The Artemis infirmary never felt so quiet.
Galathea Brooks stood just inside the doorway, arms folded tightly across her ribs, watching the girl breathe. Before this, she did not know that Artemis even had an infirmary deep within its bowels. Because why would it have one? It's an art gallery!
The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and drying paint.
No one had expected that.
The pigment had come off the girl's skin slowly in the first frantic minutes after the extraction --slick streaks of dark oil paint smeared across steel counters and medical gauze. What remained now was only faint staining along her collarbone and wrists, like the ghost of fingerprints.
The girl lay motionless on the narrow hospital bed, thin shoulders wrapped in a borrowed Artemis blanket. Her hair had been washed clean but still clung damply to her temples.
She looked younger now.
Fragile and impossible.
