Chapter 5
When the boys turned twelve, Kinlear’s illness became too much for the cold, frigid air of the north, and he was sent away.
He went south, to Touvre, to breathe in the warmth of their mother’s summer palace. Arawn stayed behind...the only Laroux prince that remained.
Those first days without his brother felt empty, his soul strangely disjointed, for Kinlear had always been Arawn’s soft landing place.
And now he was gone.
There was only the ghost of his laughter to fill the space.
So Arawn trained.
Even when he was tired, he trained. From sunup to sundown, he learned all he could about his pillared magic.
At first, it was to fill the gap of missing Kinlear, for they had never spent more than a few days apart. But as time wore on, and Arawn’s magic burned and brightened, and Vivorr’s glory sat in its rightful place...
He lost his fear.
With magic, he could not fail.
With Vivorr on his side...he could be all he was meant to be.
His father stopped frowning at him. He gave him space, allowed him to learn and grow and be shaped, and it filled Arawn with a new sense of joy.
He was a Firemage.
He mastered all his invocations by the time he was thirteen.
The godstongue became as easy to him as breathing, for he tried and failed and tried again, until he could call a perfect flame to his fingertips with a whispered prayer.
..a surge of power. After that, he’d learned how to conjure a churning ball of fire to his palm.
He practiced how to thrust that magic away from him. How to land it home against a target. How to choose when the fire would burn, and when it was only for show. How to use it to warm, and how to use it for light alone.
After he Settled, others did, too. Their pillared gods chose them, day after day...while plenty of younglings were looked over. Kinlear was among them. He’d told Arawn as much through their Speaking Stones, right after he’d complained about Touvre having a shameful lack of good books.
And as time passed, the wall of separation between Sacred Knight and Scribe – and those who became servants, who would never Settle at all – became wider. Harder to cross.
Friendships were separated, as roles in the war took their place.
Arawn was thirteen, two years into his magic, when he finally mastered the connection between his sword and his power. It was a feat he’d been studying for months. The best Firemages could call a flame to their blade, making it much easier to sever darksoul heads.
Today, his own weapon was left smoking in the snow, where he’d melted the damned hilt right off it. A problem, that he wasn’t yet able to control putting the flame out himself. He’d accidentally melted three test dummies, for the fire kept spreading, until the Watermages had to put it out for him.
But...at least he’d ignited it.
He’d gone back to the Citadel after that, into the training room to finish his day with his fists instead of his fire. He’d bested far too many opponents there before the day was called early, several of the other Knights-in-training sent to the infirmary to have their wounds tended to.
And now he stood on the edge of the training room, catching his breath as he watched the war eagles take flight on the other side of the glass. It was mesmerizing, the way they fell from the sky. The way their Riders clung to them as if they were one body...one set of golden wings.
“Do you have a moment, Crown Prince?”
He stiffened.
He didn’t have time. He was just leaving, off to another War Table meeting.
He couldn’t be late.
But he turned to find Soraya as she approached, her dark curls plastered with sweat. She whispered something to her god, and a little gust of wind pushed her hair back from her face, drying it.
She’d Settled only recently, far later than all the rest.
“No,” Arawn said, for he was always honest to a fault. “I don’t have time.”
But...he paused as he noticed the swelling on her face. She’d taken another massive hit in sparring. She was too slow. Too weak, though she had no quit in her. “You need to stop getting hit.”
“Oh, is that what I should do?” Soraya asked, crossing her arms. “Aren’t you a clever Prince.”
She turned those amber eyes onto him...and he bristled.
Gods, how could one girl make him feel so frustrated?
He swore the embers inside of him hissed, wanting to be unleashed again.
But that was just what Soraya did. He’d known her his entire life, even called upon her a rare few times, when Kinlear was locked away in his room after paying penance.
..and at the time, Soraya was the only youngling who knew how to successfully complete an unlocking rune.
But it didn’t mean they were friends.
He had none.
And she frustrated him more than he cared to admit.
She made his fists clench and... for some reason, his mouth felt dry when she was near. And he found himself unable to look away from her, because her eyes were like little embers of amber flames, themselves, and...
Arawn blinked.
I can’t stand her, he said.
Yes, that was it.
“What do you want, Soraya?”
“You’re not very fun to talk to,” Soraya said. “Do you know that?”
He blinked. “So don’t talk to me.”
“That’s going to be a problem,” Soraya said, and frowned up at him as she wiped fresh sweat from her brow with a small towel. “I need your help.”
Arawn blinked down at her. “You...need my help.”
She nodded, her dark curls falling back into her face. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
And then those amber eyes held him, boring into his soul, until he felt like squirming.
She wasn’t like other younglings.
She reminded him, strangely, of Kinlear.
Soraya’s cloak was off, for starters, revealing the penance marks she’d paid were nearly as many as his brother’s. She was one of those challengers. The kind of Sacred that loved to serve the gods, every bit as much as she seemed to love challenging them, too.
Gods help anyone who faced her in true war.
Of course, she’d have to get physically stronger, first. She was a terrible fighter. A darksoul would slay her in an instant.
“I need you to train me,” Soraya said, as if she sensed the words in his brain. “So I can be ready for the nomage march.”
“What?”
“A cinnamon roll, every day,” she said with a grin, bobbing on her toes. “That’s how I’ll pay you for your services.”
How she knew he liked cinnamon rolls so much, Arawn couldn’t be certain. But the offer was pointless. “I could just get them myself. I have access to the kitchens.”
She groaned in defeat.
So, he picked up his cloak, which he’d left hanging carefully on the edge of the training rack, and slid it on.
She followed when he turned to go.
“We both know I’ll die out there,” Soraya said, jogging to keep up with him.
She’d donned her own cloak, which Arawn realized, in horror...was covered in wrinkles so bad it looked like she’d balled it up and tossed it to the floor.
His hands itched to fix them, but he kept walking.
“Ask someone else.”
“No,” Soraya said.
“No?” he glanced down at her, sidestepping a set of younglings as they sparred. He itched to correct their form, too, but...no. He had to keep going. Not everything has to be perfect, he told himself. Sometimes, creativity gets in the way.
It was a mantra he’d learned from Alaris, though it did little to help his annoyance.
Soraya kept pace with him, her footsteps light as a feather.
“You’re the best. And I want the best! Otherwise...I won’t make it to earn my own sword.”
She wasn’t wrong.
He could picture it all now, the moment every Sacred Knight in Training was preparing for. When they’d march with the nomage forces onto the Expanse in true battle. If they survived, they’d earn their own Sacred blade.
Then they’d move on to try their hand at becoming a Rider.
Arawn would succeed. Of that, he had no doubt, for battling with sword and fist and magic was where he shined.
You must not fail, his father’s voice hissed at him.
But...
He frowned down at Soraya.
He wasn’t so sure about her.
“Why do you care so much?” Arawn asked. “Become a Scribe. You’d survive that just fine.” She was too small to be a warrior, anyhow. She was...too weak. He wasn’t afraid to admit it. And she’d always been skilled at inscribing runes.
Her dreams might be what brought about her untimely death.
But she wouldn’t give up. Still, she followed after him, insistent. “I’m a Windmage,” Soraya said.
Arawn sighed. “And?”
“And I’m destined to be in the sky! I won’t have it any other way.”
“The gods decide that,” Arawn said. He reached the exit doors. She followed after him, refusing to give up or give in.
“They do...” Soraya said. “But...well, perhaps I can still nudge them along in that way. I can still try to convince them that I’m good enough.”
“Sorry,” Arawn said, as he reached the first stair heading up. “I can’t help.”
“But—”
“I don’t have time, Soraya.”
He was three steps up when she blurted, “Kinlear was wrong about you.”
He paused.
The torch beside his head flickered...as the fire in his veins sizzled. “Kinlear?”
He hadn’t heard his brother’s name in quite some time. Certainly not from anyone here, and that surprised him. It sent him barreling back to the last day they’d seen each other, when Kinlear had passed out on his bedroom floor, and Arawn had screamed for help.
He still thought of it every time they spoke through the Speaking Stone.
He still imagined the way the blood had dribbled from Kinlear’s lips...and Arawn thought he was dead.
“What do you mean, Kinlear?”
“Please tell me you aren’t that daft.” Soraya just shrugged at him. “We send ravens, you know. He’s still my friend, even if he’s too good to be in the Citadel. No, he had to go to Touvre, with its fancy clothes and flowers and---”
She didn’t know the true reason Kinlear left.
Nobody did.
Arawn was forbidden to speak of it, for it made his bloodline look weak. At least, so his father said. They believed he was seeking training elsewhere...receiving the special treatment reserved for a prince.
It couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“Kinlear knows about my predicament, seeing as he’s never Settled. And I was nearly dead last,” Soraya sighed, looking up at him from below. “He said you’d help me, because you care about the weakest ones...like him.” A shrug of her small shoulders. “I guess he was wrong.”
And then she turned to go, leaving him there on the stairwell with his heart hammering in his chest.
He sighed. Of course, Kinlear would be half a kingdom away, and offer up Arawn’s services... and say nothing of it through the Speaking Stone. He’d probably laughed to himself as he’d suggested it, knowing how much it would irk Arawn.
As if Arawn wasn’t already losing sleep, late to meals, because of his own endless trainings.
His father wasn’t as obsessive as he once was about his time, but Arawn still had to attend every War Table meeting, every prayer hour in the temple.
He still had to complete his studies, and of course there was the thirty minutes he woke up early, each morning, so he could ensure his clothing was freshly pressed.
But as he watched Soraya go, her small body and her wind magic, the weakest of them all, in war...he thought of Kinlear and his cane.
Kinlear and his cough.
Kinlear and his constant paying of penance.
“Wait,” Arawn said, before he could stop himself.
He sighed.
Soraya whirled around, expectant.
“First light,” he said. “Don’t be late.”
She smiled, her amber eyes aglow, and nodded.
“And bring two cinnamon rolls.”
“For each of us?” Soraya asked.
“No,” Arawn said. “For me. One is never enough.”
He turned and rushed up the stairwell before she could say another word...wondering why, the whole time he’d spoken to her...he felt like butterflies had come to life inside his chest.