"One visitor at a time" was a ridiculous rule. I sat by myself on one of the hard wooden benches outside the infirmary entrance, arms crossed and head drooped downward in annoyance. The infirmary doctors and nurses had shooed me away just seconds after I'd stepped over the threshold and asked after the whereabouts of Cinthara.

"Miss Valen already has a visitor, and one visitor is all we allow for each patient at one time," a shriveled old woman nurse had drawled at me through cracked lips that she'd painted red. "You may wait your turn outside."

Annoyed, I'd let the straggling doctors next to the front desk guide me back out, but it hadn't stopped me from grumbling at them the entire time.

I glanced up at one of the many tall portraits in the hall. A smug-looking character with a thin, wispy mustache and narrow eyes stared down at me almost disapprovingly. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, avoided the gaze of any of the other portraits, and determined to stare at the floor. Sluggish moments like these made me miss my stunted, yet comforting conversations with Dex.

"You can see Miss Valen now."

I leaped out of my seat a little too eagerly–I decided to stress and analyze over why I needed to see Cinthara so much later. I whirled on the same nurse from before and tried a smile. She pursed her chapped and wrinkled lips and tapped impatient fingers along the dark magenta rings around the sleeves of her jumpsuit. I ascertained during my last visit to the infirmary that the magenta color indicated nurse status.

Just as the nurse and I stepped through the swinging doors and into the infirmary, a dark figure pushed past me with his shoulder.

"Ow!" I cried out, frustrated. I grabbed at the part of my arm the hurried stranger had hit and turned my head to get a better look at him.

"Nic?" I said, noticing the black helmet encasing his head. "What are you doing here? Did you come here to see Cinthara?"

I realized after I said it that there could be a great many more patients Nic would want to visit in the numerous wings of the infirmary, but something about the slight slump of Nic's shoulders when I said Cinthara's name told me otherwise.

But why would he need to see her? I knew Cinthara was a past student of his, and I suspected he'd helped train her in the past. I could guess that much based on what Nic knew about Cinthara's fighting style when he was helping me prepare for my duel against her.

"Rayden?" The question in Nic's voice indicated he hadn't known it was me he'd pushed past. "You don't look so good."

I rubbed the back of my neck and sighed. I didn't expect to "look good" at all, not after that insane crash I'd just suffered through.

"You didn't answer my question," I said, dismissing any more talk of my exhausted appearance. "Why are you here? Who were you visiting?"

"I am not required to reveal all of my doings to you, Rayden."

"Son, visiting hours end in 30 minutes. If you wish to see Miss Valen, you need to come with me now." The nurse's voice was so gravelly it grated on my ears.

"I'll be right there," I insisted.

I completely ignored the woman's exaggerated eye-roll as she left Nic and me to our conversation and returned to her work.

Nic leaned forward, causing a hanging and magically lit orb from the ceiling to flash a glare across the smooth surface of his helmet.

"You look as if you had the life drained from you." He touched a thumb to his inaccessible chin in thought. "Did you crash?"

"How'd you know?"

"I know from experience what a crash looks like."

Nic circled me. Even though I couldn't see them, I could feel his eyes on me at every passing second. "And yours must have been terrible. I've never seen you look so awful."

"Thanks."

"How long were you enhancing yourself?"

I shrugged. "A while."

Nic shook his head and groaned in annoyance. "You need to be more careful."

"I wanted to ask you about that," I said in hushed tones, glancing around to make sure we were alone.

The old woman from before flashed her dark, hooded eyes in my direction, grumbled something incoherent, but then continued tapping away at her desk that stood about ten feet away from us.

Even though I felt she or no one else could hear us, I stepped in closer to Nic. "How do I avoid crashing like that? Will it happen to me every time I enhance my body? No matter how good it makes me in a fight, it almost doesn't feel worth it."

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"We will discuss it in your next lesson," Nic said, falling into his signature pose of legs standing shoulder width apart and arms folded tightly over his thick chest. "But the solution is not something I think you're strong enough for. Not yet."

My shoulders fell. I wanted him to say something encouraging, but I should've known better when it came to Nic.

The nurse cleared her throat, loudly. The sound probably pierced the empty, white walls surrounding us and traveled to the hall outside.

I turned to glare at her as she pointed in the direction of the patient beds and mouthed, "You're running out of time."

I moved to say goodbye to Nic, but he had already disappeared, which was annoying.

Following the direction the nurse pointed with a knobby finger, memories of my own stay in the infirmary just a few weeks prior flashed through my mind. It was all the same as before: immaculate to the point of maybe too much cleanliness, with the perfectly made beds lining the walls in equal spacing. Stairs at the back of the room, also white like everything else, led to what I could only guess were more floors that extended the potential patient capacity.

And the smell… It wasn't a smell that I missed, and I definitely had not forgotten it from my last visit. The overwhelming scent of medicines and strong soaps burned the insides of my nose, and the overly bright lights hurt my eyes and exacerbated the headache pounding through my temples.

About one-third of the beds on this floor were occupied. I averted my gaze from the sick and injured. I didn't necessarily feel queasy–I saw enough gore and blood on the battlefield–, but I didn't like seeing the anguish on the patients' faces as nurses and doctors dressed bleeding wounds or caught colorful vomit in metal bowls. The entire atmosphere of the place sent chills down my spine and made me feel on edge.

Cinthara lay in a bed in the far left corner, next to only one other afflicted student who moaned and groaned in discomfort. His leg had been wrapped in a mountain of gauze, so I couldn't see his injuries, but by the sweat dripping down his narrow face and the way he clenched his teeth, I could tell it was a serious injury.

Cinthara ignored the pained cries of her neighbor, head turned toward the wall. Her slight frame looked even smaller underneath the thick, white covers piled on top of her. Even with the many blankets, she shivered as if freezing. Her lips and the lids of her eyes were still tinged blue, and the boniness of her shoulders that poked out from one of the simple gowns the patients wore suggested she wasn't eating very well. But she had collapsed only yesterday…. How could she look so frail so quickly?

I smiled at Cinthara as I finally caught her attention. It may have been a trick of the light, but it looked as if her face went even paler at the sight of me. She squirmed in her bed, trying to sit up straighter, and her eyes darted back and forth as if she were looking for a way to escape.

I quirked my head to the side, slowed my approach, and then stopped at the foot of the bed so as not to startle her any further.

"Cinthara? It's me, Rayden."

"I know who you are, idiot!" Cinthara snapped hoarsely. Though she had a large glass of water on a modest nightstand to the left of her bed, she sounded like she hadn't had something to drink in days.

I flinched at her tone. It had been a while since she'd shown any sort of animosity toward me. I tried to ignore it, chalking her behavior up to exhaustion and pain, and dared a step around the side of the bed and closer to her face. Cinthara pushed back on her hands, trying to scoot farther away from me. Her breathing grew shallow, and her eyes widened.

Frowning, I moved back to the foot of the bed. "What happened in the rift, Cinthara? I just want to make sure you're all right."

"I was tired," Cinthara declared without looking at me. "I just need some rest."

I didn't believe her for a second.

"How long do the doctors want to keep you here?"

Cinthara shrugged. "I don't know! A few days, maybe."

"Hmm…" I grunted, folding my arms. I was determined not to let her strange attitude get to me.

"And how is my patient?"

A tall man, about two heads taller than me, with a high-pitched, nasally voice, approached from behind. He shoved his hands into the pockets of the white doctor coat billowing over his jumpsuit with a smile.

"Fine," Cinthara whispered, looking down at her hands.

"I see you visiting with a friend. That's nice." The doctor nodded cordially in my direction.

I smiled in return. "Doctor, how is she doing, and how long will she need to stay here?"

The doctor pulled a slim tablet from one of his large coat pockets and scrolled through a few pages of scrawled notes with his finger.

"We don't know exactly what happened, but a majority of Cinthara's organs were near failure when Gareth brought her in. Any later, and she would have died."

My heart plummeted, and I tried to swallow down the sudden appearance of a lump in my throat. The thought of Cinthara dying sent a visceral reaction through my body. I looked down at her once again, even more acutely aware of the new shallowness in her cheeks and the darkness behind her once-vibrant eyes.

"But you have no idea how it came about?" I said.

Cinthara began anxiously tapping her long fingers against the bed. She knew something, and for some reason, she refused to reveal it to anyone.

The doctor shook his head. "It's very strange, especially considering she started out as healthy as can be. We'd like to keep here for monitoring at least through Wednesday."

"Is there anything I can do?" I wrung my hands nervously as I continued to study my sick friend.

"You can leave," Cinthara growled.

Both the doctor and I took a step back at her outburst. The lump in my throat grew even more painful as I fought away a single tear biting at the corner of my eye. My emotional state had to come from a combination of my own exhaustion, my worry for Cinthara, and from her sudden cruelty toward me.

"Uh, well…" The doctor tapped away on his tablet again. "Visiting hours are almost over. Maybe you should head back to your dormitory, Mr. …?"

"Grim, " I responded, eyes still glued to Cinthara's face. "Can I come back tomorrow?"

Cinthara looked sick at the idea.

"I'm not sure that's the best course of action," the doctor responded to both my question and Cinthara's reaction. "Let's allow her some time to heal."

I lifted my chin in an attempt to look accepting of the situation, nodded goodbye, and then hurried away. But not without looking back one more time at Cinthara as the doctor listened to her heart with a metal, cone-shaped device that sent readings to his tablet. She didn't acknowledge me in the slightest, purposely avoiding my gaze.

She was hiding something from me. I could feel it. And Nic was, too. Were they in league with each other? What was going on?

I left the infirmary, pounding a fist against my thigh in frustration. Why couldn't I ever just have normal friendships?

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