The room was quiet except for the drip and the slow rise and fall on the monitor. Emma lay pale against the pillow, eyes open, mouth set in a straight line that used to soften for him. Evans stood at the foot of the bed and could not make his feet move. He had handled fires, border skirmishes, and council threats, but he had never handled this look from her. It was colder than silence. It said she saw him, without the ribbon and the soft wrapping, and she did not like what she saw.
She knows. The thought hit him like a blade under the ribs. She knows all of it.
His mind started to sort facts the way it always did when panic tried to turn him into someone he did not respect. Facts were a map. He needed a map. She had run. The chase. The crash. Blood everywhere. The surgeons had said the w
