Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy Chapter 398

ARIA

"The chart," Nina said, with the specific quality of someone who has found something they were looking for, "says that the shoulder injury from last night involves the secondary subclavian branch, which has been partially closed but requires forty-eight hours of reduced movement to fully seal." She turned a page. "It also says that the treatment Ivory applied to herself at five in the morning was correct in approach but insufficient in thoroughness because the angle of self-treatment was limited by the reach of her working hand."

"The angle was fine," Ivory said.

"The angle left two centimeters of the wound margin unsupported," Nina said, reading. "The healer noted it. It's in the chart."

"Two centimeters," Ivory said. "That's—"

"Also in the chart," Nina said, turning another page, "is a note from the senior healer about the third year of the curse."

The room went slightly quieter.

"Specifically," Nina continued, "about a rib injury documented in the pack's medical records from thirty-seven months ago that was treated at the time but that the healer believes may have healed with some residual structural irregularity that was not followed up on because the patient subsequently lost her memories and the follow-up appointment was never—"

"That healed," Ivory said. Her voice had shifted from the clipped argument register into something more firmly precise. "That healed completely. I assessed it myself."

"It left a scar," Nina said.

"Everything leaves a—"

"It left a scar," Nina said, not loudly, just with the immovable quality that was Nina operating from full conviction. "The healer noted the scar tissue. Which required resting at the time and was not rested because you apparently decided that thirty-seven months ago you were also fine."

"I WAS fine," Ivory said.

"IT LEFT A SCAR," Nina said. "IT NEEDS RESTING."

The junior healers at the doorway had given up on the chart-as-barrier. One of them had turned to face the wall, which was the most honest available response to the situation. The other was looking at the ceiling in a position suspiciously similar to Jordan's.

I looked at Jordan.

"The rib," he said quietly to me. "She broke it during the second curse year. She never told anyone how."

"Did she tell anyone she broke it at all?" I asked.

"She told the pack healer at the time that she'd strained it," he said. "The pack healer treated a strain. The pack healer recently reviewed the imaging from last night's initial assessment and found old evidence of a break rather than a strain and is currently experiencing some significant professional feelings about this discovery."

"Where is the pack healer," I said.

"Went for a walk," Jordan said. "About twenty minutes ago. Haven't seen her since."

"She needed some air," the junior healer at the wall said, to the wall.

"The rib isn't even the issue from last night," Ivory was saying, with the focused energy of someone arguing on the most solid ground available. "The rib is thirty-seven months old. It's completely irrelevant to the current—"

"It's relevant to the pattern," Nina said. "Which is what we're discussing. The pattern, Ivory. Of injuries that you treat minimally, document insufficiently, and then return to full activity from prematurely, which results in—"

"I have never had a complication from—"

"Last night," Nina said.

"Last night was not a complication from premature return to activity," Ivory said. "Last night was an ambush by a person who'd been hunting me for—"

She stopped.

The stopping was the kind that happened when you'd said more than you intended.

Jordan looked at me.

I looked at Jordan.

Nina was looking at Ivory with the specific expression of a security chief who had just received new information and was reorganizing her current concerns around it.

"Hunting you," Nina said.

Ivory's jaw set.

"For how long," Nina said.

"That's not relevant to the shoulder injury," Ivory said.

"How long," Nina said.

"Nina—"

"Ivory."

The specific exchange of the two of them had a rhythm I was recognizing — the one where Nina used Ivory's name without inflection and Ivory used Nina's name without inflection and both of them were communicating the full weight of twenty-some years of knowing each other in those two syllables.

"About eighteen months," Ivory said finally. The words came out with the reluctance of something that had been held a long time.

"Eighteen months," Nina said.

"She wasn't — she hadn't found me before last night," Ivory said. "She was tracking. Getting closer. I knew she was getting closer and I was managing the approach and I had contingencies—"

"You had training traps on the lower slope," Nina said.

"Those were for Aria's training," Ivory said.

"They were for Aria's training and also a contingency for an eighteen-month pursuit by an enemy with comparable power to a child of the moon who had reasons to want you dead," Nina said, with the flat precision of someone assembling a picture and not liking what it showed.

"That's a somewhat dramatic way of—"

"Is any part of that inaccurate," Nina said.

A pause.

"No," Ivory said.

"You've been managing an eighteen-month pursuit by a dangerous enemy," Nina said, "alone, without telling anyone, while also running a clinic, recovering from amnesia, going through the Ghost Hunt, recovering from memory restoration, and apparently breaking ribs and treating them as strains."

"The rib was thirty-seven—"

"The rib is illustrative," Nina said. "The rib tells me how you handle your own injuries and your own problems and your own enemies and your own — everything. You handle them alone and you handle them minimally and you tell no one and you keep going." She set the chart down. "You were shot last night, Ivory. A silver bolt hit your secondary subclavian branch and you lost enough blood to make the stretcher necessary and you came in at five in the morning to treat it yourself before anyone was awake."

The room was quiet.