He looked at his niece....this girl who had been raised human and had survived the unsurvivable and was currently sitting in a recovery bed commanding him with the quiet authority of someone who had been born to it....and felt something that he had no adequate word for. Something that lived in the space between pride and grief and the specific love of a person who had been alone for a very long time and had found, unexpectedly, that they weren't anymore.
"You should rest," he said.
"I will," Eve said. "Go."
Rapahel nodded and walked out of the room.
He was in his car and out of the estate gates inside four minutes later, moving through the early morning city with the focused urgency of someone who had been given permission to stop pretending he didn't care.
