Askatla swaddled herself in Oeuf’s comforting presence like a security blanket, cradled in his arms while he carried her to the car, grounding herself with the feel of his soft wool jacket against her forehead, his earthy sandalwood and cedar scent, and the steady thrum of his cetaceous heartbeat under her ear. His presence was a lighthouse in the tempest of her mind, one toward which she struggled to swim as the surge and swell of memory washed over her and obscured her view of him, but rose in the distance and seemed to grow taller and more steadfast the more she strove for it. 

She stayed silent for a while as they cruised through the countryside, clearly headed to Hôpital Saint Luc le Médecin rather than the medical centre at CECIC’s headquarter to which she assumed her colleagues would have been taken. The thought of her comrades struck her and brought to the front of her mind the way MacFhionnlaigh had reacted to the gunman–how swift and brutal he had been in her defence. 

She flinched as the memory overlapped with an image of Oeuf placing his hand under a table in that room, lifting it up and carrying…