Liam left the hospital that night with Clara’s hand still warm in the memory of his, and by the next afternoon he was walking the promenade in a cardigan, the kind of soft grey that did nothing to hide how little sleep he’d gotten.
The walkway ran along the edge of the district, wide enough for two lanes of foot traffic and a bike lane that nobody seemed to fully respect, lined on one side with young trees still tied to their support stakes and on the other with a row of shopfronts that changed character every fifty meters, a bakery giving way to a shoe repair place giving way to a shop that sold nothing but candles.
The afternoon light sat high and clean, the kind that came before the heat properly broke, and the walkway was full of it, full of people moving through their Tuesday the way people moved through Tuesdays, without any particular urgency.
An older man walked a dog on a leash too long for the width of the path.
A group of university students passed going the other way, one of them laughing so hard at something that she had to stop and hold onto her friend’s arm.
A woman jogged by with earbuds in, her breathing audible even over the general noise, and behind her a delivery cyclist wove through the foot traffic with the confidence of someone who did this ten times a day and had never once been wrong about the gap he was aiming for.
Liam walked through all of it with his hands in his cardigan pockets, not really looking at anything, his mind somewhere between the hospital room and whatever was coming next.
Then he stepped in it.
He felt it before he saw it, a soft give under his shoe that had no business being soft, and he stopped mid stride and looked down with the specific dawning horror of a man who already knew what he was going to find.
"Why," he said, to nobody, to the universe in general.
A woman a few steps back winced, already moving toward him, a small white terrier straining at the end of a leash beside her, tail going, entirely unbothered by the crime it had just committed. "Oh my god, I’m so sorry," she said. "He’s new, I only got him last week, he’s not trained yet, I didn’t even see him do it, I swear."
Liam looked at the dog.
The dog looked back at him with the open, guiltless face of an animal that had never once in its life considered consequences.
"It’s okay," Liam said, lifting his foot and inspecting the damage with a grimace he didn’t bother hiding. "Not your fault. He’s a puppy."
"I have wipes, hold on, I have wipes." She was already digging through a bag slung over her shoulder, pulling out a small travel pack.
"I’m fine," Liam said, waving her off gently. "I’ll deal with it. Really."
She still looked apologetic, glancing between him and the dog like she was deciding which of them to be more embarrassed by. "I’m really sorry," she said again. "He’s usually better than this."
"It’s genuinely fine," Liam said, and something in his tone must have landed, because she gave him a small grateful nod and let the dog pull her onward, throwing one more apologetic look over her shoulder before she went.
Liam scraped his shoe against the edge of the curb, muttering something under his breath that wasn’t quite a complaint and wasn’t quite a laugh either, and kept walking.
That was when he saw it.
Across the street, tucked between a wine shop and a place that sold expensive stationary, sat a restaurant with dark wood paneling visible through wide front windows and a discreet gold sign above the door that read Kingsley’s.
It had the kind of understated presence that expensive places always had, no need to announce itself loudly because the people who needed to know already knew.
Liam stood there for a moment, looking at it, something in his jaw tightening slightly.
Then he crossed the street.
The inside of Kingsley’s was dim in the deliberate way, low warm lighting instead of anything overhead, dark wood everywhere, tables spaced far enough apart that conversations wouldn’t bleed into each other.
A host stood near the entrance in a fitted black jacket, and he looked up as Liam came in, his expression arranging itself into the practiced neutral welcome of someone trained not to react to anything.
"Good afternoon, sir. Table for one?"
"I’m here to see Stiles," Liam said.
Something shifted behind the host’s eyes, brief, almost imperceptible, there and gone. "Of course. This way, please."
He led Liam past the main dining room, through a narrow hallway near the back that most guests probably never noticed, to a staircase tucked behind a door that looked, from the outside, like it belonged to a storage closet.
They climbed to the floor above, and the space that opened up at the top of the stairs was a different world entirely from the restaurant below, quieter, emptier, its own bar running along one wall with bottles lit from beneath, a scatter of low tables and leather chairs arranged with the kind of care that made the emptiness feel intentional rather than accidental.
Stiles was already there, seated in one of the low chairs with a glass in front of him, and Elena sat a few feet away, her hands folded in her lap, her posture straight in a way that looked more like discipline than comfort.
"Liam," Stiles said, standing, spreading his arms slightly like he was greeting an old friend. "Glad you could make it."
Liam crossed the room and took the chair across from him without waiting for an invitation. "Let’s just get this over with, Stiles."
Stiles lowered himself back into his seat, unbothered, a small smile pulling at one side of his mouth. "Calm down. I was just being nice."
"That’s not why I’m here."
"You’re right." Stiles picked up his glass, turned it slightly in his hand, watching the light move through it. "Although let me just point out that you smell like shit."
Liam scoffed, short and flat, and didn’t dignify it with anything more than that.
Something flickered across Stiles’s face at the lack of reaction, a small twitch of irritation quickly smoothed back over, like he’d been hoping for more and hadn’t gotten it.
"Fine," Stiles said, setting the glass down. "Business, then." He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees. "The question on the table is whether you’re in. So. Are you in?"
Liam looked over at Elena.
She was watching him with an expression that gave almost nothing away, but there was something underneath it, something careful, something waiting.
He looked back at Stiles. "I’m in."
"Wonderful," Stiles said, already leaning back, already moving on in his head to whatever came next.
"But," Liam cut in, "I’ll only do it if I’m fighting as Elena’s fighter. Only hers."
Stiles paused with his hand halfway toward the glass again. "That’s not possible," he said. "She already has a fighter. A numbered one that’s one of the best on the roster."
"Then find a way to make it work." Liam said it evenly, without raising his voice at all, and let a small, deliberate smile settle onto his face, the kind that wasn’t friendly so much as certain.
Stiles looked at him for a long moment. Then his eyes moved to Elena.
She was smiling too, small, quiet, the kind of smile that came from watching something she wanted actually happen in front of her.
Stiles exhaled through his nose, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh of irritation, and looked back at Liam. "Alright." He shook his head slightly, like he couldn’t quite believe he was agreeing to it. "I’ll make it work."
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded set of papers, setting them on the low table between them along with a pen, sliding both toward Liam with two fingers.
Liam picked up the pen without hesitation, flipped to the marked page, and signed.
Stiles watched him do it, then stood, tucking the papers back under his arm once Liam had finished. He looked down at Liam for a moment, something almost thoughtful crossing his face.
"Enjoy the little time you have left," he said, "before you die."
"Careful," Liam said. "Wouldn’t want you dying of disappointment first."
Stiles’s mouth curled into a real smile at that, something almost like respect flickering behind it, and then he turned and walked toward the stairs, disappearing down them without another word.
The room went quiet.
Elena was still sitting there, her hands still folded, but her shoulders had dropped slightly now that Stiles was gone, some of the careful posture easing out of her.
"It’s really happening," she said, her voice quieter than it had been the whole time Stiles was in the room.
"Yeah," Liam said. He studied her for a second, the tightness around her eyes, the way her hands sat folded a little too still in her lap. "How are you doing?"
She looked down at her hands. "Not okay," she said. "Not really. Not at all, if I’m honest."
Liam’s expression shifted, the certainty from a moment ago giving way to something softer, something that pulled at the edges of his face. He looked at her for a long moment, then stood, holding a hand out toward her.
"Let’s go somewhere else," he said. "Just the two of us. Not here."
Elena looked up at him, something loosening in her face at the offer, and nodded.
She reached out and took his hand, letting him pull her up out of the chair, and together they made their way toward the stairs, leaving the empty bar and its low lights behind them.
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