Wrenna's account came out in broken pieces, grief fraying every sentence before she could finish it cleanly. "Baris went to confront Torvent. About Celeste, about the wedding, about everything he'd heard secondhand and decided he had to fix himself. They argued, and it got worse, and somehow they ended up agreeing to a sanctioned duel, honor rules, blades sharp." Her hands twisted in her lap, wringing the fabric of her own sleeve without seeming to notice she was doing it. "Torvent didn't just win. He took his time about it. He wanted people watching. This is what he left behind when he was done."
Something hot and absolute rose in Corren's chest, and for one long, dangerous second he let himself feel every inch of it before pushing it back down into something he could actually use. He moved Wrenna gently aside, sat at Baris's bedside, and laid both hands over the worst of the visible damage, letting the corrected Duskveil-Hart healing chant flow out of him in the same low, steady cadence he'd used a hundred times since arriving at this world. Gold light spilled from his palms into torn muscle and battered bone, and the familiar hollow drain sank into his own chest at the same moment Baris's breathing eased, a debt paid out in the same instant it was incurred.
Baris's eyes opened, hazed with pain and medication both, and he reached up with a hand that trembled from more than injury and pulled Corren close enough to whisper. "I didn't want to do anything stupid, Corren. I swear it. Torvent did something. To how I felt. Made me want to..." His grip slackened before he could finish the thought, exhaustion pulling him back under.
"Rest," Corren said, gentle as he could make it, pressing a finger briefly to Baris's lips the way he might have quieted a much younger child. "We'll talk later. Heal first."
One of the mages drew Corren aside once Baris had settled, her expression carrying the specific weight of someone about to deliver a verdict she'd rather not have to give. "Your healing chant is remarkable," she said, "and it saved his life outright, make no mistake. But the damage to his mana pathways runs deeper than muscle. He may never hold a sword the way he used to. Possibly never again at all."
"But being a Knight is everything he's ever wanted," Corren said, and heard, even as he said it, exactly how useless a protest it was against a diagnosis that had nothing to do with wanting.
"I know," the mage said, not unkindly. "I'm sorry. There's nothing more I can offer you today."
He stepped out into the corridor to breathe, the antiseptic weight of the infirmary suddenly unbearable, and walked without direction through hallways full of trainees hurrying between classes who had no idea, and no reason to care, that his whole world had just cracked down the middle. He didn't see the young man walking toward him until they collided, hard enough to knock him back a step.
The stranger, older, broad-shouldered, dressed in the loose confidence of a final-year student, recovered his footing and looked at Corren with open irritation. "Watch where you're going, kid. You owe me an apology."
Something in Corren that had been holding steady since the infirmary simply gave way. "If anyone's owed an apology, it's me," he snapped, voice carrying further than he intended. "You walked into me."
The senior's mouth curled into something between amusement and challenge. "Care to prove it? A duel might teach you some manners."
"Fine." The word left Corren before the part of his mind that usually governed such decisions had finished registering the question. "Let's duel, then. See how much manners you've got when someone actually pushes back."
Master Doss arrived at his shoulder a half-second too late to stop it, and the look he leveled at Corren carried real concern rather than his usual dry disapproval. "Think carefully before you accept a challenge born out of grief," he said, low enough that only Corren could hear it. "That's not the reason to fight anyone."
"I've already accepted," Corren said, and heard, distantly, how much that sentence sounded like something Baris might have said a week ago, reckless and certain and entirely unlike the version of himself he usually tried to be. He wondered, later, lying awake with the memory of his own shout still ringing faintly in his ears, whether Torvent's magic had reached even this far without either of them realizing it, some residue of manipulated feeling bleeding sideways into a stranger's unrelated shove. He wondered, and then admitted to himself, honestly, that he'd been plenty capable of losing his temper long before Torvent ever existed in his life. It was an uncomfortable thing to know about himself. He filed it away anyway, the way he filed everything, unresolved and waiting.
Celeste found her way to the infirmary that evening, drawn by news that traveled faster through the Academy than any official report could match, and the moment she crossed the threshold and saw Baris's bandaged, sleeping form, her composure cracked wide open in a way Corren hadn't yet seen from her.
Wrenna was on her feet before Celeste had finished crossing the room. "You," she said, and the single word carried enough weight to stop Celeste dead in the doorway. "Do you have any idea what happened because of you?"
"Wrenna," Corren started, but she was already moving past him.
"If you'd never asked for help, none of this happens." Wrenna's voice shook, grief and fury tangled so tightly together that neither one could be pulled loose from the other. "Baris is in that bed because he decided your problem was his problem to solve, and now it might have cost him everything he ever wanted."
Celeste's chin lifted, even as her eyes shone with unshed tears. "You think I asked him to fight for me? I never asked either of you for anything beyond a favor Corren offered freely. I didn't put a sword in Baris's hand."