CHAPTER TWENTY
Aweek passes in a painful, mind-numbing blur.
I wake in pain. I lay myself down to rest in pain. I can’t move freely without favoring some part of my body.
Every day: combat training, riding practice, class to go over battle strategy or types of magic or history. Every day, I continue to reach out to Anassa with very little progress.
And every night, when I lock myself in my private room, I try very hard not to think about the man who gave this room to me, or the words he spoke in the garden. I don’t have the mental space to nurture a broken heart right now.
I’m still enduring the permanent headache I seem to have lately as I trudge to strategy class this morning. But before I can reach the classroom, a voice calls my name. I stop short and lift my head, confused.
Henrey is standing there with his hands in his pockets. Leader Aldrich is next to him, stroking his beard.
The older man smiles at me, and it’s… surprisingly gentle. It’s the first truly gentle smile I think I’ve seen from an instructor. It deepens the age lines around his eyes just so. And it reminds me of my dad, suddenly and jarringly. My shoulders fall.
“Would you join us in my office?” Aldrich asks.
I approach them. “For… what?”
“Class,” he says, turning and striding down the echoing halls.
I eye Henrey, brow raised. “The fuck? Just us?” I whisper.
“Just you,” Aldrich says over his shoulder, apparently not going deaf in his advanced age. “And please refrain from coarse language.”
I snort and cross my arms, following obediently. Not like I wanted to attend another of Egith’s strategy lectures, anyway.
Aldrich stops in front of an inlaid silver door with a tall pearlescent bar for a handle. There is a wolf engraved on it—what else—its body bent at impossible angles to emphasize the beauty of its flowing fur. Its eye is a massive ruby lodged right in the elegant silver.
I briefly consider trying to pry the rock out and get it to my mother somehow before Aldrich swings the door open and ushers us inside.
The room is smaller than most in the castle, but it’s tall. Every wall is covered in bookshelves, laden with dusty tomes and diamond-shaped cubbies crammed with crinkled scrolls. And the walls go up two, three floors. At each level, there’s a small balcony circling the room, accessible by ladders that seem to be mounted on tracks to slide across the shelves.
In the center of the room, there’s a round table covered in books and papers, as well as a few jars with what look like dried flowers or herbs in them. There are no candles in here, only enclosed oil lamps. Maybe to protect the paper.
Aldrich grunts as he wheels a chalkboard towards the table, gesturing for us to sit. Henrey doesn’t even hesitate, so I swallow my questions and pull out a chair.
I glance at Henrey again, who’s looking a bit uncomfortable. He watches as the instructor picks up a piece of chalk and starts writing on the dusty board. I haven’t spoken to Henrey much since the Ascent, but he seems like a decent Rawbond.
He rides well. He wields the sword and bow well. He’s determined and dedicated.
If this is the remedial class, I have no idea why he’s here.
Henrey seems to be wondering that, too, because he pipes up. “Leader Aldrich, if I may ask?—”
“You are here because there are lessons you haven’t learned. Lessons everyone else learned at their mothers’ knees.”
Oh. Right.
Bonded family lore, that kind of stuff. Whereas the lessons I was getting at my mother’s knee mostly involved insane ravings about “the twins.”
Henrey slumps in his chair, his face flushing. He doesn’t look at me, but I know what he’s thinking.
Us versus them.
This is just another way we aren’t like the rest.
“So what… lessons, exactly, will we be learning?” Henrey asks.
