I held out the letter without speaking.
He took it, the creases in his forehead deepening as he read. When he finished, he set it down and pulled out the chair across from me.
"When did this arrive?"
"Just now. Express delivery." I lifted the envelope to show him the broken royal seal. "They are not playing around anymore."
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"I don't know." The words felt hollow. "What if it's true? What if he's dying?"
Mother hadn't said it in her letter, but she'd implied it.
"Then he's dying whether you're there or not."
The bluntness should have stung, but it didn't. Codric had always been the one person who told me the truth, even when I didn't want to hear it.
"If he dies and I wasn't there..." I couldn't finish the sentence.
"You'll live with that," Codric said. "If you leave now, you will have to live with losing everything you wanted, everything you worked for. Which one will be more difficult?"
I knew the answer to that and hated it because it was selfish. I was choosing myself over my father and my family.
"It might be manipulation," I said, to ease my conscience. "The timing is too perfect."
"It might be." Codric leaned back in his chair. "Your family has never been above using emotional manipulation as a weapon. It's a royal thing, I guess."
"What if he really is asking for me?"
"Then he's asking you to choose between him and everything you've worked for." Codric's eyes met mine. "That's not a father's love, Alar. That's control. Even from a deathbed. Say no."
Codric was right. Even if the letter was genuine, even if my father truly was dying, the demand was the same as it had always been—come home, be the son he wanted me to be, and abandon what he regarded as foolish dreams.
"I don't know if I can live with that." I rubbed my temples with my thumb and forefinger.
Codric reached across the table and gripped my shoulders. "You live with it the same way you've lived with every other impossible choice you've had to make. You make the decision, and you don't look back. You can't let your family make this decision for you. You have to choose for yourself."
I looked at my cousin, my friend, my confidant, the one person who always understood the full weight of what I was carrying. "What would you do?"
"I'd stay." No hesitation. "I'd grieve, and I'd feel guilty, and I'd question myself forever. But I'd stay. Because the alternative is worse."
I looked down at the letter again, at my mother's elegant script, at the desperation bleeding through every line. She loved me. I'd never doubted that or her love for my brothers. But first and foremost, she served Catonia. She had shaped her entire existence around the demands of her crown.
She would choose the good of the country over the good of her sons any day.
"Are you going to tell Kailin?" Codric asked.
I shook my head. "Maybe later, but not today. She's stressed enough as it is."
Codric nodded. "That's probably wise. She doesn't need this on her mind during the evaluations. Neither do you, but you have no choice. You are stuck with it."
The bathroom door opened, and Kailin emerged, her blond hair damp from washing, her blue eyes still sleepy. She looked at me, then at Codric, and frowned.
"What's wrong? You both look like someone died."
I forced a smile. "Pre-test anxiety."
She didn't look convinced, but she didn't press. "We should eat something. The flight tests start in an hour."
