My dao to eternity

The boy's hand shook worse from fear than from the pain itself, Li Fan judged, watching him hold it out across the merchant's kitchen table with his jaw clenched tight and his eyes fixed hard on the far wall rather than on his own swollen fingers. Fourteen years old, and trying very hard tonight to be older than that.

"This will hurt," Li Fan said plainly, no softening in the warning. "Worse for a moment before it's better. I need you still through that moment, not brave. Still."

The boy nodded, jaw tightening further, and Li Fan worked quickly once the nod came, setting the smaller break first with a precise, practiced pressure that drew a sharp, bitten-off cry despite every effort at bravery, then the second, the boy's mother gripping his opposite shoulder throughout with white-knuckled hands of her own. Li Fan splinted both fingers with the same care he'd once given a poisoned child's breathing, wrapped them snug against a thin wooden brace, and pressed a measured dose of pain-easing tincture into the boy's other hand before finally sitting back.

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