Chapter 58
EAT FIRST, PLOT AFTER
Genesis - Ruelle
Kookaburra
Morning arrives without ceremony.
No alarms. No shouting. Just light pushing through the gap in the curtains and the muted city hum that says the world carried on while I slept.
I lie still for a moment, cataloguing before I move – breath steady, limbs heavy but functional, the familiar gravity in my pelvis that tells me the baby is still there and still calm.
Too calm.
I don’t linger on it. Lingering turns into spirals, and I’m not doing that today.
The room smells like coffee by the time I sit up.
Nightshade is already awake, jacket off, sleeves rolled, a paper bag on the desk like it appeared there by intent rather than effort. He looks at me the way he did last night – not searching, not scanning – just checking that I still exist in the same place he left me.
“Morning,” he says.
“Is it?” I ask.
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Technically.”
There’s food in the bag. Actual food. Toast wrapped in paper, a tub of fruit, something egg-adjacent that smells better than it has any right to. Normal things. Deliberate things.
I swing my legs off the bed and stand without wobbling. I note that too, file it away without comment.
“Sit,” he says, already pulling the chair out.
I do, mostly because I was going to anyway.
He sets the bag between us, slides a coffee across the desk like an offering. Black. No sugar. He remembered. Of course he did.
“You need to eat,” he says.
“I need to know what we’re doing,” I reply.
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “You need to eat first. Plot after.”
I snort despite myself. “That’s not an answer.”
“It is,” he says. “Just not the one you want yet.”
I consider pushing. Decide against it. There’s a tension in him that wasn’t there before – not fear, not anger. Readiness. Like decisions have already been made and he’s waiting for the right moment to let me see them.
Fine.
I unwrap the toast and take a bite. It’s warm. That alone feels like a minor miracle. My stomach accepts it without protest, no surge of nausea, no delayed punishment. I chew slowly, watching him watch me like this is the real assessment.
“You’re hovering,” I say.
“I’m observing.”
“Same thing.”
“Not to me.”
I eat anyway. The fruit disappears. The coffee goes with it. Everything stays down. I wait for the lag – the ache, the backlash – and it never comes.
I keep my face neutral.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Busy,” he says.
“With what?”
“Making sure today doesn’t get worse.”
That earns him a look. “Reassuring.”
“It’s honest.”
I wipe my hands on the napkin and lean back, fingers resting lightly on my stomach. The parasite shifts – maybe, or maybe I’m imagining things – just a small, settled movement like acknowledgement. I don’t flinch. I don’t smile.
“You’re thinking very loudly,” Nightshade says.
“Am I allowed to ask questions yet?”
He studies me for a beat. “You can ask. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”
“Fair.” I pause. “Are we staying here?”
“For now.”
“And after that?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. That’s answer enough.
I nod once. “Okay.”
Something in his posture eases, just a fraction, like he expected more resistance. Or maybe he expected me to demand details I’m choosing not to.
My pulse stays steady. That’s the worst part.
Nightshade glances back at me. “Don’t start overthinking yet.”
“I’m not,” I say, and it’s true in the strictest sense.
He watches me, gaze sharp, like he knows exactly how much that restraint cost.
“After breakfast,” he says again, softer this time. “We’ll talk.”
I nod. “After.”
He reaches out then, brief and grounding, fingers brushing my wrist like a check-in rather than a claim. “Rest today,” he adds. “Let your body do what it needs to.”
I swallow. “And if I don’t know what that is anymore?”
His eyes darken, just a touch. “Then we figure it out together.”
Together.
I hold onto that as he turns away to gather the rubbish, as the room settles back into quiet, as the weight of what I’m not saying presses in behind my ribs.
They’re keeping things from me.
I can feel it in the shape of the silence, in the way decisions have already been slotted into place around me.
That’s fine.
So am I.
Whatever they were watching, whatever they were measuring – it left fingerprints behind. I can feel them. I can read them. But that’s not the most unsettling part…it’s that nothing in me hesitates.