Chapter 760: Can We Talk?
The third mistake repeated itself in his mind more quietly but more persistently than the rest.
After the fight, he had been unable to care for himself.
That fact annoyed him more than his injuries did.
He had killed the Berserker, erased it completely, and survived the immediate aftermath, but then his body had failed him. He had passed out in a hostile realm and remained unconscious long enough that his safety fell entirely into Charlotte’s hands.
Without her, he might have died to something far weaker than the demon he had destroyed. That made the victory feel incomplete. Worse than incomplete, it made it feel badly managed. Regulus had been right. It did not matter how powerful he was if the cost of using that power left him defenseless afterward.
So Liam trained with those thoughts circling through him again and again.
He repeated movement drills until his muscles shook, forced controlled bursts of flame until his channels burned with warning heat, practiced drawing Myst in smaller quantities and releasing it with tighter efficiency, and recreated portions of his fight against the Berserker in his mind while moving through empty space.
He did not train recklessly enough to collapse, but he pushed far past what any healer would have approved. When pain rose, he treated it as information. When fatigue slowed him, he treated it as a limit to be measured. When his body warned him that continuing was unwise, he lowered output, changed drills, then continued anyway.
And through it all, Mabel watched.
She did not interfere at first.
Mabel Arkwright lingered at a careful distance, close enough to observe him, far enough not to make her presence feel like a wall. She watched from the edge of the underground hall with her usual composed stillness, her Royal Corps attire neat, her half-mask in place, and her hazel-brown eyes following Liam’s movements with quiet attention. Her hand sometimes rested near the hilt of her sword, not because she expected to draw it, but because habit kept her prepared whenever Liam pushed himself in ways that might become dangerous.
Her restraint did not come from indifference.