Leah
I needed to feel useful.
That was the truth underneath everything. Darien hovered, the healers monitored, Andromeda fought her endless war inside my blood, and I lay in bed feeling like a battlefield instead of a person. Sleeping had become my main occupation. Some days I was awake for only a handful of hours, surfacing from the exhaustion long enough to eat, to hold Darien’s hand, to hear Keanu’s voice on the phone, and then the parasite would pull me back under like a tide that owned me.
But today was a good day. I’d woken with actual energy, eaten an actual breakfast, and convinced Darien that a visit to the apartment complex was not going to kill me.
“One hour,” he’d said, holding up a finger like a parent negotiating with a toddler. “And a guard stays with you.”
“Two hours,
