Chapter 197

SIENNA

Hospitals had their own kind of silence.

Not the soft, peaceful kind. No, this one was heavier, a silence that pressed in from every corner, humming with machines and antiseptic, whispering of lives that dangled on fragile threads.

I hated it.

Every night, after everyone else was gone, I sat in that silence with Gideon. The twins curled against me, their tiny bodies warm, their brea