4. Reckoning
RECKONING
KIT
Dramatics might indeed run in the Ravenswing family, Kit had to begrudgingly admit.
She had always known her brother to be rather showy.
She’d come to expect it. Occasionally relished in it, even.
It was, after all, endlessly entertaining to watch him don his hat as the noble heir, the future duke. He played his role so well.
Something was different now.
When Kit had answered Evander’s rather abrupt summons, she’d walked in to find him mid-argument with their mother, words of grand goals and noble intentions tripping from his tongue. He had a gift for spinning words, to be sure. He might protest, but the man was born for politics.
So, Kit listened patiently as her brother spoke of what Nyrundelle needed. That, as members of nobility, they needed to lead by example. That they needed to take advantage of the opportunity being provided now, that it was their duty.
Pretty words to mask an intention that was decidedly not.
Because Kit quickly grew to understand that she had been summoned for a very specific purpose. That there was a reason he had met with the king, had asked for his blessing.
Evander had made a decision.
And it wasn’t one that would lead to Elyria finally—officially—becoming the sister Kit already considered her to be. It was about something . . . else.
“I will enter the Arcane Crucible,” he’d said.
She’d always known her brother was not meant for anything small in this life. That he had a part to play in something larger. Something important.
She just hadn’t expected this.
Their mother spoke first.
“You will not.”
Laeliana Ravenswing was not a woman typically prone to outward displays of emotion.
She was the duchess of Aerithia, sister to the king, and had been raised to wield her courtly manners like a blade.
This was a woman who had buried two husbands and lived through three separate wars without so much as a crack in her composure, after all.
Yet when Evander made his declaration, Laeliana’s golden eyes—the mirror image of her son’s—had flashed with something alarmingly close to fear.
Evander’s voice was steady, unwavering. Almost . . . cold. “I’ve made my decision, Mother. Telling you was a courtesy. The only person’s permission I needed was the king’s. My uncle granted it.”
Laeliana’s wings twitched behind her. “You are the heir to this house. Third in line to the throne. You have a duty here. You cannot throw your life away on this foolishness just because?—”
“Foolishness? Did the celestials create the Arcane Crucible for no reason, then? Is the Crown of Concord not worth pursuing any longer? With its power, we could fix so much. What kind of son of Nyrundelle would I be if I stayed my hand, letting others risk their lives for such a prize while I continued resting on my laurels?”
Laeliana scoffed, and Kit could no longer hold her tongue. “Those ‘others’ have been training for the past quarter century—longer!—to take on the challenges of the Crucible. You may have been a magnificent warrior in your heyday, Ev, but admit it. When’s the last time you even wielded a blade?”
“Who needs a blade?” Evander drew his hand in a long sweep through the air in front of him, his fingers curling around nothing as water seeped from his palm, crystallizing, forming a long spear of ice. He gripped the shaft, rapping the end on the floor with a wet thwack.
Kit’s eyes nearly rolled out the back of her head.
If Evander noticed her flippancy, he didn’t acknowledge it. “You would rather the humans claim the crown then? So they can come for our land, siphon away more of the earth’s mana, bit by bit?”
“As if a human could make it through the Crucible,” Laeliana muttered.
“Or worse, what if one of Malakar’s followers gets their hands on it?” Evander continued. “Imagine that kind of power in the hands of a sanguinagi, the Crown of Concord corrupted with blood magic.”
“Since when have you cared about any of that? About anything other than this?” Kit gestured broadly to the room around them.
His gaze softened. “Things change, Kitty Kat.”
Kit closed her fist in the air, melting down Evander’s ice spear with a wisp of her own tideweaving magic, letting it puddle on the floor around his boots.
“You won’t win.” The words were harsh, but they were true.
“No one ever wins. The Crucible takes its champions and leaves their bones where no one ever finds them. It turns their names into nothing but echoes. There are plenty of fools already willing to risk their lives for the glory of it, so why you? What could possibly be worth taking that risk?”
For the first time since this conversation had begun, something flickered across Evander’s face—a crack in the carefully controlled mask he was wearing.
Kit narrowed her eyes.
She knew that look.
And she knew her brother. He was not the kind of man who sought fame or glory. Despite his declarations otherwise, she knew this wasn’t even about their people, about Nyrundelle.
She exhaled sharply. “This is about Ellie.”
Laeliana threw her hands up, a noise of displeasure ripping through the air. “Of course it is,” she said, shaking her head. “I should have known.” She collapsed into a nearby chair, the wood scraping against the marble floor, as if staying upright was suddenly an impossible task.
Evander didn’t confirm it. Didn’t deny it either.
But it was as clear and bright as the morning star.
He loved her. He’d always wanted to protect her, even if she’d be the first to adamantly insist she needed no such thing.
How many times had Kit listened to her brother gripe about wanting Elyria to let him in just a little more?
To let him help shoulder her burden, to lighten the load of whatever inner turmoil she carried with her.
Kit knew the feeling. She would do anything for Ellie too.
But this?
“Stars damn it, Ev.”
“The Crown of Concord?—”
“Yes, yes, I remember. ‘With its power, we could fix so much.’ ” Kit let out a bitter laugh, pressing a hand to her temple. “You don’t want to fix the world. You just want to fix her.”
His jaw ticked.
“And if I were to tell you there’s nothing to fix? That she’ll be fine? That she’s always been fine?”
“I know you pride yourself on knowing just about everybody’s business, little sister, but you will simply have to trust me when I tell you that you don’t know everything. Not about her.”
Kit swallowed the surge of defensiveness that bubbled up at his implication. “I know enough. And unfortunately for you, big brother, this decision isn’t just up to you. This is about all of us.”
Evander ignored her, turning toward their mother. “I wanted to tell you both privately, before the official announcement tonight.”
Laeliana’s lips pressed into a thin line, and Kit thought it might have been to keep them from quivering. “And if I forbid it?”
His golden eyes gleamed with a desperate fire. “You won’t.”
Their mother inhaled slowly, staring at her son as though searching for something—the right words, some way to dissuade him.
And then Kit watched her mother’s hands clench into fists as she rose from her chair and took several measured steps toward her son.
She placed a palm on his cheek, some unspoken thing lingering in the air between them, then turned on her heel and walked out of the room.
That was it, then.
When the ice-blooded, steel-spined Duchess of Aerithia turned away in quiet acceptance, Kit had no choice but to accept it too. Nothing would change his mind. Evander had made his decision.
She just had to hope they could all live with it.