Chapter 77: The Injury Worsens

CASSIAN’S POV

Game three was already ugly when Torin went down.

The crowd had been loud from puck drop, but by the second period the noise had changed. Every shift felt tighter than the last, every whistle a little later than it should have been, every hit one degree closer to a line the officials refused to see. We were down one, pushing hard, and Torin was doing what he always did when the game turned into a grind.

He kept moving, reading and making it look like he could absorb anything the other team threw at him.

I was on the ice when it happened.

He carried the puck through center with that low, controlled speed that always made defenders back up half a step too early. I was already turning to support the rush when their defenseman stepped in and lined him up low.

It landed in the same place I had watched him protect since the second round.

The knee.

Torin’s skates slipped out from under him.

The sound he made when he hit the ice was small enough that I almost did not hear it over the crowd.

Almost.

The building did not go silent at first, that would have been easier. The crowd was still roaring, still reacting to the puck, still caught in the flow of the play. But I saw Torin go down, I saw the way his body folded wrong, I saw the way he tried to catch himself and could not.

And then everything else stopped.

I remember the exact second my body understood before my head did.

Torin did not get up.

Not right away.

The puck had gone somewhere I did not care about. Our defense was still scrambling, somebody shouted for a change. The refs blew the whistle late, I did not hear any of it properly because I was staring at Torin down near the boards, one hand on the ice, the other braced against his leg like he was trying to hold himself together by force.

For one terrible moment, I could not move.

I think I actually forgot how.

Then the trainers were on the ice.

That snapped me out of it.

I was already off the bench before I could think about what I was doing. The linesman shouted at me to stay back. I did not listen, I skated straight to Torin and dropped to my knees beside him just as one of the trainers crouched on the other side.

“Tor.” My voice came out harder than I meant it to.

“Tor, look at me.”

He turned his head slowly.

His face had gone white.

His jaw was clenched so hard I could see the muscle jumping near his cheek. His breathing looked too shallow. His hand was still locked around the same leg the hit had landed on, and even from where I was kneeling beside him I could see the strain in his eyes.

He looked at me anyway.

“Torin,” I said again, and my voice cracked around the name before I could stop it. “Talk to me.”

One of the trainers asked him a question I did not hear.

Torin did not answer right away.

His eyes stayed on mine.

“I am okay,” he said.

It came out tight and strained and completely unconvincing.

The words hit me in the chest so hard I almost forgot to breathe.

“No,” I said immediately. “No, you are not.”

He tried to shift and failed, just a fraction, but enough for me to see the flicker of pain that crossed his face. The trainers were already checking his leg, already asking him where it hurt, how bad it was, whether he had felt anything pop or twist or tear. He was trying to answer and trying not to show too much at the same time.

I grabbed his wrist before I even realized I had reached for him.

His hand was cold.

He turned his head back towards me again, and the second our eyes met, I felt something in my chest start to break apart.

“Please,” I said, and I did not care that the word sounded wrong in my mouth. “Please get up.”

He shook his head once, almost imperceptibly.

The movement looked like it hurt.

I took a breath that did not go all the way in. “Torin.”

He tried to push up with one hand. His body made it a few inches before the leg buckled under him again and the pain hit his face so fast I nearly lost my mind.

One of the trainers put a hand on his shoulder and told him not to move. Another was already speaking into the radio for more help, more assessment, maybe a stretcher if they needed it. I did not know, I did not care, I only knew he was still on the ice and his face had gone too still, too focused, the way it got when he was trying to survive pain without letting it show too much.

I leaned in closer because I had to.

“Look at me,” I said again. “Stay with me.”

His eyes found mine.

I saw the fight in him then, the stubbornness, the refusal. The way he always tried to make pain into something manageable by sheer will. It had carried him through months of hiding that knee from everyone, through playoffs, through games I had already worried about too much. Now it was on the ice in front of me, worse than it had ever been.

His mouth parted like he wanted to say something.

The words did not come.

One of the trainers touched his leg again and he flinched hard enough to make my stomach drop.

That was when the world fully changed.

The crowd had gone quieter now, pulled into that awful collective awareness that something real and bad was happening. The refs were standing back. Our bench was on its feet, Danton was already shouting from the glass for the line to clear. Raffi was halfway off the bench with both hands on the boards.

I did not look anywhere except at Torin.

“Can you stand?” I asked, already knowing the answer and hating myself for asking anyway.

He swallowed.

Then, very faintly, “I do not know.”

The honesty in that was worse than if he had lied.

I nodded once because I could not do anything else.

The trainers kept talking to him in short, low voices, telling him to breathe, asking where the pain was, whether it was the knee, the hip, the ankle. Torin tried to shift his weight again and his face changed so fast I felt it in my own body.

He could not stand.

The trainer looked up at me briefly, then back to Torin. “We are getting you off.”

I felt my mouth go dry.

Torin tried to nod and did not quite manage it. His eyes came back to mine.

He looked angry now.

Not at me, at the situation, at the ice, at his own body for failing him in front of everyone. That familiar frustration was there, but underneath it was something else too. A quiet, sharp edge that said he hated that I had seen him like this.

I shook my head once at him because I knew the look.

“Do not,” I said quietly.

His jaw tightened.

He tried to make a joke out of it and failed halfway through the first breath. “This is not ideal.”

A sound almost got out of me. Not a laugh. Something too close to panic for that.

“No,” I said. “It is not.”

He held my gaze.

I could not stop staring at him.

One of the trainers said, “On three.”

I heard Danton shouting from the bench, but I could not make out the words.

The trainer counted.

They got Torin up enough to help him move, but he could not take the weight properly. His leg gave under him before he could get full balance, and both trainers had to catch him immediately. I was already rising to follow before one of the refs cut in front of me and told me to stay back.

I did not stay back.

The trainer saw me and said, “Cassian, give us a second.”

I heard my own voice come out raw. “I am not leaving.”

“No one asked you to.”

Torin looked at me when they shifted him again, and for a second all the noise in the arena felt very far away.

His face was still white.

He looked wrecked.

And he still looked at me like he wanted to make sure I was okay before he let himself be moved.

That was the part that cracked something in me.

The fact that even now, with pain written across his face and his body failing him on the ice, he was still looking at me like I was the one he needed to check on.

I swallowed hard.

“Tor,” I said again, and my voice broke completely this time. I did not try to hide it. “Please.”

He stared at me for one beat too long.

Then, with visible effort, he managed a small nod.

It was not enough.

It was the only thing I was going to get.

The trainers began guiding him towards the tunnel. Torin’s shoulders were tense, his head slightly down, his hand still braced near his knee, trying to keep the damage from getting worse with every step.

The arena stayed loud around us, but I barely heard it.

All I could hear was the sound of his skates scraping across the ice as they helped him off.

I followed a few feet behind before the refs blocked me again and pointed towards my bench. There was still a game happening, a period to finish, a score to chase. I knew that, I understood it. None of it reached me properly.

I watched Torin disappear into the tunnel with the trainers on either side of him.

He did not look back this time.

Or maybe he did and I missed it because my vision had started tunneling around the exact same empty space he was leaving behind.

For a second, I could not feel the stick in my hands.

I could not hear the crowd.

I could not remember the score.

The game had not even stopped around me, not really, but it no longer mattered in the same way. Torin was gone, the ice felt wrong without him, the rink did.

I stood there at the edge of the shift while the officials waved everyone back into position and the play started moving again around the absence he had left behind.

My heart felt shattered.

The game was still going.

I was not.