Chapter 20
Casimir
I was rinsing my hands at the sink when I noticed something that sent a chill down my spine: Zane hadn’t moved in over ten minutes.
For most people, that wouldn’t be alarming. For Zane, it was catastrophic.
My middle brother stood between the two patients, his back straight, shoulders rigid. Only his eyes moved, darting between Foster and Seri in a rhythmic pattern. Left, right. Left, right. Checking. Always checking. The rest of him might as well have been carved from stone.
That was not good, the stillness. In all our years, I could count on my fingers the times I’d seen Zane go completely motionless, and that included our childhood.
He was perpetual motion made flesh. Fingers drumming, knee bouncing, mouth running.
Even in sleep, he twisted and turned and murmured nonsense.
When Zane went quiet, truly quiet, it was a major red flag warning.
Koa caught my eye from where he was adjusting Foster’s gauze. His gaze flicked meaningfully toward Zane, then back to me, one eyebrow raised in silent question. I gave a subtle nod. We both knew what that silence meant.
Foster’s huge wolf body shifted slightly, his breathing shallow, but steady. His ears twitched. A good sign.
“His body temperature’s stabilizing,” Ko reported. “Devil’s Breath’s completely extinguished.”
Zane didn’t acknowledge the update. He just stood, statue-still, his gaze continuing its mechanical sweep.
I dried my hands and moved closer, careful not to startle him.
“He’ll be okay, Z. So will Seri.”
No response. Not even a twitch.
In our childhood, King Lucian’s training methods had broken each of us in different ways.
I’d become rigid, controlled, hypervigilant.
Koa had turned his emotions inward, becoming a pressure cooker of restrained feeling.
And Zane had developed a shell of performance to keep everyone at arm’s length.
When that performance stopped, when the jokes and fidgeting disappeared, it meant the cracks had reached too deep for him to paper over. It meant he was just barely holding on.
The silence around him was loud. Not the usual kind, not the one he filled with smartass comments or shitty jokes. This one was brittle.
Ko tapped Morse code against the metal frame of Seri’s cot with his wedding ring: Want me to intervene?
I responded with one sharp head shake: Let me go first.
We didn’t lecture or even touch him at first. Because Zane wasn’t being slippery, or loud, or flinching from consequences. He had done exactly what we’d asked of him, had aided in a successful rescue and brought our girl back, and was now standing vigil over two injured people who mattered to us.
A muscle in his jaw twitched, the only sign he was still flesh and blood.
“Zane.”
His eyes flicked toward me. Just that. No words. No excuses. No deflection about how he’d almost gotten our beloved killed or how Foster looked like he’d been dragged through nine circles of hell backward.
“You did what we asked.”
His mouth twitched like he meant to say something stupid and just didn’t have the strength to pull it off. The effort of holding himself together was visibly exhausting him.
“You didn’t freeze. You didn’t fold.” I took a careful step closer, not enough to crowd, just enough to be there, and Zane’s throat worked like he was swallowing something sharp. “You didn’t run. You didn’t quit.”
He blinked. Once. Then again. His lips parted, breath shallow, shoulders hunched like he was trying to make himself smaller without moving at all. Not a pest now. Not a menace. Just a kid who’d walked through hell with someone else’s blood on his hands and still thought he could’ve done more.
“You got them both here,” I said. “Alive.”
“You protected her,” Ko added. “Kept yourself between her and danger.”
“Not enough. Not fast enough.” Zane’s breathing hitched. His gaze drifted to Seri’s bandaged hand. “I should have stopped her—”
I finished crossing the distance very slowly and laid a hand on his shoulder. Not to steady him. To let him lean.
He didn’t say anything. But he did. He exhaled, and it shuddered out of him like breath had weight.
His knees bent just slightly as if gravity had caught him by surprise, and he let his forehead tip forward until it touched my chest. Not a hug.
A collapse. All six foot three of him trying to curl into me like when we were small boys.
Like the first time he’d read Brumous’ memories and cried, overwhelmed by the pup’s confused, fractured recollections of Arabesque’s cruelty.
Ko and I wrapped our arms around him like we’d done countless times before.
When he was seven and Father forced him to euthanize an injured hound.
Sixteen and pretending it didn’t matter that someone had missed his birthday.
Or last week, when that someone dropped in like a lightning strike and left just as fast.
“You did well.” Ko’s palm cradled Zane’s crown. “We’re proud of you.”
We didn’t speak again. We just stood there with him. We just held him together. Let him be soft, for once. Let him be safe enough to be soft.
After a long moment, Zane’s hands came up to grip the backs of our shirts, fingers twisted in the fabric like he was anchoring himself. His breathing was still uneven, but the rigidity had faded.
“Never again,” he murmured against my shoulder, voice muffled. “Never again is Seri allowed to plan a mission.”
There he was. A hint of the Zane we knew.
“What’s wrong with, ‘A. We leave. B. We find him. C. We come home’?” Koa rumbled. “Wasn’t the first time that’s been our entire strategy, if stated more simply.”
“It’s a shit strategy.”
“Can’t argue with results,” I pointed out, relief coursing through me at the return of his sarcasm, however faint.
“I ran out of bullets.” Zane pulled back slightly, enough to glare at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Foster’s half-dead, and Seri got burned. Those are shit results, Cas.”
“They’re alive,” I countered. “We can work with alive.”
Another tremor passed through him, but he nodded. After a moment, he straightened, squared his shoulders.
“Did I at least look cool while shadow walking?” he asked, a ghost of his usual smirk appearing.
“You looked like you were about to puke,” Ko snickered.
“Lies and slander,” Zane muttered as he scrubbed a hand across his face. “I was the pinnacle of badassery.”
For a moment, we all stood in silence, but a different kind this time. Steadier. Calmer. I squeezed his shoulder one more time before stepping back.
“Is Fosterifico really going to be okay?”
“He’ll be out for a while,” I admitted. “The fire went deep.”
“And why isn’t Seri waking up?” Zane moved to her side and stared down at her.
“Her burns were superficial. She’s just asleep because it’s one in the morning.”
“And because we’d worn her out before she went shadow walking,” Ko chuckled.
“Hmm. Looks like a moon-damned warzone in here,” Zane muttered.
He wasn’t wrong. We’d made an almighty mess, especially Foster, who’d swallowed his phone at some point during his escape and Zane had had to perform the doggy Heimlich, resulting in vomit on my sterile med bay floor.
Which was fine. Cleaning with bleach cleared more than germs for me.
There was something meditative about wiping away chaos, restoring order one surface at a time, until the world made sense again.
“Come on.” I clapped Zane on the back. “Let’s clean.”
“You just want to boss me around while I do all the work.”
The corner of his mouth lifted in a weak smile. Not perfect, but good enough for now.
So Koa sat between Foster and Seri, watching over them, while Zane and I cleaned. I was scrubbing at a particularly stubborn spot of ash when movement near the door caught my eye.
“The hell?” I muttered.
Oh. Just Brumous.
The dire wolf pup padded in on silent feet, his charcoal gray fur fluffed from static, blue eyes huge as he surveyed the room. He moved like a ghost, hesitant and curious all at once. His nose twitched, taking in the lingering smell of the Devil’s Breath and antiseptic.
He went to Seri first, of course. Circled the cot once, then sniffed all over her, his nose hovering just above her skin, pausing on her bandaged hand before moving to her wrist.
Then he licked her. Right on the pulse point.
“No, Brummy,” I grumbled at him, waving a bleach-soaked rag in his direction. “Don’t disturb the gauze. It’s helping her.”
He ignored me completely. Not even a flicker of acknowledgment. Instead, he whirled and turned his attention to Foster. His entire body language changed: Ears forward, tail straight out behind him, each step slow and cautious. He looked like he wasn’t sure if Foster was real.
“Probably the first wolf he’s seen since Arabesque took him,” Zane said, pausing in his task of sterilizing tools. “Seri said he was barely weaned when she found him.”
Brumous approached the wolf cautiously, sniffing at the bandages. He circled once, twice, nose working overtime as he processed whatever scents lingered. Then, with all the caution of a bomb technician, he extended his neck until his nose nearly touched Foster’s.
“Remember about the gauze, Brumous,” I warned. “Don’t lick it.”
The pup’s ears flattened against his head, and Zane choked on a surprised laugh as he translated for us.
“He said, ‘No lick! Am noble.’ Very indignant about it, too.”
“Noble?” I wondered aloud. “Where did he hear that word? Does he even know what it means?”
“Probably from Seri’s books,” Zane replied. “He likes to sit with his head in her lap when she reads those cheesy historical romance novels. He soaks up vocabulary like a sponge, even if he can’t pronounce half of it right.”
Brumous, apparently tired of being discussed like he wasn’t there, poked Foster’s ear with his nose.
The ear twitched, and Brumous practically levitated backward with a startled squeak, legs pinwheeling like a cartoon character’s. His tail puffed to three times its normal size, bottlebrush-style.