Flashback ( PDFDrive )

“Wow,” she whispered, letting out what was probably an
embarrassing moan. “That’s . . . wow.”
“What does it feel like?” Fitz asked.
Sophie shook her head, unable to find words to properly describe it.
The closest she could come up with was, “It’s like . . . soaking in
sunshine.”
“Told you you’d love it!” Elwin said smugly. “All the treatments I’ve
put you through were to get you to this point—and it only gets better
from here. Can you make a fist for me, Sophie?”
Her fingers easily obeyed, curling into her palm as her thumb
wrapped around them.
“Good. Now uncurl your fingers until you feel a stretch across your
palm. Does that hurt at all?”
“Nope!”
“Perfect! Then I want you to try for a hundred sets of that: Curl,
uncurl. But don’t be afraid to stop if your hand tells you it’s too much.
I’m picking that number arbitrarily. You know your limits.”
Sophie set to work as Elwin poured a sludgy brown serum into
Fitz’s bath, making the slime crackle like Pop Rocks as he helped Fitz
lower his leg into the basin.
The groany sound Fitz made might’ve been the most adorable thing
Sophie had ever heard.
“Amazing, right?” she asked.
His response was some sort of garbled sigh.
“Don’t go relaxing too much,” Elwin warned. “You have strength
exercises to work through too. But first . . .”
He helped Fitz sit up and removed the bandages around his ribs,
then wrapped his chest in a long cloth soaked with slime from the