Irina’s POV

The walk back felt longer than it should have.

Same corridors. Same fluorescent glow. Same guards straightening when they saw me, same cold stone smell that never quite left this part of the building no matter how far up you went.

But everything felt like it was pushing back tonight. Like the air had gotten heavier while I was down there.

*The cure is you, sweetheart. It’s been you this entire time.*

I pressed Alexei’s voice flat and kept walking.

*Your blood. Your mother’s blood. The Healing Tribe’s queen.*

I didn’t know if it was true.

I didn’t know if any of it was true.

But I’d pressed my hands to Nicholas and nothing had happened. The light that had come out of me in the medical wing — the warmth, the way Andrei’s wound had closed like it had never been there — none of that had worked on him. And the doctors were running out of careful words to say. I could see it in their faces every time I walked into that room. The way they’d stopped meeting my eyes.

Nicholas’s room was quiet.

Someone had left the lamp on the low setting — just enough light to see by, not enough to feel like daylight. The curtains were pulled. The machines beeped in their slow, even rhythm, the same rhythm I’d been measuring the last few days like a kind of prayer.

I stood in the doorway for a moment.

Then I walked in and let the door close behind me.

He looked the same as he had this morning. Same stillness. Same pale set to his face, the kind of pale that didn’t belong there — Nicholas was not supposed to look like this. He was supposed to be sharp and dangerous and taking up all the air in a room without even trying. He was supposed to make people’s knees go soft just by existing.

Like this, he just looked like a person.

A person who was running out of time.

I sat down beside the bed.

I reached out — slowly, the way I always did, like sudden movements might break something — and laid my palm flat on his chest.

His heartbeat was there. I felt it immediately.

Steady. Even.

But slower than it used to be.

He was fading.

Not fast. Not like a cliff’s edge. More like a tide going out — slow and steady and almost unnoticeable until you looked up and realized how far the waterline had dropped.

My hand pressed down harder, like pressure would help.

It didn’t.

"You’re so stubborn," I said quietly. "Even this. Even being unconscious. You’re still doing it slowly, deliberately, like you’re making a point."

He didn’t answer. Obviously.

I let out a breath.

---

I looked at Nicholas’s face.

I thought about the first time he’d looked at me — in that auction room, with all those people watching and that terrible light overhead, and his eyes finding me across the crowd and not letting go. I’d been terrified. I’d been terrified of everything back then. I hadn’t known the difference between someone wanting to hurt me and someone just wanting me, because those two things had always come packaged together.

I thought about the morning he’d told me what he was planning for my father and Maxim, the careful way he’d said *I already promised you, no war*, and how I hadn’t known what to do with that. Nobody had ever kept a promise to me before. I hadn’t had a reference point.

I thought about how he’d held my hand in the hospital after I’d taken that hit from Maxim’s wolf. The way he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t made it about him or about what had happened or about anything at all — just held on.

My eyes started to burn.

I blinked it back.

*Stop it*, I told myself. *This isn’t the time.*

---

The knife was in my pocket.

I’d taken it from the medical kit in my room — small, clean, the kind they used for procedures. I’d put it there yesterday, after I’d come back from trying and failing to heal Nicholas with my hands, after I’d sat in the chair beside his bed and tried to figure out what else I had.

I pulled the knife out.

Looked at it for a second.

Then I pressed the blade to the center of my palm and cut.

It wasn’t deep — I didn’t need it deep, just enough. The pain was sharp and quick, and then the blood came, welling up fast, running down my wrist before I’d even moved my hand.

I leaned over.

I pressed my palm to Nicholas’s lips.

For a moment, nothing.

I held my breath.

Then — something. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

His color changed first. Just slightly, just at the edges — the waxy pallor giving way to something warmer, something that looked more like him. Like blood remembered where it was supposed to be.

The machines beeped.

And then again. Faster.

His heartbeat — I felt it change under my other hand, still resting on his chest. Like something had been winding down and now someone had touched the mechanism, and it was finding its rhythm again. Stronger. More present. Less far away.

I made a sound I hadn’t meant to make. Something halfway between a breath and something else.

His eyelids moved.

Just slightly. Just the faintest flutter, the kind that meant he was somewhere between wherever he’d been and coming back. His brow creased. His jaw shifted. The machines beeped again, and again, steady now, insistent.

He was coming back.

He was actually coming back.

I pulled my hand away. I wrapped it in the edge of my sleeve, pressing down on the cut, watching his face. His cheeks had color again. Real color — warm and alive, not that awful gray that had been sitting there for days like something had already given up.

My chest hurt.

I hadn’t expected it to hurt like this. I don’t know what I’d expected — relief, maybe. Or nothing. I’d been so braced for it not to work that I hadn’t thought past that part. Hadn’t thought about what it would feel like to watch it actually work. To watch him come back.

His fingers moved.

Small. Just a twitch. But I saw it.

I pressed my eyes shut for a second.

When I opened them again, he was still unconscious, still not quite there, but closer. Definitely closer. The machines said so. His whole face said so — the tension that had gone out of it when he’d fallen, that particular slackness that had made him look wrong, it was shifting back. He was in there.

I stood up.

My legs were unsteady. I held onto the side of the bed for a moment, just to make sure, and then I let go.

I leaned down.

I pressed my lips to his — gently, barely there, just a breath. His mouth was warm now. That was the thing I noticed most. He was warm again.

I stayed there for a moment.

Just a moment.

"I’m sorry," I said against his lips.

I straightened.

"Goodbye."