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.
If anything, it came from the opposite.
Mabel understood enough about Liam to know that he solved most things by reducing them into something he could act upon. If he was angry, he trained. If he was uncertain, he gathered information. If he was wounded, he tested the wound until he understood how much it limited him. If he made a mistake, he broke it apart in his mind and tried to carve a solution out of the pieces. It was not always healthy, but it was often effective for him. Interfering too early might only make him close himself off or treat her as another obstacle to move around.
So she watched.
For the first day, she let him continue.
For part of the second, she still let him continue.
But by then, Mabel began to see the difference.
This was not Liam solving a problem.
This was Liam circling one.
There was no clear adjustment being made, no final conclusion he was approaching, no strategy forming behind the repetition. He was not training toward one specific improvement anymore.
He was punishing himself through correction, using effort as if enough exhaustion might silence the frustration beneath it. The problem was not that he did not understand what he had done wrong. He understood it too well. The problem was that knowing the mistake did not give him an answer for the part of it he could not control.
His frustration had been deeper than tactics.
His choices in Nalim had not come only from poor planning.
They had come from something inside him that his usual methods could not completely discipline away.
By the end of the second day, Mabel understood that Liam had no real answer for this particular problem because, in truth, it was above his capability to solve alone.
Later that evening, Liam returned to his room through Shadow Passage.
A ripple of darkness unfolded near one side of the room, stretching thinly across the floor before rising like a curtain, and Liam stepped out from within it with the faint heaviness of someone who had spent hours refusing to acknowledge his own limits.
The shadows collapsed behind him without sound. His hair was damp with sweat, his breathing controlled but heavier than usual, and the training clothes he wore clung slightly to his body from exertion. He did not pause after arriving. He headed straight for the bathroom, stripped out of the ruined training clothes, and turned on the shower.
The hot water did more to reveal his fatigue than his expression ever would.
For several minutes, Liam stood beneath it without moving much, letting the water run over his shoulders, back, and arms as the ache in his muscles slowly sharpened into something more honest. The steam filled the bathroom, fogging the glass and softening the edges of the mirror. He washed quickly after that, not because he was in a hurry to do anything meaningful, but because he did not want to remain still long enough for his thoughts to grow louder.
When he stepped out afterward, he had already changed into loose dark pants, his upper body still bare as he dried his hair and shoulders with a towel. He moved back into the room with the intention of going straight to bed, only to notice that Mabel was now standing near the door.
She had appeared silently, as she often did.
Her posture was composed, her Royal Corps uniform neat despite the late hour, her dark ash-brown hair tied back into its usual ponytail, and her half-mask resting in place with familiar precision. She did not stand like someone intruding. She stood like someone who had waited until he could no longer avoid being met.
Liam looked at her for only a moment before turning toward his bed.
He did not seem surprised.
Or if he was, he gave no sign of it.
Mabel watched him approach the bed, her gaze moving over the subtle stiffness in his shoulders, the faint bruising still visible along his side, and the tiredness he carried beneath all that calm. She waited until he was close enough to sit before speaking.
"Liam," she said evenly, "could you give me a little of your time before you sleep?"
Liam stopped beside the bed, towel still in one hand. His head lowered slightly, not from submission, but from exhaustion. "I’m tired," he said bluntly. "And I’m not in the mood to talk. Save it for tomorrow."
Mabel did not look offended.
She had guarded him long enough to know that bluntness from Liam was not always hostility. Sometimes it was simply the shortest route between what he felt and what he chose to say.
She remained near the door, calm and steady, though her eyes did not leave him.
"I know you do not feel like talking about what you are dealing with," she said. "You think ignoring the conversation is the best way to keep yourself focused and handle it."
Liam’s gaze shifted slightly toward her.
Mabel continued, her tone still calm but precise. "But you are wrong."
That precision caught his attention more than any emotional appeal would have.
For a moment, Liam said nothing.
Then he turned enough to face her properly. "What are you talking about?"
Mabel studied him for a quiet moment before answering. She did not rush. She seemed to choose each word carefully, not because she was afraid of him, but because she knew exactly how easily Liam could reject a conversation if it sounded careless.
"You are very good at hiding things," she said. "Your expression, your tone, your silence, the way you move through a room as if nothing has reached you. Most people see that and assume there is nothing underneath."
Liam’s face remained unreadable.
Mabel’s eyes stayed on his. "But I was aware of the frustration inside you before you went to Nalim."
