Sarah’s face appeared above his own, and blocked out the brilliant light. “Hi,” she said softly. “You’re back.”

Murhder started to smile. He wasn’t sure exactly how well he managed it. His mouth felt loose as yarn.

“Back …” His voice was like sandpaper. “Back to you.”

She was gentle as she brushed his newly shorn hair at his temples. “You were so brave.”

“What … happened? Results?”

“It looks good. It looks really promising. We’ve ordered a second set of the drug. Havers said he should have it by nightfall. If I’m right, it’s John’s best shot at a cure.”

“You’re … going to be … right.”

As Murhder’s eyelids became heavy as garage doors, he fought to keep them open.

“It’s okay,” he heard her say. “You rest.”

“Stay … with me?”

“You bet your life I will.”

Second time was the charm. This time, when awareness returned to him, his sensory functions were much more normalized: He knew he wasn’t having seizures, he could feel the bed underneath his body, and his hearing was back.

His eyes popped open. He took a deep breath. And he sat up, rising off the thin pillow, the hard mattress.

“Sarah?”

He glanced around—ah. There she was. On the floor, curled on her side against the wall, hands tucked up under her neck, a security blanket of her own making. Her hair had fuzzed out from her ponytail, wisps touching her face, and her features were tense as if, even in her repose, she was waiting for bad news. Worried about him. Worried about John.

Murhder looked down at his legs and wondered whether they were going to hold his weight. There was a sheet covering him, and he lifted it aside—only to stop. There were terrible marks on the front of his calves, the twin lines of bruises standing out bright purple and deep red.

It made him remember the fire. The kiln.

He smiled. After two decades of floating, he was now firmly on the earth, thank you very much. Granted, he wasn’t sure he could stand up, but that was only one measure of being grounded.

His thoughts were clear as they had been before everything had happened up at the symphath colony. The artificially stimulated change had been the last part of the cure he needed, the final piece to making him whole, the unexpected blessing that had finished the job.

Now, let’s try for some footwork, he thought as he moved his legs off the table one by one. His joints felt like they’d been over-oiled. And he had wires still attached to his chest. Glancing over his shoulder, he checked out the front of the monitor and located the off button. The machine went silent and dark when he pushed the thing, and he removed all the sensors that had been clipped on his chest via pads that had been stuck on him.

They’d already removed the IVs. Good.

The tile floor was cool under his bare soles, and he was relieved when his legs held him up. Baby steps. Little, shuffling baby steps. And as he lowered himself down next to Sarah, he used the wall like it was crutches, buttressing himself on the way to the tiled floor.

Sarah woke up just as his butt hit proverbial pay dirt, and she sat up like an alarm was going off.

“Hi,” he said. “That’s the first word you spoke to me afterward, by the way. Or at least, the first one I heard.”

“How are you feeling? Do you need me to get the—”

“Just you. That’s all I need.”

He lay down with her, spooning her body so that he was her wall to lie against. Sure, they could have moved to that room they’d been in before, or gotten up on the bed under the bright lights. But all that was too much like work. He was bone-tired.

As she settled in against his chest, using his arm as a pillow, she said, “They’re administering the drugs to John as we speak.”

“God, I hope it works.”

“Me, too.”

“Murhder?”

“Hmm?”

“You were very brave.”

“I’m going to will the lights off, ’kay?”

At his command, the big eight-light chandelier in the center—the one that had made him think he was in the Fade—extinguished. And then the ones along the ceiling followed. He kept the line under the cupboards as it was, the glow making everything seem a little less medical.

“You were so brave,” she murmured.

“So were you.”

Murhder closed his eyes and let out a long exhale. He only had some vague memory of his first transition; it had been centuries ago, after all. But he did recall this loose, logy feeling after it had been over, like post-feeding satiation times a thousand. What he hadn’t had back then, though, was a female like Sarah to cozy in against, to hold, to love—

Woman, he meant.

Not female.

The reality of their situation, eclipsed by all the medical drama, returned in a rush, as if it were pissed at him for having been distracted. And as Sarah let out a yawn, and pressed a kiss to the inside of his elbow, his eyes popped open again.

The dimness was no longer a reassuring camouflage that smudged the fact that they were in an operating room.

It was a reminder that night would fall, if it hadn’t already. And they would have to go their separate ways.

His recovery might buy them an extra twenty-four hours. But courtesy of the Chosen who had given him her vein, he was fully strong and he would be fully recovered very soon. Whether or not John was cured of his infection, Sarah was going to have to go home.

And so was he.

Closing his eyes again, he drew his woman to him and held her even tighter.

This was the longest goodbye he’d ever had. Then again, it was going to last his lifetime.

As night fell the following day, Sarah wiped the tears from her eyes and knocked on the patient room next to the one she and Murhder had moved into after they’d left the OR. At the moment, her male was taking a shower, and then …

Well, she didn’t want to think about that.

“Come in.”

Pushing things wide, she stepped into the room. Over at the bed, a clutch of medical staff in blue scrubs was around John’s head, with Xhex and Tohr on the other side. Everyone was leaning down over the recumbent patient, and the tableau reminded her some of the pietàs she’d studied during her one art history class in undergrad.

I am not part of them, she thought.

But she was involved, and she thought of her work with the war on cancer. Her drugs, her theories and experiments, brought her into countless scenes like this around the country, around the world.

It was important work. Even without Murhder, she had important work to do.

As a hollow feeling sunk in at the center of her chest, she took a deep breath and—

Xhex looked up. Motioned urgently. “You’ve got to see this!”

Sarah gathered herself and went over to the bedside. As she approached, everyone straightened and she had a full view of John. The male looked like he’d run a marathon and then bench pressed a couple of houses: He had dark circles under his eyes, he seemed to have lost forty pounds of body weight, and his face was waxy. But he was smiling. Oh, how he was smiling.

The wound on his shoulder was half the size it had been, the black infection retreating like enemy forces being overrun by a strong defense. In the area where it had previously extended, the skin was puckered, as if it had been burned, but the color was normal—and that ring of healing seemed to be increasing in size before her very eyes—

John extended his long arms, and at first, she was confused who he was reaching for. But then she realized it was her.

The medical staff backed up and smiled as she went to him, bent down and gave him a hug.

“I’m so glad you’re getting better.”

As she straightened, he started to sign and she focused on his hands as they smoothly moved from position to position.

Xhex started to translate, but Sarah stopped her. “He says he owes me his life and he’s grateful.” She shook her head. “You don’t have to repay me anything. I’m just glad the hunch paid off.”

Xhex cleared her throat. “I’m grateful to you, too.”

“Make that three of us,” Tohrment said roughly.

Sarah felt her face get hot. “Like I said, I’m just glad my extrapolation worked out.”

There was conversation at that point, with John looking at Tohrment and signing, the other male smiling and saying that yes, John would be allowed out in the field as soon as he was medically cleared. Then Doc Jane and Manny talked about John’s test results, all of which were trending positively.

Sarah said some things back to everyone. She wasn’t sure exactly what came out of her mouth because it was hard to internalize all of the gratitude that continued to come her way. And then she was very aware of needing to depart before her composure cracked.

As she took her leave, she was also very aware that it was a goodbye instead of a see-you-later situation. But she wasn’t going to bring any of that up. They were all having a profoundly happy moment and there was no reason to darken it. Besides, she didn’t imagine they were going to miss her much after tonight, and no, she wasn’t being mopey. The reality was, she was an outsider, whereas they were family.

Back out in the corridor, she paused by the door to Nate’s room. He was staying in the training center until housing arrangements could be made, which was fine. But she was a little concerned that he didn’t seem to want to leave the four walls he’d been in since he’d arrived at the facility. It wasn’t like she didn’t get it. He had been kept in a small space his whole life in that lab. The room he was in now replicated that experience to some degree. He had to branch out, though.

“You can come in,” his voice said through the door.

She pushed the panel wide. “How did you know it was me?”

Nate touched the side of his nose. “Good sniffer.”

Sarah went over to the bed and took his hand. As she smoothed his big palm, she worried about him as if he were still the young boy she’d assumed he was when she first saw him in that cage.