*Runze's POV*
The estate looks exactly the same as it always does.
I don't know what I expected, some visible change, some outward sign that everything inside it is different now. But the iron gates open the same way they always open, the gravel drive curves the same way it always curves, and the old stone facade catches the afternoon light the same way it has every time I've come home through these gates.
Everything is the same.
Except I am holding Siying.
There are two black cars ahead of ours and one behind, I noticed them pull out from the hospital parking level before we even reached the main road. Bael said nothing about it and I didn't ask. Some things have simply become part of how we move through the world.
Dr. Xi kept us one more night for observation—standard procedure, he said, though I suspect Bael had something to do with the private suite being extended.
