Chapter Twelve
Cormal
Of course apologizing didn’t go the way Cormal wanted it to, but he’d… really hoped, apparently, even though he’d tried not to. He’d wanted to actually mend some of those bridges the same way that he seemed to have mended them with Prince Kinan.
But of course it wasn’t that easy, and he wasn’t sure, now, why he’d thought that starting with Molun was a good idea. Except, you know, he was Cormal’s Secundus, and Cormal had… honestly thought he’d be happy about this?
Molun heaved himself out of his chair, wobbled a little, and stared at Cormal like he was the lowest of the low.
“Let me get this straight: after driving Brannal out of here and depriving us of the best Summus we’ve ever had, you’re just going to abandon the post, too?
Is your goal to wind up with no Mage Warriors at all?
I mean, I know that you’re a selfish jerk, but I actually thought you cared about the Mage Warriors! ”
“Of course I—!”
“And asking me if I’d like to be Summus? Seriously! That’s not funny, Cormal!”
“I wasn’t—”
Molun’s eyes were spitting fire, and worse, there was a trace of hurt there. “I know I can’t do it, all right? You don’t have to rub salt in the wound!”
“I wasn’t—!”
But Cormal didn’t actually manage to get a complete sentence out because then Molun was slamming out of the room—slower than normal, still limping, although Cormal noticed that he didn’t have the cane today, which was good.
He was slow enough that Cormal could have stopped him, but as much as he wanted to make the man sit down and listen to him, he didn’t let himself move.
If the only reason he could catch Molun was because he was injured, then he couldn’t do it. He was sure if Molun would just listen to him—
Well. Cormal huffed to himself. He was sort of the expert on not hearing people, wasn’t he?
It had become entirely obvious that if there was a way for Cormal to say what he wanted to say that Molun would actually hear, this wasn’t it.
Talking more was no guarantee that someone else would actually hear you.
(It was still dawning on him just how frustrating this had to have been for Brannal, for Perian, for their friends. They had kept trying to tell Cormal the truth, and he hadn’t heard it.)
He laid his head down on his desk and just rested it there for a moment.
He’d known this wasn’t going to be easy.
But he’d made the mistake of thinking that Molun’s dislike of Cormal and of his being in this position would predispose him to listen to him about it.
Instead, he seemed to have assumed that Cormal was either joking or was trying to make matters worse with the Mage Warriors.
Should he have started with the Queen instead?
She was the one who was actually going to appoint someone as Summus, after all.
But he didn’t really need to apologize to her.
Well, maybe a little. But if anything, she needed to be apologizing to other people, just like he was—and he wasn’t about to tell her that.
He could apologize for the part he’d played in getting her support for his plan, but she’d made her own decisions.
Would she have decided differently if all of her Mage Warriors had supported Perian?
If he and Brannal had been on the same side, would they have convinced her that Perian was safe?
He really wasn’t sure. She was a mother and a queen, and she’d been determined to protect her children and the country.
It had seemed to him that their beliefs aligned, but who was to say?
Maybe he’d been scaremongering with her as well as with the rest of the castle, just as Brannal had accused. Cormal didn’t know anything anymore.
“What did you do to piss Molun off?”
His head popped up off his desk. Delana was at the door, leaning against the door frame with one ankle crossed over the other, regarding him with amusement. He could do what he liked in his office… but he was pretty sure she’d never caught him in so undignified a position before.
He sighed. “He thought I was mocking him about his injury and, uh, trying to wreck the Mage Warriors worse than they already are.”
Delana blinked at him, then her gaze narrowed. “Cormal.”
“I really wasn’t trying to do that,” he told her. “I swear! Not that I can blame anyone for thinking I mean the worst whenever I do something.”
A frown twisted her face, and she was looking at him like she couldn’t quite figure him out.
No surprise there. Cormal was beginning to see that he’d felt that way for years.
“What were you actually trying to do?” she asked.
“You want to come in? Shut the door?” He sighed. “I’ll probably screw it up with you, too, but I can at least try to get it right.”
Looking kind of worried now, she did as he’d asked and sat down across from him, arms crossed, as she gazed at him narrowly.
“Despite what it looks like, I never wanted to be Summus,” he told her.
“If I could undo all of it right now, I would. Unfortunately, there’s no magic on this earth that will let me go back and change what happened.
So all I can do is try to apologize and see if I can help fix any of it, instead of breaking it.
I asked Molun if he had any interest in being Summus. ”
Ah. So that was what it looked like when Delana was stunned into silence. He’d never actually seen someone’s jaw drop before.
After a very long moment, she said, “Cormal—”
“I know no one believes me, that you all think I wanted this.” He gestured at the stupid desk and his stupid position behind it.
“I know that just speaking words doesn’t have a lot of meaning.
So I thought I’d start with action. If I stepped down as Summus, then maybe one day, people would actually believe that my actions never had anything to do with that.
That I’d have Brannal back here in a heartbeat, if he’d come. ”
She was still staring at him and finally asked, “What happened?”
Well, at least she hadn’t stormed out of the room yet.
“I apologized to someone. They asked me if I actually wanted this, and then they reminded me that even though I’d accepted, I didn’t have to keep doing it.” He huffed a breath. “And suddenly it seemed like maybe there was a way forward. Even if it means groveling. A lot.”
She was still staring, and he was starting to feel uncomfortable. He swallowed but made himself continue to meet her gaze.
Slowly, she said, “You’d be Secundus while Molun was Summus? Really?”
He blinked at her. “Oh, well, I thought I’d just be a Mage Warrior while he was Summus. Or, I suppose, if that would fix everything, that I’d be a Mage. I can’t imagine anyone picking me as Secundus at this point.” His lips twisted. “I’m really not a good bet, am I?”
And then, to his surprise, she jumped up from her chair, came around the desk, and leaned down to wrap her arms around him. He swallowed heavily, buried his face in her chest, and held on.
She kissed the top of his head. “Oh, Cormal. I haven’t seen this side of you in a long time.”
Cormal was pretty sure he’d buried this side of himself seven years ago, when he’d stupidly ended up almost following in his father’s footsteps while trying to do the opposite.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into her leather vest. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen and was a jealous asshole and hurt Brannal and Perian and all of you.”
It was almost easier to say, the second time, and he wondered if it got easier every time—or if this had been easier because Delana was the only person who hadn’t completely abandoned him, even though he deserved it.
She was also hugging him, and he’d been pretty sure that she was going to hear him, even if she didn’t entirely believe him.
She laughed. “Oh, Cormal, trying to get it all out there at once?”
He nodded. “I am. But I need to talk to a lot of different people, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t all going to listen. Which is fair, since I spent months doing the same thing.”
She pulled back from him, cupped his face with her hands and stared at him. “What happened?”
He huffed a laugh. “I realized that I was becoming—had become—a person I didn’t want to be.
And I’m still going to lose my temper, and I’m probably going to completely screw this up, but I was reminded that this is still all me.
I have choices to make, and these are my decisions.
And I can stare at the past and be bitter that something is wrong with it, or I can try to make changes for the future.
” He held up a hand and a fireball appeared.
“I can still do this, obviously. You’ll need to douse me with water at some point, I have no doubt.
But I’m going to try to make a difference. ”
“I’m proud of you,” she told him.
He leaned into her hands, closing his eyes for a moment. He swallowed, sniffed back tears, and opened his eyes, pulling back a little. She let her hands drop.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “I mean, I’m not sure anyone should be telling me they’re proud of me for trying to act like a decent human being, but I appreciate it nonetheless.”
She laughed softly, and he smiled at her and felt a tiny bit of the tension diminish.
“I have a lot of work to do,” he admitted. “But I’m committed to trying. Also to trying not to lose my temper when people tell me that I’m an asshole out loud.”
An eyebrow rose. “You think they’re doing it in their heads?”
He shrugged. “That’s what I hear every time they call me Summus. And I don’t blame them for it.”
She was looking at him weird again. “You know, I think you’ve been lobbing far fewer fireballs than even I realized.”
He let out a huff of laughter. How had he managed to back himself into a corner and not realize that it was the worst life ever? He’d thought it was the only choice. Why hadn’t he thought about what Brannal had done, about how they’d backed him into a corner and he’d dissolved the walls.