"I cannot understand why you have not talked to Lord Marin about this," Lady Vinara said, having disregarded Sonea's protests that her presence was wholly unnecessary. "If I remember correctly, your results in Healing studies were promising enough, and you should know better."

Sonea did not reply. There was nothing to say; Vinara was right. Akkarin had all but dragged her to the unused bedroom, where she now sat with her injured leg freed of bandages and both hands digging into the mattress to distract from the deep ache in her bones. The scars on her calf, just healed and stiff, stood out raw against her skin.

Lady Vinara had taken a chair to sit by the side of the bed, and assessed the situation with her lips pressed tight. She shook her head. "If it is as bad as you say, this may be rather uncomfortable. I have to see if the bone has mended properly."

It was not uncomfortable; it was worse. Every inch of her body protested against Vinara's feather-light touch and it took all her willpower not to make a sound while the healer ran her hands up and down the bones of her lower leg. She was asked to bend her knee, move her toes, rotate her ankle, all of which she could do, albeit with some difficulty.

"There is nothing wrong that I can tell," Vinara said, frowning. "You've recovered most of your muscle strength and everything has healed as well as we could have hoped. There are no bumps or splinters that I can feel or sense."

"What are you saying?" Sonea asked through gritted teeth; it had taken her a few moments to catch her breath.

"I cannot tell you what causes the pain, and I cannot fix it if I do not know what is wrong." She paused. "Of course, we do not understand everything about the human body, and it is possible that this is something I just cannot see."

Sonea let out a shaky breath and uncurled her fingers from the sheets one by one. "But?"

"But I do not think that is the case. It is not impossible, after traumatic events such as you witnessed, to experience a something like miscommunication between the mind and the body –"

"I am not imagining this!" Sonea said. It came out louder than intended but she did not apologise. "I am not going mad, or –"

Vinara raised her hands with her palms open. "I am sure the pain is real. Here, give me your hand; do you feel how tight these muscles are? I believe that is what is causing some of the pain now, and a lot of discomfort even when it is not this bad. But there is no reason for them to be so tight. You have been exercising as you should, and there is nothing I can tell that is causing it."

Sonea's heart sank, the palm of her left hand still pressed to her calf. "So there is nothing you can do." It was not a question.

Lady Vinara shrugged. "There are medicines that loosen muscles for a while and relieve pain, and of course you could use healing magic as well."

"Of course," Sonea echoed. Her heart drummed in her chest. "Thank you."

The healer frowned at her. "We'll leave off the bandages, now. Do you want me to speak to Marin for you?"

"Yes, thank you."

"If there is anything else you need, come to me directly. I'll see to it that those medicines I mentioned are provided to you as soon as possible."

Sonea nodded. This was more or less what she had been expecting – glad as she was to know that she was not imagining the pain, some small part of her had hoped that she had simply missed something, and that there was a simple explanation for it all. But at least she knew, now, and she could tell Akkarin that there was nothing else she could do and that he could stop worrying, as if that would work.

It didn't, of course. She could feel him watching her every movement over the next few days, keeping track of how often she had to sit down, how much she limped, figuring out the way her features changed when she was using magic on herself. At dinner, he would remind her to take the dry, bitter pills Vinara had given her, and refuse to eat until she had. It was infuriating and childish and she was just a little bit happy to see how much he cared.

It would have been easier if there had been any real improvement. She could tell that the medicines were doing their job; the muscles in her calf felt looser, less rigid, and she could move the leg more easily when there was no weight on it, but even standing still without some kind of support was often too painful to keep up for more than a handful of minutes.

Akkarin stopped asking, eventually. He saw her wince when she accidentally shifted her weight and heard her sigh whenever she got to sit down, and he knew without her telling him that it was not getting any better. Sensing, somehow, that she did not want to talk about it, he didn't. But that did not stop him from worrying. He offered to carry things for her even after she abandoned the crutches and began to use a single cane instead, and Sonea could tell that even when he seemed to be engrossed in something else, part of him was focused entirely on her as she moved about the room, trying to find something in the chaos that was still their guestroom.

She wanted, very badly, to talk to her aunt and uncle. Ranel's knee had never fully recovered from an accident back when Sonea was a small child, but even beyond that kind of advice she ached to see her family, to hug Jonna and the children and just be plain Sonea for a little while. Unfortunately, despite their relatively safe status at the Guild, she doubted she would be permitted to leave the grounds, even with an escort. Over time, they might grind down the magicians' objections, but until then, all she could do was write to her family and hope they would understand.

In the meantime, she tried to take satisfaction from the little things. She did not know what Akkarin and Rothen had spoken of during their meeting, but when Sonea had joined them for dinner that day there had been a kind of truce between them. There had been no arguments since then, at least not in her hearing, and if Rothen was not exactly happy with her choices, at least he accepted and supported her now she had made them.

Takan, however, had been a different matter.

'I told him to go home,' Akkarin said after receiving a note in which the Sachakan had made it very clear that he had no intention of leaving the city. 'He deserves better than to be tied to a criminal hundreds of miles from where he grew up.'

Sonea rather thought that Takan was capable of making his own decisions, but said nothing. She remained silent all through the colourful argument the two men had two days later, during which she ignored any and all requests to 'please, make him see sense' and 'tell him he is being irrational', and when Akkarin finally gave in and conceded that yes, he did miss his friend, and no, he would not send him away, she did not gloat. She did, however, exchange a private word with Takan to thank him, and apologise.

'I tried,' she told him. 'But there was nothing I could do to protect him.'

Takan shook his head and squeezed her hands. 'You did your best,' he said. 'And you are both still alive.'

There was a good deal of commotion about the Sachakan returning to the Guild in his position as Akkarin's servant. Sonea could even understand why; of course the Higher Magicians were not exactly keen on providing Akkarin with an easy, willing source of magic. She did not know what Akkarin offered in exchange for this demonstration of trust, and seeing his face when he shut the door behind him that evening, she did not ask.

##

'I think it is time we did something to earn our upkeep, don't you think?' Akkarin asked one evening after Takan had left and Sonea was half asleep in her chair.

'What do you mean?'

'"Protectors of the Allied Lands,"' he said, grimacing at the grandiose title. 'We need to prove we are worth keeping around, for lack of a better phrase. The Guild takes a risk by keeping us around, and it can only benefit our situation if we prove that we are worthy of that risk.'

Even in her drowsy state, Sonea agreed. She was all too aware that the decision to rehabilitate them had not been unanimous, and that their position in the Guild was fragile at best. What they needed was a reminder that they were not only a force to be reckoned with but one that would be essential to the Guild's safety should another conflict arise, and they would not achieve that by failing to organise Akkarin's library. A chill ran down her spine but she forced herself to ignore it.

'Well,' she said as cheerfully as she could, 'we could both use the practice.'

Hi. It's been almost three years a while.

I'll be honest - the only reason I just posted this is because I got an e-mail that chao0607 just subscribed to this story, and that was such a shock I had to go check what was going on. So, shoutout to you!

I created this story six years ago, and since then I graduated from secondary school AND went and got a degree in Creative Writing, so, uh, a lot has happened. I've been scribbling bits of this fic here and there the whole time but never really had the energy or time to sit down and do anything coherent, especially because I was 16 when I started this thing and there are so many things I would do differently or not at all if I were to write it now. I can't and won't promise I'll be anything like consistent in the future, or how much I'll be updating at all. It'll probably be somewhat different from previous chapters because six years is a long time, but I sincerely hope that I've become at least a little bit better as a writer!

This fic has been my go-to whenever I needed to clear my head from dissertations and my novel project and essays, and it'll probably stay that way. This might become a lot more snippet-y in the future because I can't bring up the motivation to write all the connective tissue, but I hope y'all enjoy it anyway!

Lots of love,

Jo