Chapter Fourteen
Cormal
The next morning, Molun came to see Cormal in his office. He had a weird expression on his face, and Cormal hoped that maybe the other man was going to bring up the topic Cormal wanted to discuss.
But what he said instead was, “Is kneeing you in the groin an option for everyone?”
Cormal huffed a breath. No surprise, now that he thought about it, that the story would spread. The Princess certainly wasn’t shy.
“If it would make you feel better,” Cormal told him.
Molun’s expression got ever weirder, perhaps because he realized that Cormal was serious. It would hurt like blazes, but Cormal would accept it if it actually resolved things between them.
Molun’s expression finally settled into an angry one. “It’s not really us you hurt. You know that, don’t you?”
He stomped out as fast as his limp would allow, before Cormal could figure out what to say to that. Molun… kind of had a point. Cormal had hurt the others because they’d cared for Perian. It was Perian he’d harmed. It was Brannal he’d driven away, and that was what had hurt the others.
He stared blindly at the wall.
Was he going about this all wrong? Should he start with the two of them?
(Well, it was too late to do that, but should he continue with them?) They had the least reason to listen to anything he had to say, and if he were them, he’d surely consign a letter to the fire.
Should he go see them? They still wouldn’t have to listen to him, and Brannal would probably try to set him on fire…
but it would be starting at the beginning.
If he resolved things with them, one way or the other, it would surely make it easier for everyone else to figure out how to respond.
The more he thought about it, the more it felt like the right decision… but he had to figure out how to do it. The last thing he needed was for anyone to think he was about to attack Perian or Brannal. (He wouldn’t stand a chance, of course, but that hadn’t stopped him in the past.)
Then he realized that he was contemplating lying to everyone at the castle, which probably meant he hadn’t learned a single lesson about anything…
Except he wouldn’t be lying to do anything bad.
If anyone was going to get hurt doing this, it would be him.
His was the only safety he might be jeopardizing, and that was his choice to make.
He stared out the door of his office, not really seeing the corridor beyond.
Sometimes, he dreamed about the way Perian had looked when Cormal had first seen him after the kidnapping, bruised, battered, and covered in soot.
But by then, Cormal had helped stop the fire, and he’d heard that Perian had killed someone, and that was all he’d focused on.
He’d pushed all the uncomfortable feelings aside, and focused on only the aspects that made Cormal right.
And now here they were. Cormal had done everything wrong, and maybe going back to the beginning was the only hope of untangling the mess he’d made. He drew in a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Yes, he was sure that was the way to go.
Summus went on inspections of the watch stations, so he should be able to set that up. Plus, it would give everyone at the castle time without him, and surely they’d like that. And assuming Brannal didn’t kill him, Cormal could complete the inspections after, so it wouldn’t even really be lying.
There was a knock on his door frame, and then one of the novices, Breeta, stuck their head in.
“We need you. There’s a new novice. Arvus sent me.”
Cormal sprang to his feet, all of his plans evaporating.
He’d been seeing new novices arrive since he was six, of course, but this was the first time one had arrived while he was Summus.
It was his job to greet them, to make sure they were comfortable and settled, and to come up with a training plan for them, though Summus typically worked closely with the instructors for that.
It was a life-changing event. Even without the possible trauma if their element had manifested badly, they almost always needed to move to live with either the Mages or the Mage Warriors.
(Some Mages did private tutoring, but they were the minority.) Even with a really supportive family, the novice’s life would be upended.
(He thought of a scared twelve-year-old boy and hoped desperately that he’d been a good friend to Brannal then, at least.)
The transition to novice and Mage Warrior wasn’t always a smooth one, and now Cormal was responsible for ensuring it went well.
He followed Breeta back to one of the small training rooms and saw that there were three people at the front of the room, two adults, as well as a slight figure in between them who was undoubtedly the child in question.
Their backs were to him, but the child didn’t look very old.
It made a difference if you arrived at twelve or at seventeen.
Those years mattered. But there was no way to control when someone would manifest. It simply happened when it happened.
“Ah, here he is,” Arvus said, face relaxed and welcoming. “Cormal is our expert when it comes to fire—”
And then everyone turned, and Cormal actually felt the blood drain from his face as he sucked in a sharp breath. He wavered, like the world had tilted unexpectedly. He blinked, but the vision didn’t waver… and the look on the man’s face said he’d expected something like this.
Arvus took one look at Cormal’s face and then said, “Breeta, get Molun for me. Now.”
Cormal stared at a ghost and demanded, “Who are you?”
The man had his arms protectively around the woman and child. Cormal could see that she probably wasn’t his partner, as he’d assumed from the back. She looked like she was his daughter, and presumably the mother of the child who stood tucked next to them.
“My name is Tramon,” he said, and he even sounded—Cormal wasn’t thinking about it. “I couldn’t leave Livala here without seeing if it was going to be a problem.”
Cormal pressed his lips together and tried to get himself under control. “But who are you?”
And after a long moment, the older man admitted, “Tramad was my father. You and I had different mothers. When I didn’t display any magical gifts by my eighteenth birthday, he moved on.”
Cormal stared blindly at the man who looked so very much like his father.
He didn’t have the green eyes that Cormal had inherited, and his hair was mostly salt and pepper, but the build, the height, the nose, the chin…
It was all there. In a man who looked like he was old enough to be Cormal’s father.
He tried to parse through this with a brain that felt like it had been frozen. “He must have had you when he was very young.”
“Twenty,” Tramon agreed.
Cormal’s father had had a baby young… so he had plenty of time to try again if necessary? Cormal had known that he’d been a late baby, had known that his father placed so much stock in being from a family of Mages, but he’d never expected something like this.
It was really hard to focus.
“So this is my… grand-niece?” he asked, gesturing at the child who was watching him like she thought he might explode.
Cormal wondered if she was right.
Tramon nodded. “Yes. Half by blood.”
Cormal waved this aside. “He hid a whole family from me?”
Tramon was silent for a long moment, and then he said carefully, “Continuing the magical line was very important to him.”
Cormal had always known that, hadn’t he? Tramad had always made it sound so important, and like it was a great personal achievement. As if Brannal, who hadn’t come from any “magical line” at all, wasn’t one of the most powerful Mages who’d ever existed.
But Cormal’s father had been so fixated on being the best, that he had—
“Son of a wraith,” Cormal spat, barely noticing when everyone in front of him flinched.
“That’s why I didn’t live with him when I was little!
That’s why he was so angry when my mother brought me when I was six.
She was sick, and she couldn’t take care of me anymore.
He yelled at her in private. I never really understood, but I was so young, I thought it was one of those weird adult things.
” He scoffed. “It never occurred to me… He’d hidden me away, just like he hid you.
He hadn’t planned to reveal my existence unless I manifested an element.
But my mother came to the castle, and others knew, so he couldn’t just get rid of me.
Only then I did manifest fire, and he could spout off all that rhetoric about our magical family always producing Mages.
But he was hiding his children and abandoning them if they didn’t give him what he wanted! His cursed secrets!”
It was getting hard to breathe, everything was burning hot, and Cormal couldn’t quite figure out what the problem was, until there was a voice at his ear saying, “Cormal! Cormal! Look at me.”
Blindly, he looked at Kinan, wondering distantly where he’d come from.
“Hey,” Kinan said, something weird about his voice. “Come with me. No, oops, all right. Fire and water, Molun, bring him, please.”
Cormal was being pulled away, but Kinan was still there, and Cormal tried to listen to him.
“Here’s the first thing you should know about being here. Everyone loses control sometimes, and it can be a little dangerous if you can control fire, but there are always Mages who can help with that, like Molun.”
Yes, Molun was always good about getting Cormal wet if he needed to.
Was that why Cormal was wet right now? He looked down at himself and realized that he was soaked through, but there were still flames flickering periodically around his body as he marched through the hall, going wherever he was being directed.