The knocking was quiet. As if whoever were on the far side of the door was concerned about interrupting something. And then she caught a scent she recognized.
“Nate?” she said.
The door into the room swung wide, and there he was, up on his feet, his color bright and healthy, his balance buttressed on a rolling stand on which was suspended a deflating transparent bag full of some kind of liquid. Behind him, both his parents were shaken, but no longer crying, the twin sentries of his well-being having clearly had one hell of a night.
As she met Nate’s eyes, her own filled with tears, and he rushed forward—even as his parents tried to keep him from bolting. But he didn’t need any aid to walk. He didn’t need whatever was being transfused into his arm vein. He was not going to require help with his physicality in any fashion, ever again.
Rahvyn sat all the way up at the same time he came upon her, and then they were embraced, his arms around her shoulders, her own tucked around his waist. As she ducked her head into his neck, she was dimly aware that the others in the room were speaking softly… and then retreating out into the hallway.
After a long moment, Nate eased back and sat on the side of the bed more properly. “So were you shot, too? Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
He paled. “Yes, you were shot or—”
“No, I mean, I was not injured, therefore I am okay.”
“Thank God.”
There was a silence, their eyes clocking the details of survival in the other. And then he looked down, and she braced herself for what he was going to ask. What he had every right to know. What she could not explain.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, who was she to wield this power.
“What happened, Rahvyn. No one really wants to tell me.”
“I am so sorry.” When he went to respond, she stopped him from speaking. “I wish I could have asked you whether you wanted to come back.”
“Of course I want to be alive—”
“Yes, but there is a price, and you deserved to choose. I just did not know what else to do—”
He put his hand out. “We’re not talking about CPR, are we.”
“What is that?”
“Cardiopulmonary resus—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
There was a pause because she did not know where to begin. And that was when his expression changed. She had seen as such many times before, back in the Old Country, back even when she had been a young and not understood herself any more than anybody else did: Wariness and a little awe.
Meanwhile, she had lost her voice. This was perhaps good. There was a truth she refused to share with anyone, even herself, and she worried over what would come out of her mouth.
“The night that the meteor landed behind Luchas House,” he said slowly. “And I saw you there, by the impact site…”
She watched his mind work through the subtle shifts in his facial muscles, his lips tightening, his brows dropping and raising, his jaw working as if he were grinding his back teeth. Indeed, he was stitching together things he had overlooked, pulling the truth out of a series of previously unconnected details. And that was life, was it not. One went about, not aware that the superficial details were but a screen for a revelation yet to materialize.
“What exactly did you do to me?” he demanded.
* * *
Sitting on Rahvyn’s hospital bed, his legs dangling off the side, one hand braced on the mattress, Nate was aware of feeling different in his own skin. It was hard to put a bead on exactly what was so off. The closest he could come to defining the sensation was what he’d experienced in the nights immediately after his transition.
He was supercharged. Vibrating with energy. Not just alive, but… awakened.
And his brain was crackling with thoughts and memories—although that could be a result of his confusion over this whole thing with her. He kept thinking back to going out into the field behind the house with Shuli to investigate that celestial show and impact. Rahvyn—or Elyn, as he’d known her at first—had been back there in the forest, standing apart from the others who had likewise come to check things out.
Then he could remember when he’d spoken to her the following evening, and fireflies had circled her, the little sparks of light casting a beautiful illumination on her delicate face.
At the time, he hadn’t questioned where the insects had come from. But he’d never seen them before out there in the cold and hadn’t seen them since.
If he was honest… he wasn’t sure what the pinpoints of lights had actually been.