Chapter 217: Chapter 216: She is still out there
Two days.
Maya had been gone for two days, and Eve had counted every hour of it from the same spot on the bed, back against the headboard, knees pulled to her chest, eyes on the window. The estate grounds looked the same as they always had. Green and manicured and completely unbothered by the fact that Maya wasn’t in them anymore.
The food on the nightstand had gone cold. Damian had brought it up himself, asked her to eat. She’d looked at the plate. Told him she wasn’t hungry. He’d sat with her for an hour, not pushing, and then eventually he’d had to leave because the pack needed him and the world didn’t stop for grief. The food had sat there getting cold until Elena quietly removed it sometime later.
That had been this morning.
Damon had tried twice. The first time with actual food, the second time with chocolate....her specific brand, which meant he’d gone out and bought it. She’d managed two pieces before her appetite disappeared again. He hadn’t pushed. Just left the rest on the nightstand, squeezed her hand, and had gone back to his office with a promise to check on her before dinner.
She appreciated their efforts. She just couldn’t make her body cooperate.
The door opened.
Elena came in with a plate of snacks....fruit, crackers, a small bowl of something that smelled like the spiced nuts Catherine kept in the kitchen.
She sat in the chair beside the bed and put the plate on the nightstand within easy reach.
Eve looked at it. Then at Elena.
"I’m not...."
"I know," Elena said. "It’s just there."
She didn’t push. Just sat back in the chair, tucked one leg under herself, and looked at Eve with those steady dark eyes that had never once, in all the weeks Eve had known her, flinched from whatever they found.
The room was quiet for a while.
"She must be so scared," Eve said.
It came out smaller than she meant it to. More honest than she’d intended. She’d been thinking about it for two days, the image of Maya somewhere unfamiliar, probably without her phone, without anyone she knew, with no idea how any of this world worked or what the people holding her were capable of.
Maya, who had never asked for any of this. Who had just loved Eve before Eve knew what she was, and had stayed after.
"She’s scared," Elena said. "And she’s probably terrified."
Eve looked at her.
"But she’s Maya," Elena continued. "And Maya is... she’s not someone who falls apart easily. You know that better than anyone." She held Eve’s gaze. "She knows you’re coming for her. Whatever else she’s feeling right now... she knows that. She’s never doubted it for a single second."
Eve’s throat tightened.
"You don’t know that," she said.
"I do," Elena said simply. "Because she knows you. And knowing you means knowing that you’d walk through anything to get to her." A small pause. "She’s scared. But she’s also waiting. There’s a difference."
Eve looked at the window.
Then she reached out and took a cracker from the plate.
Elena said nothing. Didn’t react. Just watched Eve eat the cracker.
Eve took another one and started munching on it.
***
Raphael appeared in the doorway a few minutes later.
He looked at Eve first. Then at Elena. Something passed between them, a wordless communication shared by two people who’d been coordinating around Eve’s wellbeing for two days and had developed a system for it.
Then he looked back at Eve with the expression he used when he was about to ask a question he already knew the answer to.
"How are you feeling?" he said. "And I mean physically. Are you fully healed?"
Eve considered lying. Decided against it, Raphael had an uncanny ability to know when she was lying before she’d even finished the sentence, which made the attempt mostly pointless.
She shook her head.
He didn’t look surprised.
"It is because she has refused to sleep or eat," Silas said from the doorway.
Eve turned. She hadn’t heard him arrive. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, looking at her with the expression that meant he’d been tracking exactly what she was and wasn’t doing for the past two days.
"I’ve been eating," Eve said.
"Two crackers and some chocolate," Silas said. "And approximately four hours of sleep in forty-eight hours."
She opened her mouth.
"You know that’s the truth, Eve," he said.
Raphael moved further into the room. He stopped at the edge of the bed and looked down at her. "Eve," he said. "Maya is waiting for you to come get her. That’s still happening. That hasn’t changed." He paused, making sure she was with him. "But you can’t go to her like this. You can’t walk into the Seraphim Court depleted and exhausted and running on no food and no sleep and expect to be able to do what needs to be done when you get there." Another pause. "She needs you to be strong. She needs you at your full capacity. Not almost. Not close enough. Full."
Eve looked at him.
She knew he was right. She’d known for two days
But knowing a thing and being able to act on it were different things.
But hearing Raphael say it out loud now, Bypassed the part of her brain that has refused to fuction.
She looked at the plate.
Elena picked it up without a word and held it out.
Eve took a piece of fruit. Then another. Then a handful of the spiced nuts that she normally loved and had stopped being able to taste two days ago. The taste came back slowly, the warmth of the spices, the familiar comfort of food the Catherine had made specifically because she knew Eve liked them.
She ate half the plate before she noticed she was doing it.
Elena set it back down on the nightstand then stood up.
"I’ll go make you something proper," she said, "Actual food. You need more than snacks."
She looked at Raphael briefly as she passed him.
He waited until her footsteps had faded down the hallway. Then he moved to where Eve sat, and his hand came to rest on top of her head.
He bent and pressed a kiss to her hair.
"I’m going to go check on Elena," he said quietly. "She’s been running on worry for two days too."
Eve looked up at him. "Uncle."
He met her eyes.
"Thank you," she said. "For everything. For being here."
Something moved across his face that he didn’t try to manage. "There’s nowhere else I would be."
He stood up and left the room.
The door stayed open behind him.
Silas moved. He crossed the room and sat on the bed beside her, He just sat down next to her the way he had on a hundred other nights, close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off his body.
He didn’t say anything immediately.
Eve stared at the middle distance with the blank expression she’d been wearing for two days. The one that wasn’t peace and wasn’t grief exactly, just the face of someone who’d run out of the energy required to feel things in an organized way.
Silas reached over and took her hand.
His fingers closed around hers. Eve looked down at their hands.
Then she looked at him.
His dark eyes were already on her.
Her eyes filled with tears.
She didn’t mean for it to happen. But the tears just started falling.
Silas lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. Held them there for a moment.
"It’s going to be okay," he said. "We’re going to get her back. That’s not a question." He lowered her hand but didn’t release it. "Maya is coming home."
Eve cried harder.
She didn’t wipe the tears away.
She moved, shifted toward him, closed the small distance between them, and put her head against his chest. His arm came around her immediately, his hand settling against her back.
She could feel his heartbeat.
She stayed there and let herself cry properly for the first time since Maya had got kidnapped.
Silas said nothing, He just held her and rubbed her back in a slow, steady rhythm that didn’t try to hurry the grief or fix it or turn it into something else.
