The studio looks like any other at first glance—gated, grey, anonymous—but Niamh has learned those are the ones that hide the sharpest teeth.
“Cheery,” she says, watching the security barrier rise. “Very dreams-come-true.”
“Dreams and liability waivers,” Ronan answers. “Try not to mix them up.”
He’s back in full work mode, Sentinel badge clipped discreetly inside his jacket, earpiece dark against his skin. The private warmth of the car has been folded away, replaced by the clean, precise lines of the man who treats every doorway like an exam he intends to ace.
Two local security guards wave them through. Ronan studies them as they pass, eyes flicking from posture to hands to the way their radios sit on their belts. Assessment runs under his skin like a second pulse. Niamh wonders if he ever worked out how to turn it off, or if it’s woven in too deep at this point.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he says quietly, without looking at her.
“Am I?” she asks. “What does that sound like?”
“Like you’re about to decide none of this is worth it and go open a bookshop instead.”
She huffs. “Tempting. I’d last about a week before I started casting the regulars.”
“I’d still be on your security detail,” he says. “Those book clubs get vicious.”
The car pulls up beside a squat building with peeling paint and a sign that once promised GLAMOUR in bright cursive but now just says GLA OUR. Rain has eased to a mist, leaving the concrete shiny. Runners criss-cross the yard with clipboards, headsets, armfuls of coffee. A stunt van squats near the far wall, hazard lights blinking lazily.
Ronan opens her door first, scanning the space before offering his hand. She takes it, not because she needs help getting out of a car but because they both know what it looks like on camera. His palm is warm, calloused, absurdly gentle around her fingers.
“Eyes up,” he murmurs. “You’ve got two lenses at eleven o’clock, one at the window above you.”
“Already?” she mutters. “Who even tipped them off? We only just—”
She catches herself. They both know who. Or rather, what: a leak big enough to post a call sheet to a fan account in under two minutes.
Inside, the corridor smells of plywood, coffee, and tired ambition. Posters from old productions line the walls, some sun-faded, some curling at the edges. A PA with a frazzled bun and three lanyards meets them halfway.
“Hi, hi, sorry, they’re running a bit behind,” she gushes. “But they want to do the safety and schedule briefing in one go, so if you could just—oh my God, it’s really you.” Her eyes widen at Niamh. “Sorry. Professional. I’m professional.”
“It’s alright,” Niamh says. “You’re getting more words out than I do pre-coffee. Lead the way.”
Ronan falls in beside them, not quite between Niamh and the PA, but close enough to register as a quiet warning to anyone thinking about trailing too near. His presence has a way of making corridors feel narrower.
They’re ushered into a conference room that looks like every conference room she’s ever seen: long table, too many chairs, bad lighting that manages to be both harsh and dim. A tray of pastries sits untouched in the middle, next to a pile of branded water bottles.
The producer is already there. Victor Leclerc—Paris darling, social media fluent, forty going on perpetually thirty-two. He wears a soft knit jumper that probably costs more than Niamh’s first car and an expression that says he’s very familiar with his own reflection.
“Niamh, enfin,” he says, coming around the table with arms open. “Bienvenue. We are so lucky to have you. You look—” His gaze travels in a way that almost, almost tips over the line before he reins it in. “—fantastic. Very… sellable.”
Ronan doesn’t move, but the air beside her cools.
“Lovely to meet you,” Niamh says, carefully not stepping into the offered embrace. She holds out her hand instead. “Thank you for bringing me on.”
Victor recovers smoothly, taking her hand, brushing a kiss near the back of it like they’re in some forgotten black-and-white film. “Ah, the Irish. Always polite, even when you say no.” He glances past her to Ronan. “And you must be our famous bodyguard.”
“Security lead,” Ronan says evenly. “Ronan Keane.”
“Of course,” Victor says, with the tone of someone humouring a child. “Security lead. We are very grateful to Sentinel. We do not want another… incident, no?”
Niamh feels the word incident hit like a stone dropped into a tank. Ronan’s jaw tightens once.
“We’re here to keep everyone safe,” Ronan says. “Not just Niamh.”
Victor flashes him a charming, empty smile and turns away before the sentence has finished landing. “Come, come, we do the boring part fast, oui? Then we make magic.”
The first AD, Carla, is already seated with a laptop open, chunky glasses perched on her nose. She gives Niamh a brief, sincere smile and nods to Ronan with professional respect. Beside her sits the second AD—Luca, according to the lanyard. Mid-thirties, hair swept back like he’s auditioning for his own spin-off, fingers drumming a restless rhythm on his tablet.
“Hey,” Luca says, standing to pull a chair out for Niamh before she can choose her own. “We are all huge fans. Seriously. My girlfriend cried when she found out I was working with you. In a manly way.”
“Does your girlfriend know you’re flirting at work?” Niamh asks lightly, taking a chair one seat farther from him instead. “In a manly way.”
Carla snorts. Luca flushes. Ronan’s mouth does that almost-smile again.
“I am being welcoming,” Luca says. “It is my job to keep the day moving and the talent happy.” He sits, adjusting his bracelet. “The call sheet is already with everyone, so we should be—”
His phone buzzes. Then buzzes again. Around the table, other devices light up in a small, asynchronous chorus.
Carla frowns. “What now?” She taps her screen, then goes very still. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Victor leans over. “Quoi?”
She turns the laptop towards him. Even from her angle, Niamh sees it: a fan account, avatar a heavily edited shot of Niamh from a previous film, username something clingy and breathless. The top post is a screenshot. Today’s call sheet. Times. Locations. Crew names. Her hotel still helpfully circled.
Ronan’s chair scrapes back softly as he stands. “How many people had access to that sheet?”
“Everyone scheduled today,” Carla says. “Plus production. Plus stunts. Plus… look, it’s a call sheet, not nuclear codes.”
“Nuclear codes don’t trend on Twitter,” Ronan says. “This does.” His gaze sweeps the table. “Who sent it to a fan account?”
Silence settles, thick and uncomfortable. Luca raises both hands, palms out.
“Woah. Okay. Let’s not accuse anyone,” he says. “It could be a hack, yeah? Someone screenshots it off a shared drive. It happens.”
“Shared drives don’t circle hotels,” Ronan says. “People do.”
Niamh feels all their eyes wanting to land on her, like she’s the one who opened a vein in the system. She straightens, folding her hands loosely on the table.
“Alright,” she says. “Then we deal with it. We won’t be changing entire shooting days every time someone posts a schedule, or you’ll never make your deadline.”
Victor nods vigorously. “Exactement. We stay calm. It is free publicity. People are excited.”
“People are dangerous,” Ronan counters. “Excitement doesn’t stop a knife from being sharp.”
Victor’s smile thins. “Monsieur Keane, I appreciate your concern. Truly. But we cannot run a production in constant fear. We have additional security at the gate, yes? Our people know the rules.”
“Do they?” Ronan asks. “Because your additional security let press onto our route this morning, and now your call sheet is live. That’s two breaches before lunch.”
Carla clears her throat. “Okay. Let’s bring this down a notch. We can change some transport details, adjust holding areas, assign extra PAs. I’ll send a revised—”
Her laptop pings again. An email. She opens it, then swears under her breath. “Oh for— It’s already on a gossip site.”
Niamh feels Ronan’s attention sharpen beside her, like a camera lens clicking into tighter focus.
“Which site?” he asks.
“SpotlightNow,” Carla says. “One of the junior bloggers, by the look of it. They’ve even watermarked the screenshot. Classy.”
Luca whistles softly. “Fast work.”
“That’s not something you admire,” Ronan says. There’s no heat in his voice, just fact. Somehow it lands harder.
Niamh taps her fingers once against the table, a tiny rhythm to anchor herself. “Can we at least make sure none of the background performers have their numbers visible in that screenshot?” she asks. “They didn’t sign up for that.”
Carla scrolls, squints. “No personal numbers. Just initials. Small mercies.”
Victor spreads his hands. “So. We breathe. We proceed. Security handles security. The rest of us make art. Yes?”
Ronan looks like he wants to argue. Niamh catches his eye and gives the smallest shake of her head. Not yet. Not here. Not with the room wired to hear any concern as drama.
“We’ll need a private space after this,” Ronan says instead. “I’ll bring in my systems operator remotely so we can trace where the sheet moved after it left your server.”
“We?” Victor repeats. “You have a hacker in your pocket, monsieur?”
“I have a cybersecurity expert on my team,” Ronan says. “Her name’s Quinn. She’s better than whoever thought this was clever.”
Carla closes the laptop with a decisive click. “Fine. You get your space. Victor, we tighten who gets the next version of the call sheet. No more mass emails, I’ll print hard copies and log who takes one.” She looks around the table. “And if anyone in this room is passing information for clicks or cash, understand this: you’re risking lives, not just your job.”
For the first time, Luca stops moving. His fingers go still on the tablet. It’s only a second, but Niamh’s actor brain notes it and files it away.
The meeting breaks with a scrape of chairs. Victor is already talking about lighting and “organic intimacy” and how excited he is to capture “raw, unguarded Niamh” for the big rooftop scene. She smiles and nods at the right places, brain half on the words, half on the way Ronan’s hand hovers near her elbow as they leave the room.
Out in the corridor, away from Victor’s performative charm, Ronan exhales slowly through his nose.
“You didn’t tell him to shove his free publicity,” he says. “I’m impressed.”
“I’m in my mature era,” she replies. “Also, we’re under contract.”
“Contracts don’t cover common sense,” he mutters.
“No,” she says. “But they do cover days worked. And if this shoot goes sideways and shuts down, there’s a hundred people on this lot wondering how to pay rent.” She looks up at him. “We can’t just walk.”
He studies her for a long moment. “I know,” he says finally. “Doesn’t change the fact that someone is using this place like a vending machine for information.”
She bumps her shoulder lightly against his arm. “Then we figure out who it is. That’s your thing, isn’t it? Patterns. People. Rats.”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “Rats are easier. They don’t own phones.”
They’re halfway down the corridor when a voice behind them says, “Hey—Niamh?”
She turns. One of the wardrobe assistants jogs up, breathless, a measuring tape still looped round her neck. Early twenties, sharp fringe, eyeliner like armour.
“Sorry,” the woman says. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just—wanted to say I loved you in Harbourline. My sister and I watched it on repeat when she was going through chemo. It helped.” Her cheeks flush. “That sounded less weird in my head.”
Emotion punches straight through Niamh’s chest. “It doesn’t sound weird at all. How is she now?”
“Clear,” the assistant says. “Two years. She’d murder me if she knew I told you. She pretends she’s too cool to care.”
“Tell her I said hi,” Niamh says. “And that she’s absolutely not too cool.”
The assistant beams. Then her smile fades, replaced by something tighter. She glances back towards the conference room. “Also… just, off the record?”
Ronan shifts subtly, attention narrowing. “Off the record usually means trouble,” he says.
“Yeah, well.” The assistant shrugs one shoulder. “You didn’t hear it from me, okay? But you’ve definitely got a leak.”
“We noticed,” Niamh says. “You’ve seen that fan account?”
“Everyone’s seen it,” the assistant says. “People were passing the screenshot round in the smoking area before I even got my copy.” She bites her lip. “Thing is, that account? It follows about three crew members from this show. Not the big names. Background people. Runners. Second assists.”
Ronan’s gaze sharpens. “And you’re telling us why?”
She hesitates, then squares her shoulders. “Because some of us are just trying to do our jobs without ending up online, and I’m not getting paid enough to keep quiet about idiots. Watch who’s always on their phone when they think no one’s looking.”
Niamh studies her face. “You think it’s someone specific.”
“I think you have a rat,” the assistant says bluntly. “And if you don’t catch it fast, this place is going to stink.”
She walks away before they can ask anything else, leaving the faint smell of fabric steam and hairspray in her wake.
Niamh looks at Ronan.
“Well,” she says. “At least the locals are poetic.”
Ronan’s eyes are darker than she’s ever seen them. “Poetic or not,” he says, “she’s right.”
He taps his earpiece, already calling Quinn. “We have a rat on set,” he says. “Let’s find it.”
***
The soundstage is colder than outside, the air-conditioning turned up to protect equipment, not people. Niamh stands on her mark beneath a scaffold of lights, Paris reduced to a painted skyline behind her, the city’s romance flattened into backdrop.
“Okay, my loves,” Victor calls, clapping his hands once. “We warm up with the balcony beat, yes? Low stakes, big feelings. Niamh, you lean over, we catch the vertigo in your eyes, boom.” He mimes an explosion with his fingers. “Cinema.”
“Is there a reason we’re not using the rig for that?” Ronan asks from beside the monitor. He’s close enough to the action to intervene, far enough away he’s technically not in the way. “She doesn’t need to be half over a rail for a close-up.”
Victor waves a dismissive hand. “It is safe. We have the crash mat, we have the safety cable. It is more authentic if she feels the height.”
The balcony in question is three metres up, fake stone and metal, a rail that looks solid enough but has only existed for forty-eight hours. Below, a mat waits, bright blue, two stunt techs leaning against it with the boredom of people who know the real work doesn’t start till later.
“I’m fine with some height,” Niamh says. “What do you need exactly?”
Carla checks her notes. “We just want you leaning on the rail, looking down, then turning when the door opens. No actual fall today. That’s for next week with your double.”
“Exactly,” Victor says. “We tease the danger. You are the woman on the edge of the story. People feel it here.” He taps his chest. “And here.” He taps his phone, smiling at his own cleverness.
Ronan’s gaze is on the balcony, not the phone. “When was the rail load-tested?”
One of the stunt team, a compact woman with a serious braid, lifts her clipboard. “Signed off this morning. We had weight on it, no movement.”
“Weight like hers?” he asks. “Or a gentle hand?”
She meets his eyes without flinching. “Two of my lads, full lean. It’s solid. We’re not cowboys.”
Ronan nods once, respecting that. “Then the mat comes closer. And nobody stands under her mark.”
Victor exhales dramatically. “Monsieur Keane, you are killing my angles.”
“You hired Sentinel,” Ronan says. “Angles are secondary to not breaking her neck.”
Niamh steps in before Victor can sharpen. “Look, I want it to feel real,” she says. “If it’s signed off and the mat’s closer, I’m good with a lean. Not a climb. Not a stunt. Just a lean.”
Ronan looks at her, not at Victor, weighing what she’s actually saying. “A controlled lean,” he says. “You listen to the stunt lead, you stop if anything feels off, and you don’t put your centre of gravity outside the rail.”
She smiles faintly. “You always talk dirty like this in front of people, or am I special?”
The stunt lead chokes on a laugh. Victor rolls his eyes heavenward. “Fine,” he says. “Controlled lean. Happy? We shoot the rehearsal.”
Niamh climbs the narrow metal stairs to the balcony, Ronan tracking every step with his eyes. He doesn’t call up to her to be careful; he knows that word can sometimes knock you off balance. Instead, he moves to the edge of the mat, where he can see her feet and hear any change in the structure’s complaint.
“You alright up there?” Carla calls.
“Grand,” Niamh answers, hand resting light on the rail. The backdrop city glows in painted twilight. From down below, it probably looks beautiful. Up here, she’s intimately aware of the drop, the way distances distort when you’re the one standing at the edge.
“Picture is up,” Victor says. “Sound?”
“Speed,” someone calls.
“And—action.”
She leans. Not far. Just enough to feel the rail hum faintly under her arms. The script asks for anxious, so she thinks about fan accounts circling her hotel, about leaked call sheets and men in denim jackets who look harmless until they’re not. She lets it live in her face and the way her fingers tighten on the metal.
The door behind her slams as a tech rehearses the cue. She turns, sharp, letting the spike of adrenaline show in the set of her shoulders.
“Cut,” Victor says. “Not bad. But I want more fear. You trust the rail, you trust the mat, yes? Lean further. Give me your heart in your throat.”
“She leans further, her heart’s not in her throat,” Ronan says. “It’s on the floor.”
Victor sprays his hands. “You’re very dramatic for a man who does not like drama. Niamh?”
She looks down at him, breath clouding faintly in the over-cooled air. “You’ve got a stunt double on payroll for a reason,” she says. “Why do you need the illusion of me almost falling?”
“Because audiences are clever,” he says. “They smell fake. They want to see your hair move in real air. They want to feel that you could slip. It sells the whole film.”
Ronan’s voice cuts in, calm as a scalpel. “And if she does slip?”
Victor smiles, all teeth. “You catch her, non?”
Niamh feels the temperature in the room drop a notch. Ronan doesn’t rise to it. He doesn’t have to. The quiet in his face does enough.
“We’re not running safety on optimism,” he says. “She gives you the lean we agreed. Anything beyond that, we plan with stunts and doubles.”
Carla clears her throat. “Why don’t we review playback?” she suggests quickly. “See what we’ve got before anyone leans further.”
They do. On the monitor, Niamh watches herself lean over the city, every line in her body broadcasting tension. It looks real enough to make her own palms sweat—and she knows what was under her feet.
“That’s good,” Carla says. “We can punch in a little. No one’s complaining.”
“I am,” Victor says. “It is almost there. We need to push. This is the poster moment. The trailer shot. We put it under the line, ‘Some loves are worth the fall.’” He spreads his fingers like he’s painting it in the air. “Come on, Niamh. You are brave, yes?”
“Her bravery isn’t a prop,” Ronan says.
Victor gives a small, irritated laugh. “It is a film. Everything is a prop.”
“Not her bones,” Ronan replies. “Not her spine.”
Eyes flick towards them. Crew sense conflict the way sharks sense blood. Someone near the lighting rig lifts a phone, barely, angling it like they’re checking a text. Niamh clocks it. So does Ronan. She sees the subtle flare of his nostrils. The way he files it away.
“Alright,” she says, stepping back up to the balcony mark. “We’re not doing this in front of everyone.”
“Then where?” Victor demands. “In your trailer with your lawyer?”
She ignores him, looking down at Ronan instead. “Show me,” she says. “How far is safe, really?”
He exhales, slow. “Hands where they are now. Weight on your feet, not your ribs. If you feel the rail give even a millimetre, you come back. Immediately. No heroics.”
“Hear that?” she calls to Victor. “No heroics.”
“We shoot one more,” Victor says. “Then we talk lawyers all you like.”
Ronan’s jaw flexes. “One,” he repeats. It sounds like a warning more than an agreement.
“Roll camera,” Carla says tightly. “This is the last one until stunts reconfirm the rig.”
“Picture is up.”
“Speed.”
“And—action.”
Niamh leans. A breath further this time. Just enough that the painted skyline tilts in her vision. Her fingers curl around cold metal. She lets the fear in now, for real—the fear of people who think her life is a game, the fear of being watched and cornered and turned into headline fodder. It makes her voice rough when she delivers the line to the empty street below.
The door slam cue comes a heartbeat late. The timing jolts her. She twists, weight shifting as she turns—
The rail lurches.
For a split second she doesn’t understand it. The world drops half an inch, metal shrieking, and her stomach drops more. Then the bolts on the right side shear with a sound like bone snapping.
Someone screams.
The rail goes with her.
She has time to think, Oh, this is actually happening, and then gravity takes the rest.
The mat rushes up in a smear of blue. She clips the broken rail on the way down; something cracks against her temple. Impact slams the breath from her lungs. The world goes white, then grey, then too loud.
“Niamh!”
Ronan’s voice lands before any other sound, cutting through the chaos. She tries to answer but air won’t cooperate. Her vision tunnels, edges darkening. The ceiling rig swims overhead.
Hands descend on her, too many, some grabbing her shoulders, someone going for her head.
“Don’t touch her neck!” Ronan roars. “Back off—everyone back off!”
He’s suddenly there, kneeling beside the mat, one hand braced by her shoulder, the other hovering near her face. His pupils are blown wide, fury and fear fighting for space.
“Niamh. Look at me.” His accent digs in, Belfast threading through every syllable. “Stay with me, a chroí. Can you hear me?”
Her eyelids flutter. The lights smear. “You’re… very shouty for a feminist,” she mutters, or thinks she does. It comes out in a slur.
Relief flickers over his face—brief, brutal. “That’s my girl,” he breathes. Then, louder: “Carla, lock this set down now. Nobody touches that balcony. Nobody wipes anything, nobody ‘tidies’ for continuity. This is a crime scene until I say otherwise.”
Victor stumbles into view, pale under his tan. “She’s alright, yes? She fell onto the mat. We have medics, we—”
Ronan rounds on him, voice like a whip. “Shut up. And step back.”
Victor’s mouth snaps closed. No one has ever spoken to him like that on his own set. Good.
“We call the on-set medic—” someone starts.
“We call an ambulance,” Ronan barks. “Now. Not when legal signs off, not after a producer chat. Now. She hit her head, she’s bleeding, she lost consciousness. Dial emergency, state head trauma from a fall, give them the gate code and send a PA to the road to guide them in. Move.”
The nearest PA jumps like she’s been electrified and bolts for the door, phone already at her ear.
Niamh swallows, throat clicking dry. She feels wetness on her temple, trickling warm down into her hairline. When she lifts her hand, her fingers come away red. The sight of it makes the room tilt again.
“Easy,” Ronan says quickly, catching her wrist before she can touch the wound again. His grip is firm but careful. Everything about him is careful, even with fury burning off him like heat from tarmac. “Don’t move your head. Don’t try to sit up.”
“I’m… okay,” she says, because that’s what she’s been trained to say since she was a nobody on tiny sets. Don’t be a problem. Don’t hold up the day.
“You’re not okay,” he says, and there’s no room for argument. “You are alive. There’s a difference.”
Her vision drifts. The rafters above double, then slide apart. Ronan’s face is the only thing that stays in focus—a dark halo of hair, jaw set, eyes too bright.
“Talk to me,” he orders, softer now. “Favourite sister.”
She blinks. “You can’t pick favourites.”
“Wrong answer. Try again.”
“Your mother will kill you,” she mumbles. “For asking that.”
“She’ll kill me if I let you bleed out on a soundstage,” he says. “Keep talking.”
“Bossy,” she whispers.
“Raised by my mum and four sisters,” he says. “You don’t know bossy until you’ve seen them do a family WhatsApp. I can match their energy all day if it keeps you conscious, so don’t test me.”
A laugh bubbles in her chest and breaks into a wince. “Ow.”
“Yeah. No laughing. Doctor’s orders,” he says. “You’re going to hospital, Niamh. Non-negotiable.”
“We have a medic on site—” Victor tries again from a safer distance.
Ronan doesn’t even look at him. “You have a medic who cleared an obviously compromised rail. I’ll pass, thanks.”
From the balcony above, the broken rail dangles at an angle, held by one remaining bracket and a torn cable. One of the stunt lads steps forward, pale. “We didn’t sign off on that,” he says, voice shaking. “It was solid this morning, I swear it. Those bolts—Christ, look at them.”
Carla edges closer to the base of the set, not crossing the invisible line Ronan has drawn. “Nobody touch it,” she warns sharply. “I want photos. Time-stamped. Get the second camera unit in here now, but they shoot stills only. Close-ups on the brackets.”
Ronan glances up. From where he’s kneeling, he can see the torn metal, the way one of the bolts is sheared at a suspicious angle, threads scored like they were half-sawn through.
Anger roars up his spine, cold and clean. “That rail didn’t just ‘give,’” he says. “Somebody helped it.”
There’s a murmur through the watching crew. Words ripple: sabotaged, messed with, deliberate.
Niamh licks her lips. “Great,” she sighs weakly. “My first day and we’re already doing our own stunts and our own crime scene investigation.”
“Lucky for you, I multitask,” he says, but his eyes are already cataloguing everything—the placement of the mat, the angle she landed at, who moved first, who had a phone out. Quinn is going to have a field day with this when he feeds her the footage.
The siren arrives faster than he expects, a rising wail muffled by the soundstage walls. Ronan doesn’t relax. Not yet. Not until they’ve got her in a cervical collar, not until a scan shows no bleed, not until she’s had a bed and a consultant and proof in black and white that her brain is as sharp as it was when she walked in.
“The ambulance is here,” the PA pants from the doorway.
“Clear them a path,” Ronan says. “Everyone who is not essential to this scene, get back to your departments. Nobody leaves the lot until you’ve been spoken to.”
“You don’t have the authority—” Victor starts.
Ronan finally looks at him, and for the first time all day, he lets the full weight of his fury show. “A woman just fell three metres because something on your set was tampered with,” he says. “If you think I care about your sense of authority more than her life, you have fundamentally misunderstood who I am.”
Victor’s mouth opens, then shuts again. He doesn’t push it.
Paramedics flood in—bright jackets, efficient hands, questions in accented English and rapid French. Ronan answers what he can, clipped and precise, letting them do their jobs but refusing to move more than a step away.
“We need room,” one of them says. “You can wait outside.”
“I’m going with her,” he says.
“Family?” the paramedic asks.
There’s a beat. Niamh hears the question as if it’s coming down a long corridor. She wants to say yes for him, but the word won’t form.
“Partner,” Ronan says, without hesitation. “Emergency contact. You’re not getting her conscious consent right now, so you get mine.”
The paramedic studies his face, then nods once. “Fine. One of you. Stay out of the way.”
They slide a collar around Niamh’s neck, log-roll her onto a board, strap her in. She grits her teeth when the world tilts but keeps her eyes on Ronan’s. There’s blood on his hand now from where he steadied her.
“Hey,” he says quietly, bending to her level as they start to wheel her towards the doors. “Stay awake if you can. Think about all the ways you’re going to roast me for this later.”
“Already drafting the speech,” she whispers. Her tongue feels too big. “Going to be… brutal.”
“Wouldn’t expect anything less.” He squeezes her hand gently, careful of the cannula they’re slotting into her vein. “I’m right behind you. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
The overhead lights streak past as they wheel her out. Every bump sends pain knifing through her skull, but the one constant is his voice at her shoulder, low and steady, translating the paramedics’ French, arguing with a security guard about access, swearing at someone who hesitates with the door.
She drifts at the threshold between the soundstage and the daylight outside, the cold air slapping her cheeks. For a second everything goes dark. She surfaces again to the slam of ambulance doors and the tight square of Ronan’s shoulders beside the gurney.
There’s a smear of her blood on his jaw now, a thin red line like war paint.
The engine growls to life. As the siren howls and Paris blurs beyond the tiny rear window, Niamh lets her eyes close fully, clinging to the last thing she hears before the dark takes her.
Ronan’s voice, raw and furious and terrified, telling the paramedic, “She is not just some actress for your charts. Her name is Niamh Rowan, and you’re going to treat her like she’s the only patient you have today.”