18. Annalise
Chapter eighteen
Annalise
“Again, Recruit. You’ve had your vacation, now it’s time to put in some real work,” Perry drills quietly, too afraid of Korr hearing his impersonations to mock him above a whisper.
“I’d love to see you do six sets of push-ups.”
“I’d love to see him just do six,” Emily laughs from a few feet away as she knocks her opponent to the ground and straddles him with ease.
Gritting my teeth, I push myself up, arms trembling as I lock out my elbows, then slowly lower myself back toward the mat.
“Three,” Perry sings, entirely too cheerful for someone counting my suffering.
My shoulders burn as I force myself to keep going.
“Three and a half.”
“Perry,” I snarl, hoping my tone will scare him enough to at least pretend he’s not taking absolute joy in the fact that he can currently do more than I can.
“Three and five-eighths...You know, maybe you should have been in those tire flipping classes after all. Your arms are looking a little weak,” he teases.
I lower myself another inch, jaw clenched. Just. Four. More.
“Fooouuurrrrrr.”
“I hate you.”
“Four and two-twentieths…”
When I finish my set, I collapse onto the mat, immediately grabbing Perry’s ankle and yanking it with all my strength, knocking him off balance and quickly forcing him to stumble and fall beside me.
“That was four.”
“That was twelve.”
“Not according to my count,” he sings.
“Your inability to add doesn’t make the two bonus pushups I did not count.”
“I’m pretty sure they don’t count unless I say the number out loud.”
“I don’t think that’s how math works.”
Emily’s practically folded in half now, sitting cross-legged on the mat, and somehow looking completely unbothered despite having just finished the same set I did without so much as breaking a sweat.
I hate her a little.
“I don’t know…” Emily says. “Once your arms start shaking, I guess the count becomes subjective.”
“Thank you,” Perry grins.
“Of course.” Then she looks at me. “Also, you did thirteen.”
Perry's mouth drops open.
“I don’t think so...”
“Trust me. There was no missing her exhaled, ‘Fucking kill me now’ on her way down...”
“I—" I cut in, only to be interrupted.
“Or the ‘Eat my ass’ every time she pushed back up.”
There’s no excuse good enough to cover for the hideous cackle that slips past my lips and draws far too many eyes in my direction…
which is only made worse as I try to stand and shout “Fuck your mother,” as my leg threatens to give out—my not so subtle reminder of exactly why I'm sitting on a mat doing upper-body exercises instead of beating the hell out of someone.
Again.
My healing team cleared me to run.
Running.
Apparently, that's perfectly acceptable.
When I stumble on a root and fall? No biggie, dust myself off.
But sparring? Absolutely not. Apparently that's somehow a completely different category because, heavens forbid I use my legs for anything more strenuous than pushing myself off the ground.
So here I am, in Combat Class but not actually allowed to combat.
Glancing toward Korr, who’s currently overseeing a group of recruits practicing takedowns.
“I'm beginning to think this is a cruel joke,” I complain.
“The cruel joke would be if Captain Korr just made you sit on the sidelines and play cheerleader.”
“Perry! Don’t wish that kind of evil on our girl—I’m pretty sure she’d gag herself before she yelled ‘Go team, go!'” She reaches over, bumping her shoulder against mine.
“You can gag me if you promise to pull my hair,” I shoot back, smiling wickedly as Perry’s mouth drops open.
The simple conversation shouldn't mean anything, but it does because I didn't realize how much I'd missed this.
Not just training or even being pushed until my body gives out.
Just...this.
People who make me laugh and without looking at me like I'm fragile glass.
Emily doesn't ask if I'm okay. She doesn't tell me to take it easy. She doesn't watch me like she's waiting for me to fall apart. She just sits beside me, throwing digs at Perry and me while we say the kind of unhinged comments that would be reported to HR if we were training for any other job.
“Come on,” Emily says, getting to her knees. “One more set.”
I stare at her. “You're a terrible person, you know that right?”
“I've been called worse. Now get on your knees, Baby,” she taunts as I slowly lower back down on the mat beside her.
Combat Medicine is less fun, mostly because Healer Alric has apparently decided today is the perfect day to lecture us about death, his personal feelings about how I was pulled from it on full display for anyone who knows the truth to see.
We sit in rigid rows while he stands at the front of the classroom, hands folded behind his back. “Knowing when enough is enough,” he says, his voice calm and measured, “is one of the most difficult lessons an Arcane Healer will ever learn.”
I shift in my seat as all around me pens rhythmically scratch against parchment.
Alric continues, “There is a point where continuing treatment no longer serves the patient. There is a point where intervention becomes selfish.”
His gaze moves across the room.
“You cannot save everyone.” The words settle heavily.
“You will encounter patients whose bodies are too damaged. Whose magic is too depleted. Whose injuries are beyond your ability to reverse. And when that happens, you must know when to let them go.”
My stomach twists…I know exactly where this is going.
“Emotional attachment,” he continues, “cannot influence clinical judgment.” His eyes flick briefly toward Sasha. “Nor can favoritism or a desire to prove you’re the best there is.”
Sasha's pen doesn't stop moving, though I’d be shocked if she were actually listening to a single word of this bullshit. Not even for a second.
I stare at Alric, and as though he can feel it, his eyes snap to mine, something passing across his face for a heartbeat—utter disgust…and then it’s gone. His expression settles back into that carefully constructed stoicism I’ve gotten accustomed to since arriving at Scion.
“Who’s to say one person's life is worth more than others?” This time, he doesn't even bother pretending, his eyes locked on Sasha.
My jaw tightens, but still Sasha doesn't look up.
“Not someone I’d ever want working as a healer…or someone that any true healer could ever be proud of.”
A loud, grinding sound fills my ears, but my focus doesn’t break until Zeke nudges my shoulder, dragging me back to the room.
His gaze flicks toward Alric, then back to me, his mouth twitching.
“If the daggers you’re shooting him don’t give away how close to murder you are, the obsessive grinding of your teeth is sure to do the trick. ”
It takes far too long for Healer Alric to remember the rest of the class is there, though that doesn’t change the direction of our lesson. As he digs into how to know when to cut dead weight, I realize with a sinking certainty that this class is going to be a very long fucking hour.
As soon as class ends, I rush to catch Sasha in the corridor.
“Sash!” She turns, the smile she gives me immediate and inviting.
“Lee! Sorry, I was a little distracted. You ready for lunch?”
I hesitate, unsure how she could be ready to move on so easily after sitting through that farce of a lesson.
“I'm sorry.”
Her eyebrows draw together. “For what?”
“For Healer Alric. For everything he said.”
Her expression changes slightly, but her smile doesn’t falter.
“I know he's been treating you like shit.”
She sighs. “Annalise—”
“He's pissed because you broke the rules for me…I know how much you respect him.”
At that, Sasha laughs. “No.”
“No? I know you—”
“I mean, yeah, he's pissed about that, too,” my stomach twists as she leans against the stone wall. “But really he’s upset because I was the one chosen to treat you.”
I stare at her.
“What?”
“That's the part Alric really can't get over.” Her laugh is bitter this time.
“Matt and Korr refused to let anyone else into the house...”
My chest tightens.
“What about the dean?”
Grabbing my arm, Sasha pulls me into an empty classroom, the wood and iron door shutting with a thud.
“What—"
“Okay, so I wasn’t out there when it happened and when Matt told me, I was completely focused on not letting you die—”
“Which I appreciate.”
“Right…well just know the wording may be off a bit from what Matt told me, but supposedly…” Sasha looks around the room as though someone is lying in wait for the secret she unexpectedly pulled me in here to tell me.
“Well…supposedly Korr told Dean Stevens not to send anyone else out to the house…
something along the lines of 'between her attack and the bear attacks I'll shoot anything seen moving around my house if Tyr and Kali don’t get to them first.”
“WHAT?”
“Shhhh!” Sasha chides, though she’s as invested in the gossip as I am.
“Now this part I was present for, which definitely made things worse…but Healer Alric didn’t think the dean's rules applied to him, so on your third day of being in a coma, he came waltzing up to the house like he owned the place. His foot didn’t even touch the first step before the dragons were flanking him and the barrel of Captain Korr’s gun was to his forehead. ”
Sasha looks down at her hands, and I fight not to ask all the questions circling around in my mind.
“He knew you were close to dying and demanded to help, but the dean told him there was no need for his bottle of Redline and that I had things under control…when he tried to argue that I’m still a recruit, she reminded him that I was trained by the kings best…
which calmed him for the half second until he realized she wasn’t talking about him. ”
I don't know what to say, but luckily she isn’t done.
“But despite the united front, she was already pissed that I’d made the decision to use so much myself.”
Swallowing hard, I ask what happened.
She shrugs. “I got kicked out of Arcane Healing.”
My mouth falls open, sadness and disbelief immediately trampled by immense amounts of guilt. “Sasha.”
“It's fine.”
“It is absolutely not fine.”
She rolls her eyes in the happy-go-lucky way only she can. “I'm still alive. YOU are still alive. I get to spend more time in Spell Casting.”
“That isn't the point. You look up to Alric.”
She makes a face. “Looked up to.”
Past tense.
“I'm sorry.”
She waves me off. “Don't be. He's a bitch.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Sasha grins, “What? He is!”
“You're really not upset?”
“Oh, I'm furious. But not at you.” She straightens, a serious look taking over her face once more. “Every healer should have one priority—their patient.”
She points toward the infirmary.
“If I have a patient bleeding out in front of me, I don't care how they got to this academy, or if you’re threatening to expel me if I lay another finger on the patient without your supervision…I will save the person in front of me—especially if it’s my barely recognizable best friend.”
Something in my chest aches.
“He tried to get you expelled?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“What?”
“Apparently he thought if he threw enough of a tantrum to the King, he'd get his way.” She snorts, “Obviously that didn't happen…which just pissed him off even more.”
“Good. Fuck him.”
“Yup! And now I have more time to spend in the Spell Casting labs.”
I can't help smiling back. “What are you working on?”
Her entire face changes, the anger disappearing instantly as she starts talking faster, her excitement about the work she’s doing to modify an old spell to be slower acting so when the poison tincture is delivered, the operative has more time to get away before the side effects take effect.
She’s so excited and animated, it’s hard to reconcile her with the girl who, mere months ago, couldn’t imagine ever being capable of killing someone—and I wonder if she even separates this kind of spellcasting from the thought of burying a knife in someone’s chest.
By afternoon, I'm back in the arena.
Different class, different recruits, an even more painful version of punishment to be forced to observe.
The Delta recruits are running the obstacle course.
I am not.
While everyone else is climbing, jumping, dodging, and fighting their way through the course, I'm standing off to the side watching their every move as Tyr circles overhead.
His wings catch the afternoon wind, and my chest tightens.
We should be flying right now, but that’s another thing I’m not allowed to do in a classroom setting…
something dumb about needing my legs to be fully functional before they’ll let me do tactical battle dives and play war on the back of a dragon.
“Recruit Corvin. If you’re finished daydreaming, perhaps you’d like to rejoin the class. The recruits have been waiting for you to do your job.”
I bite down on the retort already forming.
Instead, my attention drifts to tonight’s dinner. Maybe I’ll make something Korr hates. Better yet, something I can lace with enough of a laxative to have him regretting every bite before dessert. I’d just need something strong enough to hide the bitter taste.
“Corvin.”
His voice is closer now.
I look up to find him standing just a few feet away, his expression unreadable. He dips his head, lowering his voice so only I can hear.
“If you’re having trouble concentrating, I can always help you with a gag to suppress Tyr’s distracting communication.”
My brows scrunch together, my annoyance clear as the line between home Hunter and arena asshole is firmly drawn.
“Not necessary, Captain,” I say with a painfully sweet smile, before turning on my heel, and jogging—just a little faster than necessary—toward my position at the fighting platform.
“Still willing to smoke him,” Tyr offers before Tyr lands too hard on the ground behind Korr to be accidental.
“I appreciate that, but I can take him,” I say, rolling my eyes at his obvious antics.
“I know you can…Which is why I’m going to lie here in the sun, blowing hot breaths on his back while you work out exactly how you’re going to ruin his evening. I’d hate to interfere with your revenge plotting."