Page 23 of Resurgent

“Faren—”

“Miss Corvin, you survived—”

If looks could kill, Korr would be nothing but ash at my feet.

“Sir, with all due respect to your position and rank, don’t try to tell me what I’ve survived. I lived it, replayed it aloud for my friends, and am suffering from the consequences more than enough without you fumbling through whatever you think I went through."

“What are you doing?” Tyr pushes, knowing how uncomfortable the thought of facing my instructors and classmates in the area where it all began again.

“Obviously, I don’t want to go to that class, but I need to. Not only do I need those skills after I graduate, but I won't let their actions consume me."

Steeling myself, I continue, my voice more sure than it's felt all day. “I will take this week to continue healing, and then I will be attending classes again. In person. I’m not asking for permission."

Korr stares at me in disbelief as Tyr’s pride pulses through the bond.

“I will make the argument for you to return to in-person classes, including Vanguard, in two weeks, under one condition,” Korr says too calmly, and I already know I’m not going to like what’s about to come out of his mouth.

Again, I wait in silence, and again, he breaks first.

“You’ll do extra training with me—without argument—once you've been cleared.”

“Matt will—”

I barely get the words out before his hand is shooting up in the air, a simple finger raised to silence me before the argument I have at the tip of my tongue has a chance to find voice.

"I'm sure he will, but he doesn't have the training or years of experience I do. You graduate in a few months, and training with me in addition to your other classes will give you the best chance in the war."

His fingers drum against the countertop, patiently waiting for me to say something. But I'm still processing everything that he's just said.

“Annalise, those are my terms if you want me to talk Dean Stevens into letting you back in classes. She’s going to be firmly against it so soon after you nearly died, but at least with those conditions, I can tell her you’re making some intelligent choices.”

Without another solution, and unwilling to put Sasha in an even worse spot, I let out a sigh of defeat. “Guess I live here now.”

“Temporarily."

"Obviously," I say, too tired to question who will be counting down the days more, him or me. Gods, I can't even imagine how long it took for him to come to terms with this arrangement.

Chapter nine

Annalise

Breakfast will be ready in five, Hunter!” I call, loud enough for him to hear me down the hall.

After the first few days after waking up were filled with awkward conversations, forced small talk, and both of us doing our best to stay out of each other’s way, we’re starting to settle into something that almost feels casual, almost roommate-adjacent. It only took us a week!

One of Korr's first demands was that if we're going to be sharing a house, I had to stop calling him Sir, Captain Korr, and—according to him most frequently, "Asshole"—and start using his actual name.

I countered that if I was going to be staying here, I should be allowed to do all the cooking.

Naturally, neither of us fully accepted the other's terms.

He launched into a lecture about rest, recovery, and the dangers of overexerting myself. I argued that I desperately needed something to do before boredom drove me insane and that cooking hardly qualified as strenuous activity. Apparently, recovering patients with holes in their legs aren't supposed to spend an hour on their feet chopping vegetables.

My argument that I'd been surviving much worse before coming to the academy and that it was more mental than physical was practically unheard of as he pointed out that I'd also recently been stabbed, almost bled out, and spent far too long medically sedated.

Unfortunately, that argument was harder to counter.

In the end, we compromised: I make breakfast, we fend for ourselves at lunch, and we alternate cooking dinner…which I hate to admit, I’m pretty damn happy about, because he can cook.