The room is small and empty. There is a bed, there are mist-spewing tubes in the wall, there is medical equipment. But there is nothing else. It is a limbo, as if she has not yet passed back into the land of the living. She can barely move a limb, barely feel her skin. It burns, like prints seared into her flesh. But the pain will recede. She will come alive, but she cannot forget those who will not. So many brave soldiers dead, and so many brave nibblers who should not have had to die brave when the snare snapped tight.

Aurora lives. So do Howard and Nike. Even Ripred had dragged his hide out of the Firelands in the end. And he had gotten the nibblers out. She knows this. The doctors have few words to spare, and her body is so weak still. Likely they think she has no strength for news. And she can hardly object. Never before has she been so near to death, despite her close relationship with the concept.

Gregor had come.

Maybe he had not read the prophecy yet. Maybe it was his last dealing as the warrior.

The red had burst from her lungs, her mortality come material, and she had fallen, vision turned to smoke. When she had looked again, she had seen him. In simple clothes, wearing no armor but his skin, covered in not as much blood and ash as the rest of them, but ample, face distorted with fear.

The door opens. "Five minutes."

He had spoken to her. And she had barely heard a thing but his voice. Clear above the pain. Clear through that lingering fog that she still does not quite believe has receded.

He could have left.

On his own terms, perhaps he should have left.

A mask-bearing figure stalks into the room, armored in sterile white. So fast are his steps that halt by her side. Those fond but fearful eyes find hers.

She had feared that he would leave.

But he stood on her side.

With a great exertion, she lifts her hand and lays it upon his hesitant one. She smiles. "You stayed."

He shrugs. As if it is a trivial matter.

But she had not known that he would.

She had not known that she could trust him without a doubt.