Raphael smiled.....a genuine, surprised smile that transford his face. "I see where Eve gets her stubbornness."
"Learned it from ," Margaret confird. "Now stop stalling and do what you ca to do."
Raphael placed both hands on Margaret’s chest.....one over her heart, one slightly lower, over the primary tumor site that the doctors had been unable to surgically address. He closed his eyes, and almost imdiately, Eve felt the air in the room change.
It was the sa quality of power she’d felt when Raphael had stabilized her after killing that assassin, ancient, deliberate, precise. But where that had been urgent and reactive, this was different. Careful. Painstaking. Like watching a master craftsman work with materials so delicate that the slightest error would shatter them.
Gold light began to emanate from his palms, spreading across Margaret’s chest in intricate patterns that reminded Eve of circuits or nerve endings.....branching, connecting, finding pathways through damaged tissue.
Margaret’s eyes went wide, then fluttered closed. Her breathing, which had been labored since they’d arrived, began to steady. Deepen.
"That’s....." she started, then fell quiet, clearly processing the sensation.
From across the room, Maya watched with wide eyes. Eve could see her from the corner of her vision....saw the mont Maya noticed the golden light and went completely still, her logical mind fighting with what her eyes were clearly showing her.
Eve would have to address that later. Right now, she couldn’t look away from her mother.
The golden light moved through Margaret in waves, and Raphael’s brow furrowed with concentration. His lips moved silently....words in a language Eve didn’t recognize but could feel resonating in her bones, in the succubus power that recognized the ancient Seraphim magic like a distant relative.
Minutes passed. Five. Ten. Fifteen.
Sweat appeared on Raphael’s temples. The effort was clearly significant....whatever he was doing required enormous precision, the kind that cost as much as brute force would have. Eve watched his energy output fluctuate, saw the slight tremor in his hands that spoke of sustained concentration.
The golden light shifted colors slightly.....warming from gold toward amber, and then Eve understood. He wasn’t just applying healing energy. He was fighting the cancer directly, his power engaging with the diseased cells on a fundantal level, disrupting their function while simultaneously strengthening the healthy tissue surrounding them.
It wasn’t a cure. He’d been honest about that. But it was sothing extraordinary. Sothing that shouldn’t have been possible by any dical understanding.
Margaret made a small sound....not pain, but the kind of exhale that cos from sothing releasing. Like a fist unclenching after years of holding tight.
"There," Raphael murmured, his eyes still closed. "There it is."
Eve felt tears tracking down her face and didn’t try to stop them.
After what felt like a very long ti, Raphael slowly withdrew his hands. The golden light faded gradually....not cutting off suddenly but dimming like a sunset, giving Margaret’s body ti to adjust to its absence.
Raphael opened his eyes, and the exhaustion in them was profound. He’d burned through a significant portion of the reserves Elena had helped him rebuild. But underneath the exhaustion was satisfaction. Quiet, honest satisfaction.
Margaret’s eyes opened.
And Eve’s breath caught.
The change wasn’t dramatic. Her mother didn’t sit bolt upright, didn’t announce herself cured, didn’t suddenly look twenty years younger. The cancer was still there....Eve could feel the residual wrongness in the room’s energy that told her the disease hadn’t been eliminated.
But Margaret’s eyes were clearer than they’d been in months. The glassy, pain-dicated quality that had beco her baseline was gone, replaced by the sharp, warm intelligence that Eve had grown up with. The labored quality of her breathing had eased to sothing much closer to normal. The gray pallor of her skin had a hint of color that hadn’t been there before.
She looked like herself again.
"Oh," Margaret said, and her voice was steady and strong in a way it hadn’t been in weeks. "Oh, that is remarkable."
"How do you feel?" Eve asked, squeezing her hand.
Margaret took a careful inventory, clearly assessing her own body with clinical attention. "Like I’ve set down a weight I’d forgotten I was carrying. The pain is....." She paused, apparently surprised. ".....considerably less. Not gone. But manageable in a way it hasn’t been in quite so ti."
She looked at Raphael, who had taken a step back and was breathing deliberately, recovering his composure. "Thank you," she said quietly, with the particular weight of soone who doesn’t use those words carelessly.
"It was my honor," Raphael replied, equally sincere.
Margaret patted Eve’s hand, then gently extracted hers and pushed herself to sit up straighter against the pillows. The movent was easier than it should have been.....Eve could see the surprise on Margaret’s face at her own capability.
"Well," Margaret said, with sothing approaching her old brisk efficiency. "Since I appear to have been given sowhat of a reprieve, I think it’s ti we had a proper conversation." She looked around the room....at Eve, at Maya across by the window, at Damian standing silent near the door, at Raphael finding his seat. "There are things I need to say to several people in this room. And I’ve been waiting for enough clarity to say them properly."
"Mom, you don’t need to...." Eve started.
"I do," Margaret interrupted firmly. "I need to say them, and you need to hear them. Don’t argue with your mother."
Eve closed her mouth. So things hadn’t changed at all.
Margaret looked at Maya first, across the room by the window. "Co here, child. Don’t hide over there."
Maya moved toward the bed, her eyes still wide with everything she’d witnessed but responding automatically to the command in Margaret’s voice the way she always had.
"You’ve been a good friend to Eve," Margaret said, looking at Maya with clear eyes. "Better than she sotis deserved, especially when she was at her worst. When she was working herself half to death and pretending she was fine. You stayed."
Maya’s eyes filled with tears. "Of course I stayed."
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