Kinlear gritted his teeth, afraid to say thewrongthing, and he certainly wasn’t stupid enough to say thecleverthings he wished he could.
“Do you know why you are here, in Touvre,” she asked him, “instead of in the north with your brother?”
It had been two years since he’d seen Arawn, face to face. He missed his twin. He longed to be with him again. To go to Augaurde, where all the best Sacred warriors were stationed. He could feel the absence in his chest, like a piece of him had been ripped away, the wound festering and unclean.
“I’m here because of my illness,” Kinlear answered.
“Yes,” she replied. “But it is not the one you think it is.” Her blue eyes hardened, cold as northern ice. “It is the illness ofrebellionyou carry, Kinlear. And it is utterly infectious. If you want to be near Arawn again...if you wish to return to your brother’s side, to serve him when he reigns, to be the good Prince of the North your blood promises you to be...then you’ll remember what it means to pay penance so often. It is not meant to be a cycle of continuous failure. It is to serve as a reminder. A change of direction. A reset for your very soul.”
She spoke of penance like it was a joy to receive.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his mother gain a mark, and for good reason.
No one liked it.
He was just too damned stubborn to stop giving wings to his sins.
She stepped close to him, reaching out only for a second to place her hand upon his shoulder. It was the first time she’d touched him in years. And it took everything in him not to flinch.
“Let this be a reminder from a concerned mother,” she whispered. “Not a queen.” And then she leaned in, close enough that he felt like he was drowning in a sea of roses. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “the penance we pay takes us to our end.”
She left him there, alone in the temple, with his heart beating like a war hammer in his chest.
9
He was sixteen, seated on a bench in his mother’s magical greenhouse.
These days, he only had a few penance marks a month. Not because he was better, but because he waswiser.
His mother’s threat had been clear.
Even a prince could pay enough times to meet the end of himself.
But...Kinlear was also clever enough to see the other side of the threat. To know that one couldn’t be punished, if one couldn’t be caught, and so he’d learned to take the servant’s passages for his gallivanting across Touvre. The servants kept their mouths shut, so long as he supplied them with expensive trinkets...
Of which a prince had plenty.
Still, he’d done his best to be good and true. He wasn’t a monster like the one in his mind. He recited his prayers, and each week, he read over the laws for his kind. He tried to deny every pleasure...to which he failed....and he begged the gods for healing...to whichtheyfailed.
He’d done all he could to be pious.
The way Arawn was.
It was never enough.
So, he wrote to her.
When he was down, when he felt brave enough to share the darkest parts of his soul...he wrote to Soraya to keep himself sane.
Dear Sora,
Sometimes, I feel like I was born in the shadows. Like the world is out there, so godsdamned close I can see it, taste it, and it is beautiful beyond belief.
But no matter how hard I try to get there...it moves on past me, always just beyond my reach.
Do you ever feel like that? Like you’ve been forced to walk in the shadows, and you don’t know if you’ll ever be given the chance to dance in the light?
Yours,
