Gerald absorbed this with a single, short nod. His eyes moved back to his son.
"Who did this?" The question came from Liam, standing at the foot of the bed now, his hands loose at his sides, his jaw set with the particular tension of someone whose first instinct is not grief but response.
The name that answered the question did not need to be said at any particular volume to land with full weight.
"Kade Nightshade," Maya said.
The room received the name in its own way. Miriam's hand tightened fractionally around Ethan's. Gerald's expression closed down another degree. Liam went very still in the particular way of someone deciding something they have not yet said aloud.
Miriam spoke without lifting her gaze from her son's face, her voice low and stripped of everything except the factual. "What happened?"
