for your aim. I wouldn’t test that if I were you.” I looked at the pregnant woman beside Adriana. “Lower the gun. Whatever he told you about tonight, about me, about any of this — it was a lie. You know that now.”
Thomas’s hand had stopped moving.
Adriana still hadn’t turned around. I could see the line of her shoulders, the way she held herself when she was managing something that was costing her a great deal. I knew that posture better than I knew my own. She’d been managing things that cost her a great deal for seven months, alone, and she was still standing.
“Elijah.” Her voice was steady and it broke my heart that she had to work to make it sound that way. “Are you actually standing there or am I losing my mind?”
“I’m standing here, baby.” I said. “I’ve been standing here for about thirty seconds and I’d very much like to come fully into the room, but first our friend needs to take his hand away from whatever he’s reaching for.” I kept my eyes on Thomas. “Last time I’m saying it.“