Chapter Nine
Cormal
The Prince continued to sit beside Cormal and asked gently, “Have you ever mourned losing him?”
And that caught Cormal right in the chest. He cried harder.
“I’m sorry I can’t hold you,” the Prince said quietly, and he sounded gutted—maybe not the way that Cormal felt, like all his insides had been ripped out and he wasn’t sure what was left inside him anymore, but like it actually hurt him to sit there beside Cormal and listen to his ugly sobbing.
Cormal reached out his hands, not that it did any good, but he laid them on the log they were sitting on, and the Prince reached out and placed his on top.
They sank right through, but that was the two of them connected, in a way.
Cormal might not be able to feel anything, but the Prince had said it was uncomfortable to pass through people, and he was doing it anyway, for Cormal, even if he probably didn’t deserve any comfort.
This might not have happened if Perian had never come to the castle, but Cormal’s actions once Perian was there were his own.
He might have felt like he’d had no choice…
but he’d still been making choices. He’d thought he’d had good reasons for them, but it had been his actions that had led to Brannal leaving, led to where they were now.
And if Perian hadn’t come, the Prince wouldn’t be here, either. Brannal wouldn’t have found the man he loved…
It hurt, but Cormal had known for years that Brannal didn’t care for him the way that he’d wanted.
He’d known it even when they were young, when they’d fallen into bed together, and then when they’d fallen out of it.
He’d seen then that he wasn’t what Brannal wanted, so he acted like it hadn’t meant as much to him, either, and he’d… stewed?
He’d thought he’d gotten over it, but maybe he hadn’t done that at all.
“I never meant to hurt Brannal,” Cormal assured the Prince, sniffing inelegantly. “But I didn’t listen to him, either. And I definitely didn’t want to see what was right under my nose.”
The Prince nodded, his expression still surprisingly understanding given everything Cormal had done.
“Cormal, I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear.”
Cormal laughed softly, even though it was still tinged with tears. “Hit me with it.”
He felt like he’d heard nothing but what he didn’t want to hear for months.
“He’s not dead.”
Cormal jolted. “I know he’s not.”
“You screwed up. Badly. You hurt him, and worse, you hurt someone he cares about.”
Face twisting, Cormal nodded and whispered through a throat that felt like it was filled with broken glass, “He said the only reason I was still alive was because Perian was.”
The Prince’s eyes widened, and he grimaced.
Cormal couldn’t help but laugh, even as his heart pinched and more stupid tears leaked down his face.
The Prince reached up and tried to brush them off, though of course it didn’t work.
But he had a look of intense concentration on his face, like if he tried hard enough, maybe it suddenly would.
No one had tried to wipe away Cormal’s tears since he’d been twelve and fallen and skinned his knee badly. Brannal had brushed his tears away and told him everything would be all right, that he’d get him to the doctor and they’d get him fixed up before his father even noticed.
Prince Kinan said, “Well, the good news is that you’re all still alive.”
Cormal made a huffy sound. He couldn’t seem to stop crying. He was trembling. The Prince was still concentrating on those tears, fingers that Cormal could see out of his peripheral vision but not feel brushing against his cheeks.
Gently, the Prince asked, “Do you believe now that Perian was a danger to anyone in the castle?”
“Apart from me?” Cormal asked, trying to joke, but the Prince just looked at him, and Cormal’s attempt at humor fell away.
With a sigh, he said, “He never touched me. I assume he could have. We got close sometimes. I told myself that I’d scared him enough, that he knew what I’d do to him if he tried anything. But he never did.”
The Prince nodded. “Maybe because he never would?”
Quietly, Cormal admitted, “He told me that he’d had no idea what he was until I told him. I didn’t believe him, then.”
“And now?”
“It’s just stupid enough to be true.”
The Prince let out a laugh, and Cormal smiled faintly at him, relieved by the tiny bit of levity.
“It seemed so straightforward at the time,” he croaked out. “Of course he had to be a danger. How could he not be? He’s a demon.”
“And it was much scarier to acknowledge that maybe he wasn’t?”
Cormal nodded. “I couldn’t take the risk. I don’t think anything they said could have convinced me. It ran so contrary to what I’d been taught to believe…”
“And what you wanted to hear?”
“Maybe that, too,” Cormal conceded reluctantly.
“I just… I kept thinking about what happened last time with the wraiths.” The Prince stiffened beside him, and Cormal hurried on.
“How could I stay silent? And yet no one listened to me, and it was like there was a wall up between us, and instead of everything getting fixed when Perian left, it all broke instead.”
“Does it have to stay broken?” the Prince asked carefully. “Nothing… irreparable has occurred.”
Cormal made a scoffing noise. “Tell that to Brannal.”
He’d never seen that look in his friend’s eyes, when he’d gone to his room and tried to convince him one last time, tried to make him see.
He’d tried to make Brannal look at the world the way Cormal saw it, and he’d finally understood that would never happen, that the distance between them was vaster than the ocean.
“I drove Brannal out of his home,” Cormal whispered brokenly. “I tried to take away the person he cares about most.”
“Did you know that was what you were doing?”
Cormal shook his head. Frowned. “Not deliberately.” He made a disgusted sound. “I can’t say for sure anymore. My feelings are so tangled up when it comes to Perian that it’s hard to be certain of how I actually felt compared to what I wanted to believe.”
“I have never, in my life, heard you be so truthful,” the Prince said.
Cormal straightened, a little offended. “What’s that supposed to mean? I know I made a mistake with that false report, but—”
The Prince tried to reach for him and then made his own annoyed face as his hand just went through Cormal’s leg.
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. That was dumb, and I don’t think you usually do dumb things.”
Cormal couldn’t help but laugh, the sound bitter but also amused. “Oh, I think everyone around me would beg to differ.”
“You were operating on bad information,” the Prince said a little bit sternly.
“I think some of that bad information was generated by you, and you didn’t listen when other people told you otherwise.
And until this conversation, I don’t know that you ever admitted any of that.
Maybe you did to yourself, but not to anyone else, did you? ”
Cormal considered this. “I… guess I didn’t.”
“Because you felt backed into a corner. And instead of backing down, you dug your feet in and held your position. Exactly like a Mage Warrior.”
Cormal closed his eyes for a moment, letting this feeling of being understood wash through him.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely when he opened his eyes again.
The Prince was still gazing steadily at him.
“That’s very generous of you. Because you also weren’t wrong before.
I saw a truth, and I turned it into everything when it wasn’t.
The others took in all the information I ignored, all the behavior that I didn’t want to acknowledge.
A good Mage Warrior has to be able to adapt to circumstances, or he’s going to die. ”
Weirdly, the Prince was beaming at him.
“What?” Cormal asked.
The Prince pointed at him. “You know what you just did?”
Confused, Cormal said, “What?”
“You just adapted.”
Cormal felt those words like a lick of flames, heat washing over his whole body.
“Instead of dying, you mean?” he whispered.
Because that was exactly what it had felt like. He’d backed himself into a corner, thrown up a wall of flame, and thought that was how he needed to live now.
He’d let himself fall into the trap of believing that he’d made all his decisions, that the only thing he could do now was keep reinforcing those decisions.
“What do you do when everything you’ve done is wrong?” Cormal asked rhetorically.
But the Prince had an answer. “You admit it. You apologize. And you see if things can be rebuilt.” His eyes were shining, his expression soft. He looked beautiful. “I can’t promise you that it will fix everything. But I can tell you that nothing will be fixed if you don’t try.”
Cormal had wanted to know why everyone couldn’t just get over what had happened because it was over now and he couldn’t change what he’d done… but he’d never once acknowledged that he’d made a mistake or apologized.
“Son of a wraith,” Cormal swore. “No wonder everyone’s been calling me an asshole.”
The Prince frowned. “Who’s been calling you an asshole?”
Cormal waved his hand. “Oh, everyone. It’s clearly what they’re thinking when they say ‘Summus.’”
The Prince looked weirdly torn between amusement and distress.
“Is that truly what you hear every time someone calls you Summus?”
Cormal nodded.
“And you never call them on it?”
“What was there to say?” Cormal shrugged. “It’s my title, and everyone in the entire castle knows what I did to earn it.”
The Prince was looking at him strangely. “Brannal chose to leave.”
Cormal shot him a look. “I think choice is scarcely the right word.”
“But you thought he’d stay.”
Grimacing, Cormal said, “Because I’m an idiot. In retrospect, it was actually entirely obvious what he would do. I can’t blame him for assuming I did it on purpose. I never particularly wanted to be Summus, you know, no matter what everyone thinks.”
“I know,” the Prince said simply.
Cormal thought that was an awfully generous acknowledgment.