Kinlear removed his own Scribe’s blade from the sheath at his hip and set it into the empty box. He slid Marin’s blade away in its place, allowing his cloak to settle carefully around it. Keeping it hidden, and safe.
You don’t believe it,he told himself, because he felt a bit sick. A bit lightheaded, as he carried the bone blade.You’re just accepting the gift of a wise master, who will most certainly slam his cane upon your toes if you don’t take it.
Footsteps sounded, and relief flooded Kinlear as he turned. “Magus, why in the —”
His words trailed off.
Because it wasn’t Magus who entered.
It was a different woman. A Scribe, he could tell, by the color of her cloak and the dagger on her own hip.
“Where is Magus?” Kinlear asked.
But he knew what her answer would be before she even said it. “He left.”
A spike of disappointment stabbed him anyways. “To go where?”
“Didn’t say,” the tutor said, turning her back to him as she went to sort through stacks of books by the fire. “He left instructions approving you to begin learning about more combative runes. From now on, I’ll be attending to your studies. Now, flip to page...”
Kinlear turned and left the room like it was on fire.
Magus couldn’t justleavehim. Not like this, not with so many questions, and so little answers, and now his dead sister’s godsdamned bone blade on his hip.
“Prince!”
The tutor’s voice called after him, but he didn’t stop.
If he did, his own panic would catch up to him.
He did his best to run, because walking wasn’t fast enough. Walking wouldn’t get him far enough away from the butterflies and the godsdamnedbirdsand the sunlight and that stupid box with his name.
He left me,Kinlear thought.Magus left.
His tutor was the only person in Touvre that had ever understood him. The only person that had ever reallyknownKinlear, all the way down to the madness in his dreams. And just like that...he had abandoned him.
It felt like a sickening trick.
“Kinlear?”
He hobbled past the servant girl he’d kissed.
He couldn’t bear to have her see him now, because his eyes were limned in silver, because his breathing was going ragged, because?—
His leg buckled.
He cried out as he collapsed to the stones. His palms were bleeding, and his cane rolled out of reach, but he didn’t go after it, because the eyes of the servants were too many, the gasps were too loud, and the darkness was closing in.
On hands and knees, Kinlear wept. He wept so hard, he began to cough.
He couldn’t stop, like always, until someone shouted for a Healer, and Kinlear found himself collapsing in full, blood on his lips, a cold stone against his cheek.
They carried him to his room soon after, where they tucked him into his bed, his cloak and his dagger still on, and marked him into a runic sleep.
He woke in the land of dreams once more, to find himself barefoot and frozen on the edge of his dying forest.
It was the same as always.
And yet...as he took his first step towards the woods, something shifted on his hip.
