Page 252 of Alchemised

Ilva was gripping her cane but looked ready to topple. It was as if Luc’s loss had ripped the ground out from beneath her.

“Examine him, then,” Ilva said, moving unsteadily away from Soren’s bed. “There will be a Council meeting in an hour. I want full reports on both the Bayards.”

Everyone filed out. Helena glared and jerked her head, indicating that Elain put the privacy curtains back as she sat down next to Soren.

He was leaning back amid the pillows which had propped him up, covered in newly healed cuts. She could tell, as soon as her resonance touched him, that he’d lost his right eye. Whatever had hit him had fractured the socket and crushed it.

Her fingers trembled.

“She’s never going to forgive me,” he said, his voice a near whisper.

Helena didn’t know if he was referring to Ilva or Lila.

She squeezed his hand. “If you’d gone after Luc in this state, all three of you might be dead. That wouldn’t have been any help. I’m sure there’s more people looking for him because you came back.”

Elain had done well with her healing. He’d had several broken bones, including the same arm he’d shattered just a few weeks ago. It hadn’t fully healed, and it was likely to have lingering issues now.

“Do you think he’s still alive?” Soren asked.

Helena’s heart caught. She couldn’t think of any reason the Undying wouldn’t immediately kill Luc.

“Until we know he’s dead, he’s still alive. And we’re going to get him back,” she said, forcing her voice to sound hopeful. “Stop worrying now. I need to check your head.”

He had a concussion, but his eye and brow bone had absorbed most of the blow. All her visits to Titus had made her more familiar with brains; she felt as if she understood them better and could at least diagnose accurately, rather than shying away.

Elain hadn’t known what to do with the destroyed eye and had left it, just wrapping gauze over it and repairing only the bone.

“Soren, your right eye’s—”

“I know,” he said brusquely, as if it didn’t matter. “I can still fight, though, right?”

Her hands stilled. “You’ve broken your arm and lost half your range of vision. That’s going to require adapting. You’re going to be vulnerable. You won’t see things from the right.”

“I’ll just turn my head,” he said in a flat voice. “Handy thing, necks.”

She sighed. “You’re not going back out. Not for weeks at least.”

He shook his head. “Lila’s out. I have to bring Luc back before she wakes. She can’t wake up and find out I didn’t go after him.” His chin trembled. In twelve years of knowing him, Helena had never seen Soren cry. He looked down. “I didn’t tell them, but she told me to leave her. To go find him. But I didn’t. I told her I’d go, as soon as I got her safe—”

He started trying to climb out of the bed. It only took one hand to push him back. He was barely strong enough to sit up.

“Soren, I need to deal with the ruptured tissue in your eye,” she said, trying to sound firm.

He ignored her, trying to shove her off, but she was adept enough at combat now. She deflected his hand and slipped her fingers behind his head. It took only a frisson of resonance and his remaining eye rolled back as he collapsed, unconscious.

She closed his eye gently so it wouldn’t dry out. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she set to work.

If there was anything intact inside the socket, there would have been a small chance of saving some of his sight, but Soren’s eye was wrecked.

She removed all the tissue that couldn’t be repaired so that it wouldn’t rot or cause infection, then carefully rebandaged him. In a few weeks, someone would make a beautiful glass eye for him, or perhaps shape a gem.

Assuming there still was a Resistance in a few weeks.

Rhea arrived just as Helena finished.

It had been a long time since both twins had been in the hospital.

Rhea’s expression was stoic, but her eyes were searching as she moved towards Soren.