He crumpled the parchment in his fist, then whispered an invocation and incinerated it.
“Well...” Soraya only shrugged, coughing through the smoke. A tiny gust of her Windmage magic sent it soaring away from both of them. “It’s veryhim,at least.”
As if Kinlear’s wildness didn’t bother her, one bit. His incessant drinking, though...that most certainly did. They were both worried about him.
For Soraya, it was because her heart was, for whatever reason, connected to Kinlear. She treated him differently than Arawn. She looked at him like she was looking at something she wanted to protect.
I wish he was illiterate,Arawn thought.I wish he’d never had the chance to write her a single letter.
He’d do anything to find out what they said.
“Best you stay out here,” Arawn said, turning to Soraya. “Unless you would like to witness me ripping into him?”
She shrugged again. “Wouldn’t be anything I haven’t seen before.”
“I can assure you,” Arawn said, as he turned the iron handle and asked Vivorr to calm the embers burning inside him. “It will be.”
And with that, he shoved through the door, and slammed it shut behind him.
He could smell the winterwine the second he went inside.
Kinlear’s room was a mess of books stacked haphazardly across the room, candles burned to nubs with wax overflowing across tables. There were countless pieces of charcoal and torn parchment, many crumbled up and left on the floor, as if he hadn’t the energy to toss them into the hearth. Which, Arawn supposed...he probably didn’t, if his illness was having its way with him again.
How had Soraya not seen the truth of it yet?
To Arawn, it was like a brand stamped on Kinlear’s forehead.
He stepped further inside, sighing. There was the speaking stone they often spoke with, left on the table beside his bed. They hadn’t used it as much since he’d returned.
An empty bottle of winterwine sat there, too, beside the small rack of vials filled to the brim with his tonic. Alaris’ work, to help keep Kinlear’s cough at bay. His clothing was strewn everywhere, spilling out of his enormous closet like the multi-colored fabrics had done their best to escape – which answered his questions as to whether a servant had even been permitted inside to clean his room.
And—Arawn’s jaw dropped as something scurried past his legs.
Kinlear had an actualcatin the room. A black one, with spots all over half of its face.
It hissed when Arawn looked at it.
“Soraya brought him in,” Kinlear said from a chair by the hearth... as if he knew Arawn had entered. Probably, because the fire always blazed a bit brighter when he entered a room. “She said it needed a safe place to hide. Zey was using it for target practice in the library.” That explained the missing hair on the poor beast’s tail, as it scurried beneath Kinlear’s unmade bed. “But to honest, all I’ve thought of is skewering him. He’s rotten to the core. Tries to drink my vials when I’m not looking. Of course, one could say the same aboutme, and?—"
“Enough, Kinlear,” Arawn growled.
He marched to the fire and slumped down in the chair across from him. Kinlear’s runed cloak was laced all the way to his neck. He had his Scribe’s dagger in his hand, an unusual design of bone for the hilt. He was twisting it as he stared at the flames, watching the way the firelight sparkled on the sharpest side of it. He’d earned it in Touvre, when he was training as a Scribe. Now...he’d done nothing with it since, though he constantly wore it. It was as much a part of him as his cane and his gloves and his marks of penance.
“Enough of what?” Kinlear asked, yawning. Had he slept at all? He had dark circles beneath his eyes, and his hair looked unwashed.
“Soraya’s worried about you,” Arawn said. “I am, too.”
Kinlear coughed, and stared into the fire, as if he were barely listening. “Soraya worries about everyone. Hence the cat,” he said, and sighed. “Hand me that bottle? I’m running dry.”
“You’re acting like a fool,” Arawn said. “It’s a blessing that you’re alive to see another year, Kinlear. That we can continue to serve the Five together. You’ve been back for weeks, and all you’ve done is drink.”
“You sound eerily like our dear mother,” Kinlear said, and yawned as he twisted that dagger round and round. “I am not a gift. I am a curse.” He looked up at Arawn with shadowed eyes. “I am the dark angel that stands poised above my own grave.”
“Stop it,” Arawn practically growled. “Have some respect for the plans of the Five, Brother.”
“Or what?” Kinlear asked. He met Arawn’s gaze, even as the fire in the hearth blazed a bit higher. So strange, to see him older...but still battling the same demons he had as a boy. As if he’d never won the war against them. “What will the gods to do me that they have not already done?”
A cough left his lips, and he glanced at his cane, settled against the side of the chair within his reach, as if to better prove his words.
