18. Keira
KEIRA
T he house infirmary I wake up in is white in a way that feels offensive.
Not the blue-white of clean sheets or the pearlescent fog of first light, but the institutional, eye-watering blankness of a surface that exists only to reflect and to be scrubbed.
I surface into it slowly, every sense lagging—the burnt ozone tang of disinfectant.
The warp and thrum of fluorescent tubes overhead.
The ache in my wrists, my jaw, my stomach, all competing for top billing.
A heart monitor ticks somewhere, and the sound is impossible to tune out.
The air is so cold, my lungs threaten to reject it.
I turn my head and the world lurches, pins and needles popping through my scalp as the drugs or the sleep or the memory tries to catch up.
I am on a cot, not a hospital bed, but the difference is mostly branding.
My hands are exposed—no IVs, no restraints—but my left wrist is wrapped in a fresh bandage, crisp and so tight it pulses.
There's a mint-green blanket half-pulled up to my chin.
Lena is slumped in a chair two feet from the bed, knees tucked under, head canted at an angle that would paralyze a lesser neck.
She's wearing the same jeans as yesterday, or last week, or forever, and her jacket is doubled as a pillow behind her head.
Her face is slack, mouth parted, arms crossed like she's bracing for impact even in sleep.
A navy fleece blanket is draped over her from knees to shoulders, but it's mostly off, pooling at the floor where her boots rest.
She's been here for a while.
Maybe all night.
Visible through the glass panel in the door, Fiachra stands with his back to the room outside, arms folded, head slightly down.
He wears a black turtleneck and dress slacks, like he's on his way to a funeral.
His sidearm is visible at his hip, the holster newer and cleaner than the rest of him.
He looks to be waiting for something.
My throat is a strip of raw sandpaper.
I run my tongue over my teeth, taste ammonia and antiseptic, and try to speak.
Nothing comes.
I reach for the glass of water on the tray beside the bed and nearly knock it over.
The sound is enough to snap Lena awake.
She sits up with a jerk, eyes wide and already moving, hands braced on the arms of the chair.
"You're awake," she says, and her voice is a surprise.
I expected exhaustion, but there's a real relief in it, something unguarded.
I nod, sip the water, try not to wince.
"How long?"
Lena glances at her watch, then out the window.
"Eighteen hours. Maybe twenty. They sedated you for the worst of it. Doc said you'd be up yesterday, but…"
She lets the thought drift.
A hand unconsciously flies to my stomach.
"You're fine," she reassures me.
"All of you. That's a fighter in there."
Now would be a good time to tell her.
"There’s two."
If that stuns her, she doesn’t show it .
My throat begins to constrict as I am faced with the mad urge to hug my belly tight.
I blink twice.
"Where is he?" I ask once I'm sure I won't cry.
I don't say who, but she answers anyway.
"Dealing with fallout, though he should be back now. I believe he's meeting with your doc in the study."
She leans back, her face shadowed by the overhead light.
"He was here last night. They had to patch him, too."
Of course they did.
The memory of his arm, blood-slick to the elbow, comes back with a clarity I wish I could dull.
I ask, "What's the news?"
She sighs.
"City is locked down. Curfew on the south side. Council says it's a public safety issue, nothing to do with Crowleys or Connollys. But no one believes it."
She hesitates, as if deciding whether to add more.
"House is on alert because word is that someone on the inside knew where you would be and delivered that intel. You'll see."
As if on cue, a man in tactical black with a rifle slung across his chest passes the door, footsteps heavy even on the carpet.
The way he scans the hallway—shoulders set, eyes forward—tells me everything about the last twelve hours.
The place is a fortress now, or at least it wants to be.
Fiachra glances inside, notices I am awake, and steps into the room.
His hair is damp, as if he's just showered, and he smells faintly of aftershave and steel.
He gives Lena a look—a go get some coffee look—and she stands, tucking her blanket under her arm.
"You want anything?" she asks me, already knowing I don't.
When she's gone, Fiachra sits on the edge of the cot, not close, but close enough that I can see the red fatigue in his eyes.
He inspects my bandaged wrist, then the bruises on my face, his gaze impersonal as a police sketch artist.
"You did well," he says after a minute .
I look away.
"I did nothing."
He almost smiles, but not quite.
"Most people in that situation panic. You didn't. You kept your head. That's worth something."
I don't know if I want to be reassured, but I take it.
He says, "You'll need to talk to Ruairí. He's in the study. There's things you need to see."
"I'm ready."
He nods, gets up, and leaves.
I watch his retreat through the glass, the careful way he scans both directions before stepping into the corridor.
The gun stays visible, an accessory and a promise.
Alone, I test my body for structural integrity—flex the fingers, turn the neck, stretch the toes.
Everything works, but nothing is the same.
I get up slowly, the blanket falling away, and see the dull gray of my gown.
No dignity left in the world, but I cinch it tighter anyway.
The door isn't locked, so I open it and step into the hall.
The medical wing is empty, but the regular house is alive with motion.
Two men with rifles stand at the intersection near the main stairs, checking badges on the handful of staff who pass through.
Every third alcove has an armed presence.
Even the kitchen staff move with clipped precision, eyes down, voices at a whisper.
There are racks of shotguns bolted to the walls, new since the morning I left, and every exit sign is now flanked by a red strobe, waiting for the order to blink alive.
The house is different.
Not a home, not a prison, but a stronghold awaiting siege.
The word comes to me unbidden citadel.
Lena finds me at the top of the stairs, an extra hoodie in hand.
"You'll freeze in that," she says and helps me pull it over my head.
The motion hurts, but I don't let her see .
She leads me down the side corridor, past the trophy wall, to the old study.
The door is closed, but I hear low voices inside—Ruairí's, and a second, softer, female.
The moment I step in, both stop.
Ruairí stands at the window, back to me, the navy coat from the night before draped over the chair.
The bloodstain at the cuff is still visible, though someone has tried to clean it.
He turns, and for a second, I see the man from the port.
The woman is the house doctor, I think.
She nods at me, scans my face, and says, "You're cleared. Just keep the wrist wrapped and watch for dizziness."
Then she packs her kit and leaves, shutting the door behind her with a click.
Ruairí gestures for me to sit.
I do, the chair still warm from the doctor's body.
He sits opposite, arms folded on the desk, gaze never quite meeting mine.
"We found something," he says.
He picks up a manila folder from the desktop, opens it, and lays a single sheet of paper in front of me.
It's a printout—bank records, the kind you only get with a court order or a good enough bribe.
The top line is a transfer from the O'Duinn account, the old trust that funds half the council's day-to-day.
The receiving bank is in Luxembourg, the account name a shell company, but the bottom line is unmistakable—three days before the abduction, one hundred thousand euro wired to a Connolly holding.
I look at the numbers, then at the date, then at the stamp in the corner.
The implication is immediate, but I let it settle before I speak.
"You knew?" I ask.
Ruairí shakes his head.
"I suspected. But this…" He points at the document. "This is proof."
"Why show me? "
He considers the question, then says, "Because I want you to understand how alone we are now. The council won't help. The guards won't help. Even the old families are hedging their bets."
He sits back, hands open, palms up. "It's just us."
I stare at the paper, trying to feel the right emotion.
Anger?
Relief?
Vindication?
None of them land.
What I feel is smaller, colder—a tightening of the world around the edges.
"They want you out of the city," he says, eyes glinting coldly. "They think if you disappear, the story goes with you."
"And what do you want?"
He looks at me, finally, and the moment is so loaded I have to drop my own eyes.
"I want you alive," he says.
"Even if that means hiding you in a closet in Wicklow until the city forgets you exist."
I smile, but it's all teeth.
"That's not my style."
He shrugs, just a twitch of one shoulder.
"It's not your decision."
I step closer, hands in the pockets of Lena's hoodie, feeling the folded paper burn against my skin.
"You think I'll let them bury me after all this?"
He shrugs again, but his hands tighten on the desk.
"I think you'll do what you have to. That's what you do. But Keira?—"
I circle the desk, closing the distance until I stand at his side.
The map on the table is old, corners gone soft and edges curling where the adhesive's failed.
I find my old neighborhood, finger the street where my father was shot, and flatten the page with my palm.
"This is my city, too," I say, loud enough for it to echo a little. "You don't get to decide who stays and who runs. "
He turns, and this time the look is different—less the cold mask of strategy, more the quicksilver calculation of a man doing math he doesn't want to finish.
The silence drags out, thick and dangerous, until I can almost hear it grinding down the gears in his head.
He says, "You're going to be a mom."
I nod.
"All the more reason, then."
He looks at my hands, then my face, then back to the map.
His own hands drift toward the edge of the desk, then stop, then start again.
There's a tremor in his fingers, but he clamps it down.
He says, "Help me, then."
His voice is lower, almost hoarse.
"If you won't leave, help me take it."
I breathe in, let the air fill the space between us, and for the first time since the docks, I feel the shape of the old world realign.
I nod again, slower this time, and he sees it.
He closes the map with a snap and shoves it aside, as if disgusted by its irrelevance.
Then he steps around the desk, stops an arm's length from me, and just stands there, watching.
We're so close now, I can smell the ghost of whiskey on his breath, the sharp afterbite of mouthwash and adrenaline.
I realize my hands are shaking, and I curl them into fists inside the hoodie.
He reaches for my left wrist—the bandaged one—and pauses just before touching it, asking permission with his eyes.
I give it, barely, with the smallest nod.
His fingers are rough and warm and careful.
He turns my wrist over, inspects the bandage, then traces a line with his thumb across the back of my hand.
The touch is nothing, but it's also everything.
"You're sure?" he asks, voice so low it vibrates in my chest .
"I'm sure."
He lets go, but his hand doesn't move far.
Instead, he shifts it to my elbow, then up to my shoulder, stopping just shy of my neck.
His thumb brushes the line of my jaw, and I don't move away.
I'm not even sure I could if I wanted to.
He kisses me then, sudden and all at once, the kind of kiss that knows exactly what it's doing.
It's not gentle, but it's not rough, either.
It's inevitable, like gravity, like a crash you see coming from miles out and do nothing to avoid.
I lean into it, matching pressure for pressure, until I'm the one driving it forward.
My hands leave the hoodie and find the buttons on his shirt, and I work them one by one, slow and methodical, as if proving a point.
He breathes out a laugh, half-disbelieving, and then pulls me harder against him.
The desk is behind me, and he lifts me onto it with a single motion.
The lamp wobbles, nearly topples, but I catch it and shove it aside.
He steps between my knees, pushes the hoodie from my shoulders, and kisses the bruise at my jaw as if he could erase it.
I let my head fall back, eyes closed and feel the cold of the desktop through the thin cotton gown.
We don't talk after that.
There's nothing left to say.
The next five minutes are all hands and mouths and the intake of breath when skin meets skin.
I lose track of the order in which clothes come off.
I only know the sound of the buttons skipping across the wood, the hiss of a zipper, the warm press of his body against mine.
He pauses, once, to look at me—really look, as if cataloguing every inch for evidence.
Then he tilts my chin up and kisses me again, slower this time, and everything else in the world recedes—the war outside, the traitors in the walls, even the children whose existence has already rewritten every rule in my book.
He enters me like it's a claim, a signature, and I meet him halfway.
The pain is sharp at first, but it softens, replaced by a heat that starts in my chest and spreads everywhere.
I dig my nails into his back; pull him closer until there's no air left between us.
When I come, it's silent.
My whole body locks, then shudders, and for a second, I am pure sensation, pure light.
He follows seconds later, face buried in my neck, breath hot and frantic.
We stay like that, tangled, until the world filters back in.
The desk is a mess—papers scattered, the lamp tilted at a dangerous angle, a pen rolling slowly to the edge and then dropping to the carpet with a soft thud.
He doesn't move at first, just holds me, forehead pressed to my collarbone.
Eventually, I slide off the desk, pull the hoodie back on, and lean against the edge.
He buttons his shirt, one-handed, and smirks at me through his hair.
The look in his eyes is different now—not softer, exactly, but less armored.
"You're a menace," he says with something almost like affection.
"And you're an idiot," I reply, but it comes out gentle.
"But it turns out that you're my idiot and if we're in this war, we may as well go in together."
He dips his head in acknowledgment.
"Fair enough."