Chapter 220: Water Isn’t Enough

Chapter 220: Chapter 220: Water Isn’t Enough

Penelope crossed the hall and knocked on 2502 with her hip, because both hands were full.

Killian opened the door slowly. He had changed out of the wet coat but not much else. His hair stuck up on one side, his eyes were bloodshot, and he held the doorframe the way a man holds a railing on a moving ship.

"I said I’d send something," Penelope said. "I decided it was faster to bring it."

"You didn’t have to."

"I know." She stepped past him before he could argue. The apartment was dark except for a single battery lantern turned down low on the kitchen counter. She set a ceramic flask beside it and a plate of cold rice and dried fruit next to the flask. "Sit."

He sat on the edge of the couch, mostly because his knees had made the decision. Penelope poured the water into a cup. It was clear and faintly luminous, and it caught the lantern light and held it a second too long.

"All of it," she said. "Not sips."

"I remember." He drank. She watched his throat work, and she watched his face. The tight line between his brows eased. His shoulders came down half an inch. When he lowered the cup, his eyes looked clearer, the red in them dimmer, as if someone had wiped a window.

"Better," he admitted.

"How much better?"

He took the question seriously, which she liked. He turned his hand over and flexed his fingers, then closed his eyes and held still for a few seconds. "The headache’s gone to a dull ache. The fog’s mostly cleared. I can think in a straight line again." His mouth thinned. "But when I reach for the power, there’s nothing under it. Like putting my hand into a well and touching dry stone."

"Yes."

"You expected that."

"I did." She sat down on the other end of the couch, leaving a cushion between them. "I’ve been watching it for weeks. The spring water does a lot. It heals the body, it clears the head, and it steadies a mind that’s been pushed too hard. Mary calls it a good strong cup of tea for the soul." She turned the empty flask in her fingers. "But it doesn’t fill the well. Whatever you spend, you spend. The water makes it easier to rest. It doesn’t do the resting for you."

"So I can’t just drink my way back to full."

"If you could, Silver would have a pipeline running into the training room." She almost smiled. "I tried. The first week, I made Kai drink four cups after a fire session. All it did was make him sleepy and sick to his stomach. He still couldn’t light a candle until he’d slept two nights."

Killian huffed a breath that was nearly a laugh. "Four cups."

"It was a bad idea."

"It was a very Kai idea."

"It was." She set the flask down. "Mental strength is like a muscle. The water is a warm bath and a good meal. It helps the muscle recover, but it can’t do the lifting. You have to sit still and let it come back."

"Which means I’m useless for a few days."

"Which means you sleep in the space," Penelope said. "Two days in there is two minutes out here. You’ll be rested before Erik finishes his coffee."

"And then?"

"And then you’ll be at about half." She looked at him steadily. "Not full. Half. The first rest after a push like that never gets all of it back. You need a few days of proper sleep, over several nights, before the bottom stops feeling hollow."

He was quiet for a moment. "That’s a lot of hours I don’t have."

"It’s a lot of hours you can’t afford not to take." Her voice stayed even, but something in it sharpened. "You stretched a hull for eight people on top of a fight you were already recovering from. You did it because it needed doing. I’m not scolding you. But if you try to run on fumes, the next thing that costs you something will cost you more."

"You sound like Silver."

"I’ve been spending time with Silver."

"That explains it." He looked at her, and the corner of his mouth tilted. "You’re worried."

"I’m being practical."

"You came all the way across the hall with a flask and a plate of fruit."

"That’s also practical."

"It’s also kind."

She looked away first. The lantern buzzed softly. After a moment she said, to the dark window and not to him, "Don’t get used to it."

"I wouldn’t dare."

She stood, a little too quickly. "Eat something, then go in. I’ll tell Erik you’re out for a couple of days. He won’t ask where."

"Penelope."

She paused at the door.

"Thank you," Killian said. "For the water. And for the part about the well."

She nodded once. She did not trust her voice, so she let the door close softly behind her.

On the twenty-third floor, in an apartment Ben had stocked with blankets and three tins of crackers, Alex lay in a bed that wasn’t his and could not sleep.

It wasn’t the dark. It was the quiet. For eight weeks every one of his breaths had been shared with a wall of living vines, every moment threaded through a thin green wire of attention that ran from his chest to the brick outside. Now the wire was gone. He kept reaching for it in his sleep, and finding nothing, and jerking awake with his heart pounding and his hand clenched around air.

The third time, he sat up gasping. Someone was already sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Breathe," Valerie said.

"I’m fine."

"You’re not. You’re shaking." She had a candle stub in one hand, unlit, and she held it the way she’d have held a thermometer. "Look at me. In. Out. Slowly."

He did it. It took four tries.

"Phantom limb," she said, once his breathing had steadied. "It’s a real thing. You spent two months with something wired into your nervous system, and now it’s gone. Your brain is still looking for it." She put the candle on the nightstand. "It’ll fade. Slowly."

"How slowly?"

"I don’t know." She said it flatly, without apology. "I’m a vet student. I’ve never treated a man with a wall."

That startled a laugh out of him, rough and short. "Thanks."

"Go back to sleep, Alex."

"Valerie."

"Hm?"

"Thank you. For keeping everyone alive."

She was quiet for a moment. In the dark he could see only the outline of her shoulders, and the faint shine of her eyes. "Somebody had to," she said. "I was the one who knew where to put my hands."

She stayed until his breathing evened, and she was still there when he slept.

In the next room, Michelle lay propped on three pillows with one hand on her stomach, counting. The practice contractions had stopped on the stairs, and the baby had gone back to kicking against her ribs. Danielle sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor beside the hutch, feeding the grey rabbit a leaf of lettuce someone had left on a plate, and watching it chew as if it were the only reliable thing left in the world. ℴℴ𝘮

"You can sleep," Michelle called softly.

"In a minute."

"Danielle."

"They need to settle." Danielle did not look up. "It’s a new place. They don’t know it yet."

Michelle watched her sister-in-law for a long while, and then she said, gently, "Neither do we."

Danielle’s hand paused over the lettuce. She said nothing. But she shifted a little closer to the hutch, and she stayed there until the lantern guttered out.

One floor up, Erik stood at the window of 2401 with Hrimnir against his leg, listening to the rain on the glass.

He was not sleeping. He had thought about it, and decided against it. Killian was in the space, and would be for the better part of an hour by Erik’s count. Kai had gone in to rest his burned hands. The Vales were one floor below, and somewhere farther below them, in the dark, a pale face on the ninth floor was telling someone how many people had come up.

Water isn’t enough, he thought, turning Penelope’s words over. It applied to more than spring water. Gates, plating, wolves, favors. Everything they owned was a boost, a bath, a good meal. Not one of them was a substitute for the thing itself, which was time, and rest, and people willing to stand watch while the others slept.

Hrimnir leaned harder against his knee. Erik rested a hand on the gray head, and watched the dark.