Chapter 330: News
CYAN
I would find myself back in that dim kitchen at three o’clock in the morning. I could hear the faint, steady hiss of oil on the stove, and the heavy, rich smell of garlic and butter warming the air.
I remembered the way the yellow light had been left burning in the narrow hallway, casting a long line across the floorboards so I wouldn’t have to navigate the dark corners after my nightmares woke me.
I could see Nick’s face clearly in my mind, the way he looked when he turned around from the frying pan, his eyes half-closed with exhaustion, wearing that particular, hesitant look of a man who was doing something kind but hadn’t decided yet whether he was going to admit to it.
I remembered the smooth leather couch where he had made me lie down, and the rough, heavy green wool blanket that had appeared over my shoulders without any grand speech or acknowledgment. It had just been placed there, warm and real, while I shook.
The moment my brain touched those images, I pulled myself back with a violent, angry jerk. A hot spike of irritation went through my chest. It was the frantic reaction of a person catching themselves dwelling on something completely useless.
Nick is irrelevant, I told myself, my teeth grinding together in the dark. He doesn’t matter. He isn’t part of the line.
What mattered was Cassian.
Cassian, lying completely motionless under a white sheet. The dark, wet look of Cassian’s blood soaking into the gray concrete of the dock.
The way that same blood had dried under my own fingernails, flaking off in dark crusts while I sat on the floor of the operating wing.
The terrifying image of his chest failing to lift the way a living chest should, and the low, rough sound of his voice the very last time he had spoken to me before the world went black.
This was the weapon the voices used when they wanted to hurt me the most.
They took those images and played them in a perfect, unbroken loop, a film strip that I couldn’t turn off no matter how hard I pressed my palms against my eyelids.
The only way to interrupt the circuit was to do something to my own skin, to use a sharp edge to force my mind back into the immediate, stinging reality of the present.
The thin, red marks on my left arm didn’t need any other explanation than that. They were just the price of staying in the room.
The sound cut through the silence of the room. It was the same as it always was... three measured taps, followed by a long, heavy pause.
"Sir," Reginald’s voice called through the wood.
I stayed exactly where I was, my spine pressed hard against the solid mahogany of the bed frame, my knees locked tight against my chest. "Go away," I croaked. My throat felt like it was full of sand.
The door handle clicked anyway.
The heavy panel swung inward, letting a thin wedge of yellow hallway light slice across the floorboards.
Reginald had never once in twenty years actually turned around and walked down the stairs when I told him to go away, and we both knew it.
"I said stay out," I spat, my voice rising as I tried to pull my legs even closer to my body, hiding from the light.
"I have news," Reginald said. He didn’t come all the way into the room. He stood right on the threshold, his tall, straight silhouette framed by the hallway.
His eyes moved through the darkness, reading the broken lamp and the open drawers without a single flicker of surprise or judgment on his old face.
"It is about Master Cassian."
The name hit my chest like a physical weight. It landed entirely differently than any other word in the language, carrying the sharp, immediate ache of a deep bruise that had never been allowed to heal.
Was he dead? Did Reginald come to deliver the news of Cassian’s death? My stomach twisted.
"I don’t care," I lied, the anger flaring up hot and fast in my throat to cover the sudden panic. My fingers dug into the wool of my sweater. "Whatever it is, tell them to—"
"He’s awake," Reginald said.
He delivered the words simply, without any drama or hesitation. Over two decades, he had learned that my mind couldn’t handle packaging; I needed information to arrive directly, like a straight line drawn on a page.
The room went completely, shockingly still.
The humming in my ears stopped so fast it felt like a drop in pressure.
"What?" I whispered.
"The hospital called the main house this morning," Reginald said, his voice remaining perfectly level. "Master Cassian has been conscious for four days now. He is responding well to the new treatment layout. The doctors are quite satisfied with his—"
I was already moving before he could even finish the sentence.
My body reacted on pure, unthinking instinct, my legs straightening and launching me off the floorboards so fast my head spun.
The heavy clothes slid off my frame, abandoned on the floor as I took two blind steps forward.
My hands reached out, catching the edge of the wardrobe to steady myself as the heavy fog that had been sitting on my brain for weeks suddenly tore apart.
It didn’t lift with a dramatic crash. It was just gone, the way the weather changes between one breath and the next when the wind shifts from the sea.
"Prepare the car," I said. The words came out sharp and fast, the old command structure returning to my tongue as if I hadn’t spent the last five days rotting in a corner.
I was already moving toward the bathroom, my mind frantically calculating the distance to the city, the afternoon traffic, the quickest route through the warehouse district.
"The car is already waiting in the courtyard, sir," Reginald replied. He spoke with the quiet patience of a man who had known exactly what my response would be before he even touched the doorknob upstairs. "However..."
I stopped near the bathroom door, my shoulder twitching. "However what?"
"You will eat the broth on the tray first," Reginald said, his tone shifting into something immovable. It wasn’t a suggestion.
"And you will take a shower. And you will swallow the morning dosage. In that exact order, Cyan. The car will not leave the gates until you do."
