Derek came on the second day.

I heard him before I saw him. The soft knock. The door opening. His footsteps on the linoleum floor. I kept my eyes on the window. Outside, the sky was white and flat. A pigeon sat on the ledge and didn't move.

He pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. I could feel him looking at me. At the gauze wrapped from my wrists to my elbows. At the IV line. At the monitors.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

Then: "I've been worried about you."

I kept looking at the pigeon.

"For a long time, actually." His voice was careful. Measured. The voice he used in meetings when he needed someone to agree with him without realizing they were agreeing. "I think you've been under enormous strain. More than anyone should carry alone."

The pigeon shifted on the ledge. Ruffled its wings. Settled again.

"I've been looking into some options," Derek said. "There are people who specialize in this kind of thing. Grief. Trauma. I think it would help you to talk to someone."

I pressed my thumb against the inside of my wrist. The gauze stopped me. I pressed harder anyway.

"Sienna." Softer now. "I'm concerned about your mental state."

I turned my head and looked at him.

He looked tired. Thinner than I remembered. His eyes were doing the thing they did when he was trying to seem open—slightly wider, eyebrows lifted just enough. I used to think that look meant he was listening. I knew now it meant he was calculating.

I looked at him and said nothing.

He held my gaze for a moment. Then he nodded slowly, like I had agreed to something. Like my silence was a door he could walk through.

He was wrong.

He stayed another twenty minutes. Talked about rest. About healing. About how he wanted to support me through this. He never said the word fire. Never said the word children. Never said Ellis.

When he left he touched the back of my hand. Lightly. Like a period at the end of a sentence.

I looked back at the window. The pigeon was gone.

---

Three weeks later, Derek came to the apartment with a folder.

I was sitting at the kitchen table. Coffee going cold in front of me. He set the folder down and opened it. Photographs of a property. Stone buildings. Open land. Rolling hills in the distance.

"It's a falconry estate," he said. "Private. About three hours out."

I looked at the photographs.

"Ellis designed the program herself." He sat down across from me. His hands flat on the table. Patient. Reasonable. "It's a purification ritual. Spiritual. Working with birds of prey—it's about releasing what you've been carrying. Letting go of the pain."

I lifted my coffee cup. Set it back down.

"I know things have been hard," he said. "For both of us. That's why I think this matters. This is for both of us, Sienna. A chance to finally let go of the pain."

I looked at him across the table.

He believed what he was saying. That was the thing that used to break me. He always believed what he was saying, right up until the moment the words left his mouth. He had a gift for it—for building a story so clean and so reasonable that even he couldn't see the rot underneath.

I thought about the room with no windows. The fluorescent light that buzzed like something dying. Eleven days of counting breaths in the dark.

I thought about the hallway full of smoke. The beam across the door. The child's arm in my hands. My skin splitting open.

I thought about his car pulling away from the curb. Ellis's head against his shoulder. His eyes never turning back.

I thought: *He has already decided I'm going.*

I thought: *If I say no, there will be consequences. There are always consequences.*

I thought: *But this is the last time.*

I didn't know yet how I would get out. I didn't have a plan. I had Jayleen, and I had the quiet, absolute knowledge that had been sitting in my chest since the night I knelt on the sidewalk watching him drive away. The knowledge that there was nothing left to break.

When you have nothing left to lose, you stop being afraid.

"Okay," I said.

His shoulders dropped half an inch. Relief. He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. His palm was warm.

"This is going to help," he said. "I really believe that."

I looked at his hand on mine.

I thought: *The last time.*

I thought: *After this, I disappear.*

I thought: *Let him have this one.*

Outside the kitchen window the city moved and breathed and went on being itself. I sat very still and let him hold my hand and felt nothing at all.

That was how I knew I was ready.

The estate was beautiful. That was the first thing I noticed. Rolling hills. Stone walls covered in old ivy. A sky so wide and blue it hurt to look at.

Ellis had arranged everything. White linen chairs in a circle. Candles in glass jars. A falconer in a leather vest who spoke in a low, reverent voice about surrender and release. There were maybe twelve people. Retreat guests. All of them watching Ellis like she was made of light.

Derek stood at the edge of the circle with his hands clasped. He looked peaceful. He looked like a man who had done something good.

I stood where they told me to stand. Center of the field. Arms out. Palms up. The posture of offering.

The birds were in the trees at the far edge of the property. I could hear them before I could see them. A low sound. Patient.

Ellis moved to stand behind me. Close. I could smell her perfume. Something clean and botanical, like a greenhouse after rain.

"Just breathe," she said softly. "Let the body open."

I breathed.

The falconer raised his arm. The first bird lifted from the branch and began to circle. Wide, slow arcs against the blue sky. It was enormous. Beautiful, even. I watched it and felt the sun on my face and thought: *This is almost over.*

Then I felt the wet.

A splash across my shoulders. My neck. Cold and sharp-smelling. Animal and wrong.

I turned my head. Ellis had already stepped back. Her hands were empty. Her face was composed. Her eyes were watching the sky.

I understood in the half second before the first bird dropped.

The impact hit my left shoulder like a fist. Talons punched through fabric and skin. I cried out and spun but there was nowhere to go. The second bird came from the right. Then the third. They were fast. They were silent. They knew exactly what they were going for.

I fell.

The grass came up hard against my knees. I covered my head with my arms. The burns on my forearms screamed. Talons raked across my scalp. Something warm ran into my eye. I pressed my face to the earth and made myself small and counted—one, two, three—the way I always counted when there was nothing else left to do.

Then they were gone. Recalled by the falconer's whistle. Just like that.

I lifted my head.

The field was still. The linen chairs. The candles in their glass jars. The wide blue sky.

Derek was ten meters away. Maybe more. He had Ellis in his arms. She was trembling against his chest. Her hands fisted in his shirt. Her eyes closed. He had one arm around her shoulders and one under her knees and he was walking toward the estate house with his head bent over hers, murmuring something I couldn't hear.

He did not turn around.

I lay in the grass and watched him carry her through the door and I felt the exact moment it happened. Not a breaking. Not a shattering. Something quieter than that. A door closing. A light going out at the end of a long hallway.

The end of something that had been dying for a long time.

I pressed my thumb against my wrist. The raw skin. The old habit. And I felt nothing at all.

Not grief. Not rage. Not even the hollow ache I'd been carrying since the day I ran from that birthing suite.

Just nothing.

Just done.

---

The estate's medical room smelled like antiseptic and wood polish. Someone had stitched my shoulder. Bandaged my arms. I sat on the table and let them work and stared at the window.

Jayleen came in when they were done.

She looked at me. I looked at her. She sat down in the chair beside the table and neither of us said anything for a long time.

Outside the window the hills were going gold in the late afternoon light. Beautiful. All of it still so beautiful.

Three hours. Maybe more. The light changed. The room got quiet. A door somewhere down the hall opened and closed.

Then I said it.

Very quietly. Like a fact.

"I need to die."

Jayleen didn't flinch. She didn't reach for me or tell me I didn't mean it. She just nodded once. Slow.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a notebook. Opened it. The pages were covered in her handwriting. Small and careful. Columns of numbers. Notes in the margins.

She set it on the table between us.

Tidal charts. Pacific Coast. Swim distances marked in red. A list of addresses. Cash-only. Safe house network.

I looked at the pages. Then I looked at her.

"How long?" I asked.

"Since the detention center," she said. "Maybe before."

I pressed my hand flat against the notebook. Felt the paper under my palm.

"I've been ready," she said. "Whenever you are."

I looked out the window. The hills were dark now. The sky above them still faintly gold at the edges.

I thought about the room with no windows. The beam across the door. The child's arm in my hands. The car pulling away from the curb.

I thought about eighteen years. I thought about instant noodles in a studio apartment and a boy who whispered *you're my family* in the dark.

I let it go.

All of it. I let it go.

"I'm ready," I said.

Jayleen closed the notebook. Slid it back into her bag. Stood up.

"Then we go."