Art's voice may have been level, but it might as well have been an attack. It wasn't the vague reassurance that Ben had been hoping for, the response that would have allowed him to dismiss this and push it back into the background with all of the rest of things he probably should have been thinking about and trying to resolve. He felt defensive, which was — actually kind of good, in a weird way, because at least he felt here. Maybe this would happen at the duel tomorrow, too — maybe seeing Macmillan would make him angry enough that he'd be present and he could cast spells and win a duel, and everything would be fine.

"She's sick," he said, voice tight. "And she'd try to talk me out of it, if she knew. And it's not — she doesn't need to know, because it's going to be fine. It's not about her," he said, listing off all of these disparate reasons as though he thought if he threw enough of them out maybe one would stick. "It's about Nova. And it's going to be fine, so she doesn't have to know. It's not like I'm — " going to die "— it's not like anything's going to happen. It would just worry her, you know? And there's no reason for her to be worried. She just needs to focus on — on getting better."