Page 102 of Katya and the Young God

16

The day after an injury is always the worst.

Katya awakens around dawn, feeling like death crawled around her shoulders and is slowly squeezing her, crushing her down.

The cabin is silent, with only the sound of the wind outside, so she gives herself a minute to breathe out, to be warm under the covers with Pieter’s arm casually over her middle, before she slowly, ever so slowly, works herself into sitting up.

The quilt pools around her waist, and her bones feel every place they were struck, every contact point with the outside world, but...

She slips her feet into her slippers, and the light that streams through the windows is pastel, lovely and pale, and if she didn’t have this pain to deal with she would love it.

Stepan thumps his tail at her from the foot of the bed, his blue eyes alert, but he doesn’t move. She reaches to pat the top of his head, and her ribs make themselves known.

Pieter’s face is peaceful, smooth, his curls arranged on the pillows in a way that she knows will stand up funny once he wakes, and she lets herself marvel at the sight. At him.

It’s a far cry from the stressed, pinched look he wore when he slept under the mountain, from the scowl that’s so commonly across his face. Like, despite everything else, he could have peace. He could have happiness.

And somehow, he might’ve found that in her.

It’s a strange feeling, one she’s not so sure about yet, not sure where it sits in her stomach, but it’s close to contentment.

But.

She pushes herself up to standing, pokes her head out into the main room.

Selene sleeps, curled up tight under the quilt they spread over her, her mouth slightly open. Sometime in the night she curled in on herself, the quilt held in one fist, and she looks so heartbreakingly innocent Katya has to take a moment to collect herself.

But she can’t take Advil on an empty stomach, so she grabs a thing of yogurt and some coffee, gingerly shrugs on her jacket, and goes out to the swing on the porch.

MIRI (7:01 AM): He said you got injured but not fatally, which is not nearly as reassuring as you’d think.

K (7:02 AM): Accurate, though.

K (7:04 AM): Shoulder is hurt, no broken bones. Pieter freaked out.

MIRI (7:09 AM): NT had opinions about him.

K (7:09 AM): I bet.

MIRI (7:11 AM): Take care of yourself. Don’t go charging into work right now with another injury. Again.

Katya folds her phone away at that, taking the moment and the time to just...observe.

She’s alive, they have Selene, and everything else could come later. Beatriz is already in the air, and will be landing to a dead Magician and no child god to manipulate.

There’s so much more to do, so much more to figure out, but...

But.

But for the moment, Katya won.

She lets that sit in her bones, past the aches, for a few minutes, as the pale sun breaks through the watery clouds. She might never be able to get her old job back, she might never be able to return to her comfortable office in a strip mall in Sherman Oaks, but she has this.

* * *

After a very pleasanthour by herself, her door opens, and Pieter steps out, Stepan hot on his heels.

Early morning Pieter has a softness around him, as he sits next to her on the swing without a word, gentle around the edges.

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