Then I hear another voice cut through the noise. “Move. Give her room.”
Maksim.
He comes across the lawn in shirtsleeves, jacket gone, hair still damp at the temples as if he dressed too fast and came out anyway. My oldest friend drops to one knee beside the girl without wasting a second, his face changing the way it always does when medicine takes over and the rest of the world becomes background.
“What happened?” he asks.
“She stood, started frothing, then went down,” I say.
He nods once and gets to work. Two fingers at her neck. A quick look at her pupils. He turns her head slightly, checks her airway, watches the movement of her chest.
“She’s breathing,” he says. “Keep her on her side.”
The doctor guest beside him shifts back at once, relieved to surrender the moment to someone with more authority. Maksim doesn’t even glance at him. His attention stays on the girl.
“Has she eaten? Drunk anything?”
“Breakfast,” someone says from behind me. “Champagne, I think.”
“Coffee too,” another voice adds.
Maksim looks up at me. He doesn’t need to say much. I already know what he’s asking.
I glance once toward Yuri. He still has the glass wrapped in linen.
“Possibly one specific drink,” I say.
Maksim’s eyes narrow slightly, but he gives no sign of understanding to anyone around us. Good. “We’re taking her inside.”
He looks at the nearest two men standing there in expensive uselessness and points. “You and you. Lift carefully. Keep her on her side. Don’t straighten her out.”
That gets them moving. People obey competence when it sounds like certainty.
The girl lets out a small, broken sound as they lift her, her body still too loose, her face frighteningly pale. One of the bridesmaids starts crying in earnest now. Camille is nowhere in sight. Ethan has done at least that much correctly.
Maksim rises and gestures toward the house. “Guest suite on the ground floor. Somewhere quiet.”
Nadine is already there, of course. “This way.”
She leads them at once, clearing a path through the terrace doors while staff pull furniture aside and guests flatten themselves out of the way. The whole breakfast has gone silent now except for the rustle of movement and the far-off wail of the ambulance getting closer.
I turn to Yuri as the group disappears inside. “Keep that glass out of everyone’s hands.”
He gives me a look. “Obviously.”
“Also the tray.”
He’s already moving toward the side station.
Only then do I look for Sienna.
She’s standing exactly where I left her, one hand braced on the edge of the service table, face pale but composed. She’s not panicking. She’s watching. Thinking. Trying, I suspect, not to show how close this came to being something else.
I go to her.
“Come inside,” I say.
Her eyes lift to mine. “I’m fine.”