Page 42 of Crimson Curse
Her eyes find mine, then return to Arkady. She gives the smallest nod.
“Good,” he replies. “Then give me your hand to hold and give him the other.”
I realize I never stopped holding her. My thumb traces her knuckles. The blood on our wrists dries into a bond I refuse to believe some door can sever. We move as a unit toward the double doors. The team begins to jog.
“You let me through,” I tell Arkady, my voice steady as a knife. “I won’t release her.”
Arkady meets my stare without wavering. The world around us narrows to that thin corridor of will between two men who have known each other long enough to skip pretense. “You know the rules,” he returns. “You can walk to the line. You can hold her hand until anesthesia takes her. Then you let my people work.”
“I’ll stay in the corridor,” I insist.
“You can do that,” he agrees.
We burst through the first set of doors. The air changes, cooled and scrubbed, the smell of antiseptic assaulting my senses. Arkady rattles orders over his shoulder that move bodies as if by magnet. The nurses strip the blood-soaked dressing. The wound surfaces, angry and wet. I breathe through the urge to put my fist through the wall.
Lex remains in the shadow of the threshold, giving me the space he knows I will not surrender and guarding a perimeter only he understands. He is the last face my enemies see when they misjudge me. Tonight, he is the guard dog outside my pain.
“Daniil,” Arkady calls, nodding at the head of the bed. “You stand there. Keep talking to her. Keep her awake if you can until we are ready.”
I plant my elbows on the rail and lower my face to Naomi’s. Her eyes are half-lidded. Her skin has lost its color. I speak anyway, because silence feels like defeat. “Do you remember the morning in the library,” I murmur, mouth close to her ear, “when you pretended not to doze on the sofa while I read reports? You told me my voice could read grocery lists and still hold a crowd.”
Her mouth tips, a ghost of a smile. “I lied,” she whispers, a papery tease that keeps her here with me.
“Liar,” I chide, grateful for the scrap. “You begged me to read you my most boring audits.”
“Never,” she breathes.
“Always.” I brush a kiss to her knuckles and look her straight in the eyes. “I love you.”
Her lashes tremble. Her lips shape the words back for me. The sound that escapes is quiet, but it steadies my spine.
An anesthesiologist leans in. “We are going to help you sleep, Naomi,” she explains with a professional calm that feels like a hand on the shoulder. “Count for me.”
I don’t let go. I press my forehead to Naomi’s and recite each number with her. “One. Two. Three.”
“Four,” she whispers.
“Five,” I answer.
“Six.”
Her hand slackens on seven.
A nurse eases my fingers free. I resist, then make myself obey because Arkady is already cutting, and this is where my presence turns from devotion to interference. I straighten, wipe at my cheek, and miss. The blood on my hand paints a rough line across my face. Lex is suddenly at my side with a towel. He offers it without looking at me. I accept and drag the coarse fabric over my palms until they are raw.
The doors bump me back into the corridor as the team lifts drapes and places equipment in a neat circle. Arkady’s voice becomes a rhythm beyond the glass. Numbers rise and fall. The steady beep on the monitor stutters, then stabilizes. Every sound in that room becomes a metronome for my heart.
I plant my back against the wall outside the OR and slide down until I am sitting on the tile like a man who has run out of decisions. The world contracts to the size of a windowed door. Inside the glass, hands move with a mechanical grace. My jaw aches from clenching. My knuckles split open along old scars I didn’t know had cracked. The towel goes dark red in my lap. I look down and only then realize I’m shaking.
Lex and Timur take positions near me like living statues. Timur’s forearms are painted with Naomi’s blood to his elbows. He wipes them with steady strokes and doesn’t bother with the sink until the second towel is soaked. Lex stares through the glass with a soldier’s gaze that has learned to live outside fear until fear has a job again.
“She will live,” Timur asserts. He doesn’t lace it with hope. He says it like a report he has verified with his own eyes.
“She will,” I answer.
Lex nods once in agreement.
“Find out how Viktor breached the gates,” I order without lifting my gaze. “Full audit. I want to know every footstep and every open door. If a guard blinked, I want his blink on tape.”
