Aria

He looked at Ash first, then his eyes moved to me, and something in the way he went still told me he’d been preparing for this moment and it was still hitting differently than he expected.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

There were things sitting in the air between us that neither of us had the right words for, and for a moment neither of us tried.

Sylas broke first.

"I’m glad you’re okay," he said. Quiet. Simple. Like the words didn’t cover half of what he meant, but they were the only ones he had.

"Thank you," I said. "For everything you did. Ash told me."

He shook his head slightly, like he was brushing it off, but he wasn’t quite managing it. "You don’t have to thank me. I would have done anything for you." He paused. "Anything."

The way he said it was gentle and honest and a little sad all at once, and I heard everything underneath it and I didn’t pretend I didn’t.

I just received it quietly and held it with the care it deserved without reaching for something I couldn’t give back.

Ash stood up and stretched dramatically.

"I need water," she announced. "And food. And probably air. I’ll be back." She patted my foot through the blanket as she passed and gave Sylas one look that said figure it out, and then she was gone and the door clicked shut behind her.

Sylas sat down in the chair she left empty.

It was quiet for a moment.

"I really am grateful," I said again, softer this time. "You didn’t have to put yourself in the middle of all of that."

"Yes I did," he said simply.

I didn’t argue with him.

He looked at his hands, then back at me. "I’m glad the baby is okay too."

"Me too," I said. "More than anything."

He nodded.

And then he said, " Okay... so... uhm... I’m leaving next week, by the way."

I looked at him. "What?"

"I’m moving back abroad to help with my father’s business. Ash will handle things here as usual." He lifted a shoulder in a small shrug that didn’t quite reach casual. "I guess maybe it’s time I stopped running."

I was quiet for a second. Something settled in my chest that was warm and a little heavy all at once.

"I’m going to miss you," I told him honestly. "I mean that."

Something moved across his face. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He smiled then, and it was a real one, even if it was soft around the edges. "Well," he said, "you could always come with me if you’ll miss me that much."

I laughed, actually laughed, and it surprised both of us I think.

"Tempting," I said.

"I mean it," he said, and he was still smiling but underneath it he absolutely did, and we both knew it, and neither of us said anything more about it.

We talked for a while after that. Easy, normal conversation, the kind that had always come naturally between us.

He made me laugh twice more. I asked about his plans abroad. He asked how I was really feeling, not the polite version, the real one, and I told him honestly.

It was good. It was warm. And it was exactly what it was, and nothing more.

The door opened.

Kael walked in with what I can only describe as an armful of things. Flowers, definitely. A fruit basket. What appeared to be a paper bag of food.

All of it balanced somewhat precariously against his chest, and the expression on his face was the one he got when he was doing something that could be considered soft and had fully committed to acting like he wasn’t.

He stopped when he saw Sylas.

He exhaled through his nose. Long. Slow. Deeply burdened.

Sylas looked at him, then at everything in his arms, then back at him. "Is that a fruit basket?"

"It’s several things," Kael said flatly.

"You brought her flowers."

"Observant."

I pressed my lips together very hard.

Sylas looked like Christmas had come early. "I didn’t think you owned those in that size."

Kael set everything down on the side table without dignifying that with a response and looked at Sylas the way you look at a minor inconvenience that you don’t have the energy to address right now.

"She’s supposed to be resting," he said. "She doesn’t need you bothering her." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"I came to make sure no one related to you was planning to kidnap her again," Sylas said pleasantly. "Given recent history."

"Deeply appreciated," Kael said. "You can go now."

"I’m comfortable, thanks."

"I’m sure you are."

I watched them. Neither of them was actually angry. There was something underneath it that wasn’t quite friendship yet, but it wasn’t what it used to be either.

Something had shifted in those hours when they were both on the same side looking for me, and they hadn’t quite figured out what to do with that yet, so they were covering it with this instead.

It was almost endearing.

Eventually Sylas stood, and he said his goodbyes with the ease of someone who had made his peace with where things stood, and when he was gone it was just me and Kael and the fruit basket and the flowers that he was still technically pretending weren’t a big deal.

Later, when the ward had gone quiet and the lights in the hallway outside had dimmed to their nighttime level, I told Kael I needed air.

He didn’t ask questions. He just found a wheelchair from somewhere and helped me into it with the same quiet focus he brought to everything, and then he wheeled me out through the side corridor and down to the small garden at the back of the hospital where the noise of the ward faded and the sky opened up above us.

It was a clear night. The kind with too many stars to count.

I tipped my head back and just looked at them for a while.

Kael stood behind me, one hand resting lightly on the back of the wheelchair, not saying anything. He was good at silence. It was one of the first things I noticed about him, way back when I hated him and everything he stood for. He didn’t fill quiet spaces just to fill them.

The peace was real. I could feel it settling into my bones.

But underneath it there was something else. A strange emptiness, not the painful kind, more like the feeling of a room after all the furniture has been cleared out. Just open space where something loud used to be.

I didn’t know what to do with the quiet yet.

"Are you comfortable?" Kael asked softly. Not pushing. Just asking. "Is there anything you want?"

I thought about it.

Not about the next week or the logistics or what came after everything that had just happened. I thought about what I actually wanted when I let myself think that honestly.

"I don’t know, I think I want peace of mind and maybe," I said. "A home. A real one." I pressed a hand to my stomach without thinking about it. "With this baby. And whatever comes after."

I heard him exhale behind me.

I looked back at him over my shoulder.

His jaw was tight in the way it got when he was feeling something he didn’t know what to do with.

His eyes were on me and they were full and warm and he looked, just briefly, like someone who had been braced for the world to end for so long he didn’t know what to do now that it hadn’t.

I raised an eyebrow. "Are you actually about to cry right now?"

"No," he said, immediately.

"You look like—"

He stepped around the wheelchair and kissed me, which was a very effective way of ending that sentence.

When he pulled back, his forehead was against mine.

"I have something for you," he murmured. "But not yet. When you’re better."

"A surprise?"

"When you’re better," he said again.

I made a face at him and he almost smiled.

We stayed out there a little longer, just the two of us and the stars and the cool night air, and I thought about how strange it was to have fought so hard and hurt so much and lost so much to end up here. In a hospital garden. In a wheelchair. With this man’s hand in mine.

And to have it feel like exactly enough.

A voice drifted across the garden from the path to our left.

Unhurried. Familiar in a way that took me a second to place.

"It’s nice to see you two like this."

I turned.

There was a man in a wheelchair, moving slowly along the path, an assistant pushing him from behind. He looked thinner than I’d imagined. Older. There was a blanket across his lap and a hospital bracelet on his wrist.

But his eyes, when they found mine, were sharp.