Arawn bristled. He didn’t want to imagine her lips pressed against Kinlear’s.
It made him sick.
“Gods above, you’re goinggreen,” Soraya said, and raised a dark brow at him. “It’s just me. What’s wrong, First Rider? Have you never had a girl in your room before?”
He just blinked. “Of course I haven’t.”
She should know that about him. He hadn’t even allowed her to come up here, for fear that if he did, people would think the wrong thing about them.
About him, and his loyalty to the laws.
You must not fail.
You must never fail.
“No...” Soraya said, and pursed her lips as if she were holding back a smile. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. Not even on Absolution.” She crossed her arms. One was marked with new penance. The other was freshly healed, mended from a fall she’d had the other day during their flight pattern trainings. She’d been thrown from her eagle’s back, and her arm had snapped in two when it hit a tree.
She hadn’t even cried. Arawn would never forget it, watching her fall.
But that was Soraya.
Always bold.
Never afraid, not even of excruciating pain. Sometimes he thought sheenjoyedit, for she’d always laughed when he got hurt, even when they were kids.
Still, they needed better Minders, better people to help calm the remaining bits of fledgling wildness in their war mounts. But the next Talon Trials was still a few weeks away.
“I need your help with something,” Soraya said, mercifully dragging him back to attention. She held out a hand to the cold stone hallway behind her, as if she wanted him to follow. “It’s happening...again.”
His stomach dropped. “Kinlear?”
She nodded. “Kinlear.”
Together, they left his room behind, and went across the long, cold hall to Kinlear’s. There was a sign on the arched door, scribbled in glowing runed ink.
Keep out.
Unless you have winterwine, in which case, why are you still standing there?
If their father saw it, he would have had Kinlear’s head. But the kingnevercame to their tower. He always sent a servant, and they were all more than afraid of Kinlear, even in the few weeks he’d been here...
Sleeping his days away.
He wasn’t the same as he once was, that final moment before his mother took him south.
Years had passed, but it was as if Kinlear hadn’t learned how to doanythingwith his life in the time they’d been apart. While Arawn had been to war countless times, while he’d Settled on his magic, and completed his Descent?
Kinlear had trained as a Scribe. But in his final days in Touvre, something had shifted. The illness, most likely, for their mother had sent him back north with strict rules that he lay down his title asScribe in Trainingand focus, instead, on finding another purpose.
He hadn’t done anything but sleep, like he couldn’t wait to escape to his dreams.
Sometimes, Arawn wondered about the monster his brother had spoken of, as a child. The first few nights Kinlear had been back, he’d lay awake...waiting for the nightmares. The screams.
But Kinlear hadn’t made a sound.
Arawn supposed, like most Sacred children, his brother had grown out of them. Or perhaps he was just too stuck beneath the stupor of winterwine to care.
“Gods help him,” Arawn grumbled now, ripping the callous sign off the door. It was a sure way to earn more penance, and Kinlear’s body was already covered in it.
