CASSIAN
The weight of him against my chest was the only thing that felt real.
Noah's frame was smaller than it should have been, sharp angles and bird-like bones that felt far too fragile for the world he was forced to inhabit.
His sobbing wasn't dramatic. It wasn't loud. It was the quiet, rhythmic shaking of a man who had been holding his breath for twenty years and had finally found a pocket of oxygen.
It was the sound of a structural collapse, years of architectural pretense finally giving way to the gravity of the truth.
I didn't move. I couldn't. I kept one hand at the back of his head, my fingers tangled in the soft mess of his hair, while my other hand splayed across his back.
I held him with the specific, focused intensity of someone trying to keep a shattered object from falling further apart. I wasn't restraining him; I was simply providing a boundary. The gesture was enough, even if my tongue couldn't find the words.
