Page 175 of His Son's Brid
The room does something strange.
I put my hand on the wall.
Luca's hand lands on my back, solid and steady, and I breathe in through my nose the way I told Aurora to breathe, once, twice, and the strange thing the room was doing gradually stops.
I spin towards the recovery room. I need to see for myself that she is all right.
She's sitting up when I walk in, pale but alert, with a bandage wrapped around her thigh and shoulder, holding a cup of something warm between both hands. Her eyes lock onto mine as soon as the door opens, and the look on her face does what it always does to me — moves through me like weather, like something I can't defend against.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi." I cross to her, sit on the edge of the bed, and take her face in both hands. She leans into them.
"It's over?" she asks.
"It's over."
"Leo?"
I think about his eyes going dim on that warehouse floor. "Alive. Barely." I pause. "He's in a coma."
She's quiet, processing. Not grieving, exactly. Something more complicated than that.
"And the Volkovs?"
"Finished." The word settles between us with the weight of everything it took to make it true. "It's done, Aurora."
She exhales. Long and slow, like she's been holding it for months, like every accumulated breath of fear and waiting and looking over her shoulder is leaving her body at once.
Luca appears in the doorway.
He looks at his daughter for a long moment. Then he crosses the room, presses a kiss to the top of her head, and straightens. He looks at me over her, and something in his face that has been complicated since the day I walked out with Aurora shifts.
"Take care of my daughter," he says.
"Every day," I promise him.
36
EPILOGUE — AURORA
Six months later
Chloe is crying before I've even put the dress on.
"I'm not crying," she says, crying.
"You're absolutely crying," Tiana says, handing her a tissue with the precision of someone who packed extras specifically for this eventuality. Which she did. I watched her count them into her clutch this morning.
I look at myself in the mirror and try to remember how to breathe.
The dress is simple, which was the argument that won after three months of Chloe sending me links to things with trains longer than most airport runways. Ivory silk, clean lines, nothing that will make it difficult to move, eat, or exist as a human being. My hair is half up, dark curls escaping everywhere, and Margareta cried when she saw it and then pretended she had something in both eyes simultaneously, which was impressive.
"You look insane," Chloe says, blowing her nose. "Like, actually insane."
"Thank you."
"I mean it as a compliment."
