And now he was gone.
There was only the ghost of his laughter to fill the space.
So Arawntrained.
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 betweenSacred KnightandScribe –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 flameouthimself. 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 tofinish his day with his fists instead of his fire. He’d bested far too many opponents there before the day was called early,severalof 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 anothermassivehit in sparring. She was too slow. Too weak, though she had noquitin her. “You need to stop getting hit.”
“Oh, isthatwhat I should do?” Soraya asked, crossing her arms. “Aren’t you a clever Prince.”
She turned those amber eyes onto him...and he bristled.
