Page 120 of Infamous

And she’s the only thing I have left worth keeping count for.

69

NADIA

It’s not so bad here.

Everything smells of chamomile and clean linens, the kind of sterile calm that makes my skin itch. The nurses move like ghosts - gentle, unbothered, speaking in the hush of people afraid to wake a sleeping grief.

I sit by the window, a blanket draped across my knees. The world outside is all green and gold, hills rolling out like an apology I can’t believe in. There’s a bird perched on a distant fence post - a scrap of life, stupid and small - and it feels obscene that it can still sing when I can barely remember how.

The wind moves through the grass and I think about the wordempty.

It doesn’t sound like what it means. It sounds soft. Forgiving. But the reality of it sits like glass inside me. The doctors call it “loss of fertility.” Such a pretty way to saybroken.

I used to imagine little hands.

Maybe a laugh like his.

Now there’s nothing but the hum of my own body, the hollow ache of a future cut open and sewn shut.

The door clicks open behind me, and my pulse stutters.

No one tells me he’s coming, but somehow, I always know when he’s near. The air shifts. The walls remember how to breathe.

“Lucian,” I whisper, before I even turn.

He crosses the room in three long strides, and then he’s there - on his knees in front of me, his head bowed like a prayer that forgot the words. His hands find mine. Rough. Warm. Trembling.

When he presses his lips to my fingers, something inside me cracks open and bleeds light.

He lifts his head, and I see it - the ruin in his eyes. The sleepless nights, the guilt stitched into every line of his face. “You look better,” he lies.

I smile without meaning to. “You’re a bad liar.”

His laugh is short. Hollow. He presses my hand to his cheek, holding it there like he’s anchoring himself to something still alive. “I didn’t know if you’d want to see me.”

“I didn’t,” I admit. “Until I did.”

The silence between us stretches. The hills outside blur. My throat tightens until it feels like my own body’s trying to choke me.

He doesn’t speak. He just sits there, still kneeling, still holding me like I’m made of something fragile and holy.

“I keep thinking about how stupid I was,” I say, the words spilling out before I can stop them. “I thought if I hurt myself first, he couldn’t hurt me again. I thought if I took control, I’d win. But all I did was lose more of myself.”

He shakes his head. “You didn’t lose yourself. Yousurvivedyourself.”

I look at him, the tears coming fast now. “You don’t understand. I’ll never get to give you -”

He cuts me off, voice fierce and breaking all at once. “Stop. Don’t you finish that sentence.”

His thumb brushes the tears from my cheek. “You don’t owe me that. You don’t owe me anything. You’re enough.”

“I’mnot.”

“Yes, you are.” His tone softens, frays around the edges. “You always were. Even when you didn’t believe it. Even when you thought surviving meant bleeding for it. You’re enough for a thousand lives, Nadia.”

I shake my head, but he leans closer until our foreheads touch. His breath ghosts against my lips.