Chapter 558: First Steps

Kira Louise was the second knight Arion restored.

She had been thirty-two when the infection took her, a forestry engineer attached to one of the eastern evacuation teams rather than a soldier, and had spent nearly sixteen years inside the restricted territory before Matthias selected her for the second controlled attempt.

Unlike Leon, Kira remembered almost nothing of the day she was infected.

She remembered rain.

A damaged transport.

Someone shouting for civilians to keep moving.

Then claws across her shoulder and a sensation she described, once she could speak again, as being pushed backward inside her own skull while something else learned how to use her body.

The restoration took eleven minutes.

Victor complained afterward that eleven minutes was an unacceptable length of time for Arion to maintain an ability nobody could properly measure, which Arion considered an unusually creative way to respond to success.

Kira survived.

Her heart remained stable, her organs appeared normal, and the hardened black structures that had covered most of her back and left side withdrew completely. Her eyes returned hazel after Arion deliberately corrected them, while the remnants around her glands resembled the same integrated pattern Victor had already documented in Elias, Matthias, and Leon.

For nearly an hour afterward, Kira spoke very little.

She sat beneath a thermal blanket in the medical unit with freshly washed brown hair hanging damply around her shoulders, staring through the window at the spring grass outside.

Then a bird landed on the perimeter fence.

Kira cried.

She watched the bird hop along the metal rail while tears slipped down her face, and when Victor asked whether something hurt, she shook her head.

"I forgot they sounded like that."

Arion left several hours later once Victor had confirmed for the fourth time that Kira remained stable and did not require him standing beside her bed as though stubborn observation would improve her laboratory results.

Matthias returned with him.

The drive from the restricted sector to Roslew took long enough that the afternoon had softened toward evening by the time the security gates opened before the Crown Prince Palace.

Arion was tired.

The restorations did not leave him physically depleted in any dramatic sense, but holding another person’s body in his awareness while forcing decades of corrupted changes backward required a level of concentration that made normal administrative work afterward feel offensive.

He wanted a shower, food, Dean and Theo.

Preferably in that order only because Theo had recently discovered that his father returning home meant Arion was no longer permitted to complete anything uninterrupted.

Matthias stepped from the vehicle beside him.

"Kira will be fine."

"Victor said mostly fine."

"Victor says mostly about everything."

"That is because he enjoys suffering."

"I believe he enjoys making everyone else suffer."

Arion almost smiled as they entered the private residence.

The western corridor was quiet, doors standing open toward the family sitting room where late sunlight stretched across the wooden floor in broad golden rectangles.

Dean was on the sofa.

He had one ankle resting over the opposite knee, a book open against his thigh and reading glasses low on his nose. His maternity leave remained theoretically in effect, although the tablet beside him contained three government files Arion knew had not appeared there by accident.

On the carpet, Theodore was playing with Boreas and Ducky.

Playing was generous.

Ducky lay on his side while Theo repeatedly placed a wooden ring on his back and removed it again, apparently conducting an experiment whose purpose nobody else understood.

Boreas had become furniture.

The enormous dog rested beside Theo with his front legs stretched across the rug, tolerating small hands buried in the thick fur around his shoulders with the patience of an animal who had accepted that the youngest member of the household considered him structural support.

Dean looked up.

"You’re back."

Theo heard him.

His head snapped toward the doorway.

Arion barely had time to smile.

Theodore’s entire face transformed.

"Da!"

The sound was imperfect, somewhere between a word and an enthusiastic declaration, but Arion had long since stopped caring whether Theo was actually saying dad or simply producing the syllable because everyone reacted to it.

Theo abandoned Ducky immediately.

He crawled toward Boreas, planted both hands in the dog’s heavy fur, and hauled himself upright.

Dean returned his attention to the book.

"He has been doing that all afternoon."

Arion stepped farther into the room.

"I can see."

Theo stood beside Boreas, one fist still tangled in black-brown fur.

Then he let go.

Dean’s book lowered.

Arion stopped.

Theo wobbled.

Both little arms rose automatically, hands spread wide while his knees bent slightly beneath the effort of balancing without anything supporting him.

For several seconds, he simply stood there.

Matthias froze beside Arion.

Ducky lifted his head.

Boreas did not move a muscle.

"Theo," Dean said quietly.

Theo looked at Arion.

Grinned.

Then took a step.

Arion’s heart stopped somewhere inside his chest.

It was barely a step.

One foot lifted, landed too far forward, and Theo swayed hard enough that Dean shifted toward the edge of the sofa.

Another followed.

Then another.

Both arms remained in the air as if he expected them to provide balance through authority alone.

Arion slowly crouched.

"Come here."

Theo giggled.

His black eyes shone beneath the evening light.

He took another step.

Matthias made a strangled sound behind Arion.

Dean had abandoned the book entirely now.

"Theo."

Their son continued toward Arion with the reckless confidence of someone who had never considered falling a sufficient reason not to attempt something.

Five steps.

Maybe six.

Arion did not count.

On the next one, Theo lost his balance.

Arion caught him before his knees reached the floor.

Theo squealed.

Arion lifted him straight against his chest and stood, laughing into his dark hair while Theo bounced triumphantly in his arms as though walking had been a completely ordinary achievement rather than something that had just rearranged every adult in the room.

"You walked."

Theo grabbed Arion’s face with both hands.

Dean reached them a second later.

"He walked."

He kissed Theo’s cheek, then Arion’s mouth.

Behind them, Matthias still stood near the doorway, looking more shaken than he had during Kira’s restoration.

Arion noticed.

"Are you all right?"

Matthias blinked.

"The little prince walked."

Dean laughed.

"Yes. That usually happens eventually."

"He walked to you."

Arion looked down at Theo.

His son had already become distracted by the fastening on Arion’s jacket and was attempting to pull it loose.

"He likes attention."

Dean slipped an arm around Arion’s waist.

"He missed you."

Arion pressed his nose briefly into Theo’s hair, breathing in the increasingly recognizable sweetness of his faint pheromones beneath the familiar scents of the room.

Boreas finally rose and stretched.

Ducky trotted over, inspected the reunited family, then placed one muddy paw on Arion’s shoe.

Dean looked down.

"Absolutely not."

Ducky sat.

Matthias laughed.

Theo laughed because Matthias did.

Arion held his son a little tighter.

That morning he had given a woman her human life back after sixteen years.

By evening, he had watched his son take his first steps.

For once, he decided the paperwork could wait until tomorrow.