Chapter 255 Further Misfortunes
POV: Callum | Rookeries, operational building
The third week after the summit has the quality that the third week after any large event has, which is the quality of reality returning in its full complexity after the event has consumed all the attention and the complexity was waiting for the attention to be available again before presenting itself.
The dragon debt notice arrives on Monday morning, which is the timing the agreement specified and which I knew was coming and which lands anyway with the quality of a first payment always lands, which is that knowing a thing is coming does not prevent the arrival from being the specific weight of the thing itself. Fifty thousand pounds, first of forty-eight monthly installments, which is the structure of the debt on the Rookeries property and which is the structure I agreed to at the summit when the alternative was losing the property outright and which I have been building the payment infrastructure toward since the agreement was signed.
The infrastructure is not yet sufficient for this payment, which is the specific problem that three weeks of building it has not fully solved.
On Monday afternoon, Estella goes feral.
I am not going to use a softer word because the softer words would be inaccurate and inaccuracy in this case would be a form of dishonoring what happened, which is that Estella, eight years old, fae-human hybrid, the child with the rising blocks and the first smile in three years, was triggered by something in her therapy session that she did not have the regulatory framework to manage, and the fae-hybrid ability that has been developing without proper oversight since Katherine and Isla began working with her produced in a moment of acute distress the specific response of uncontrolled fae magic in an enclosed space, and the caretaker who was with her was thrown against the wall by the force release and broke her left arm and received a concussion, and Estella is in a secured room in the shelter because the shelter does not have a better option and Isla is in a medical bed with an arm that is not working and Katherine is managing the acute situation but we do not have the long-term protocol for what comes next.
On Tuesday, I learn that five of the Rookeries wolves have accepted the American recruiter's offer, which is the recruiter who has been operating in London since the summit despite the withdrawal agreement's timeline and who has been in the Rookeries periphery for two weeks with the specific quality of someone who is not technically violating the agreement and who is producing results that the agreement was intended to prevent. Five wolves. Not many. Not nothing.
On Wednesday, the shelter's medical staff tells me that Isla's infection has progressed to the point where the treatment decision is becoming time-sensitive in the specific medical sense, which is that time-sensitive means the arm rather than the infection, which means the conversation I forced her into on Sunday has not been enough and the treatment she has been receiving has not been sufficient and the decision that needs to be made is now one that her body is making rather than her, which is the version that produces worse outcomes.
On Thursday, the incubator alarm activates at three in the morning, which is the alarm I have set to reach me directly rather than going through the medical team first, and I am in the shelter in six minutes and the backup systems have engaged correctly and the primary system is repairable and Lucia's vital signs are stable, which is the outcome, and the outcome is the only thing that matters, and the outcome is fine, and I sit in the shelter at three forty in the morning with the incubator running on backups and my heart doing the specific thing it does when something nearly happened and did not, and I do not go back to sleep.
On Friday, the Parliamentary inspection delegation arrives, which is the probation monitoring that the summit agreement mandated and which I accepted because not accepting it was not available and which I have been preparing for since the agreement was signed, and the preparation is as complete as it can be and the delegation has the quality of people who have been sent to find something and who are going to find it or manufacture it, and the distinction between those two things is the thing I will not know until the inspection report is filed.
On Saturday, Cormac finds me in the operational building at six in the morning, which is two hours after I got back from the shelter, and he has the expression he has been developing over the past three weeks, which is the expression of someone who is watching something they cannot fix directly and who is deciding what they can do instead.
"You're carrying too much," he says. He says it without preamble, which is Cormac when he has decided the preamble is not the useful part of the conversation. "Delegate. Trust me to handle some of this."
I look at him across the table with the maps and the debt notice and the incubator maintenance report and the wolf defection count and the Estella incident report and the Parliamentary inspection pre-filing document.
I think about Cormac. I think about the specific history of trusting Cormac, the frame-up trial, the Alpha reign, the years of the wrong version of Cormac making the wrong decisions, and then I think about the past two years of different choices, the Rookeries work and the raid and the facility and the summit and the wedding before the battle and the thing he said to the street when the car pulled away.
"I trusted Cormac before," I say. "Look what happened."
The words land in the room and I hear them land and I hear what they contain, which is a truth about the history and also a truth about me, which is that I am tired in a specific deep way and the tiredness is producing the versions of things that I would not say if I were not this tired, and that the version of Cormac I just invoked is not the version of Cormac standing in front of me.
I look at my brother.
He takes the words the way he takes things now, which is without defense, without the reactive posture that the old Cormac would have produced, he just holds them and looks at me across the table.
"I know," he says. "I know what that trust cost. I know I don't have a right to ask for it back." He does not look away. "But I'm asking anyway. Because you need it and because I'm different now and because the only way you believe that is if I prove it, which I can only do if you let me."
The debt notice is on the table. The incubator backup report is on the table. The five defected wolves are in Montana or on their way. Estella is in a secured room. Isla is in a medical bed.
I slide the debt notice across the table to Cormac.
"Figure out the payment," I say. "You have until the end of the month."
He picks it up and he looks at the number and he does not flinch, which is the Cormac who has been present for the past two years and which is different from the Cormac the old words referred to.
"I'll handle it," he says.