Victor exhaled through his nose, long and slow, the kind of breath that on a lesser man would have come with a string of language wholly unsuitable for present company. Instead, the steam thickened, curling faster, and the wet carpet beneath Tommy’s back began to dry in a spreading ring, fibres lightening from dark grey to pale.
"We will discuss," Victor said, "what signifies appropriate behaviour around water indoors. Later. When there are fewer, his eyes flicked, briefly, unmistakably, toward Frost, small ears present.
Frost, for his part, hadn’t moved from Marx’s knee, hadn’t so much as blinked toward the ongoing lecture. He was leaning forward now, both hands pressed flat on his own thighs, staring at the baby with a kind of grave, wondering focus that made him look about forty years older than six."She’s very small," he said, finally, like he was delivering a verdict.
"She’s a baby, Frost," Luna said, with the withering patience of an older sibling by exactly eleven minutes. "Babies are small."
"I know that." Frost’s ears twitched. "She has wings."
"I KNOW," Luna said, delighted all over again, bouncing where she knelt. "Mama, does she fly? Can she fly already? Can I hold her? I’ll be careful, I’m always careful!"
"Not yet, sweet girl. Her wings are still growing in." Felicity’s voice had gone honey-soft, low and easy, the tone she used when the world had gotten too loud and needed gentling back down. She shifted the sling, tilting Tilly just slightly so both cubs could see her better without crowding. "But you can say hello. Just soft hands, just like you did earlier upstairs."
Marx watched Frost lift one hand, slow, deliberate, and lay two fingers against the edge of the baby’s blanket, not the baby herself, just the fabric, as he understood without being told exactly how much space this new fragile thing required.
Something in his small face cracked open, just for a second, into pure unguarded wonder before he pulled it back into that careful composure he wore like armour too big for him."Hello baby," Frost told her, gravely.
And that was when the baby’s eyes, that bright impossible blue, too aware for one day old, too aware for anything slid past Luna’s bouncing curls, past Frost’s solemn face, past Felicity’s chin, and drifted across the room.
They landed on Marx and stayed there.He felt it like a physical thing, like a hand closing around something behind his sternum. Tommy, beside him, had gone very quiet, and when Marx glanced sideways he saw the same look on Tommy’s face that he was probably wearing himself slack-jawed, wrecked, undone by a creature who was one day old and weighed approximately nothing and was looking at him like she already knew exactly who he was.
"She’s looking at you," Tommy said, voice cracking slightly in the middle.
"I know," Marx managed.
"Marx, she’s looking at you."
"I know, Tommy."
————————————————
Felicity felt steadier than she had in days, the fever finally broken, her legs holding her weight without the room tilting sideways. She’d waved off Dimitri’s hand at her elbow twice already, insisting she could walk on her own, thank you, she wasn’t made of glass. But she let him follow anyway. Let Damien trail behind them both, silent and watchful, because arguing about it took more energy than just letting them hover.
She found the seam of her space in the air of their bedroom, that familiar shimmer only she and her husbands could see, and reached for it the way she’d reach for a door handle. The fold opened easily, welcoming, spilling that particular hush that always lived inside, the smell of clean linen and old paper, dust motes catching nonexistent light.
Except something was different.
She felt it before she saw it, the air holding a shape it shouldn’t, a faint warmth clinging to the corner of the room like someone had only just left it. Her ears swivelled, tail going stiff and straight behind her.
"Someone was here," she said, and her own voice sounded strange to her, thin.
The note sat on top of the trunk where she kept spare blankets. Folded once, her name written across the front in handwriting she knew, precise, elegant, unmistakably him.Her hands shook so badly she almost couldn’t get it open.
Felicity.I don’t have long, so I’ll say this plainly, though plain has never been my strength around you; you know that better than anyone.
I’m alive. I’m in the Mist, wherever that is, whatever that is. I don’t know how to leave it. I’ve tried. I will keep trying. But I discovered, quite by accident, that I can still reach your space, that whatever tether exists between us survived even this, even what they did to me. I don’t understand it. I’m not certain I need to.
I remember everything now. I remember you, and I am so sorry for what I did while I wasn’t myself, sorrier than these words can hold. None of it was truly me, and all of it will haunt me regardless.
I love you. I love you in a way I didn’t know I had room for until you were already inside it. I want to hold you. I want to see the cubs, if they’ll have me, if you’ll let me near them again after everything.I will come back to you. I don’t know when. But soon.
—Lucan
The paper blurred. Felicity read the last line three times before the words stopped meaning anything, before they were just shapes swimming in salt water, and her knees simply gave out from under her, folding like something cut loose.She didn’t fall far.
Dimitri caught her from behind, one arm banding around her waist, easing her down instead of letting her drop, and Damien was there too, a solid press of scales and warmth at her other side, both of them lowering with her to the floor of her own private world until she was cradled between them, the note still crushed in her fist.
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