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.
