I'll bring you back

By the time Leviana was brought back to House Avarenne, the afternoon was nearly upon them.

The room filled with people in no time. The family's healer, an herbalist urgently summoned from the city, maids, and guards streamed in and out without pause, but Lathel barely noticed any of them. He only stood near the foot of the bed, watching Leviana lie among the people examining her body.

The bloodstained sleeping gown had been changed. The cuts on the soles of her feet had been cleaned and bandaged, and the skin on her shoulder that mana had burned was also treated. Once the blood and the dirt were gone, Leviana returned to that quiet figure with silver-white hair spread across the pillow.

That was precisely what made Lathel feel worse.

She looked too much like before.

Three years he had sat beside a Leviana who couldn't open her eyes, and she had lain just as still as this.