Without warning, the insecure Adraa emerges. “Never mind, forget I asked.” I gulp the coconut water.
“No, I don’t want to forget that. Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah, let’s train together.”
I know I must be beaming. I will finally get to experience how people are taught at the academy. Maybe failing at white magic at my royal ceremony isn’t imminent.
Food pours onto our table at that moment. From a central bowl of rice, smaller bowls pinwheel in an array of heat and steam. Goat stew, lamb curry, wicker nuts, pepper bark, silken fish caught in the Belwar Bay, and thick triangles of naan are the first to pop to my attention.
“Okay, next question. You go,” Kalyan urges as he scoops food onto his plate.
I don’t care about this game anymore. First, I want to eat. Then I want to contemplate what just happened. I’m finally going to train with someone who studied at the academy. If it weren’t for my arm badgering me with pain, I would practice right now.
“Oh, I don’t know. Jatin’s favorite color?” I offer.
“Really?”
I realize a second later I actually do want to know this. “You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite color. I knew this kid in the palace who I swear became an orange forte because he loved the color that much.”
Kalyan’s face twists in skepticism. “Who loves orange that much?”
“Exactly. And I’ve found the people who say their favorite color is their forte are either obsessed with it, like that kid, or plain conceited.”
“So what’s yours?” he asks.
“Pink. But what’s Jatin’s, huh?”
Kalyan scrunches his face as he stalls. “Why pink?” he asks. He’s grasping, not wanting me to know Jatin loves white. I knew it. Mr. Arrogant must love white, be as obsessed with it as he is with himself.
“Because in a clinic, pink is the color of miracles.” I don’t miss a beat. “Jatin’s favorite is white, isn’t it?”
“Okay, maybe it’s one of his favorite colors.”
“That’s worse than orange.”
Thirty minutes later and I’ve found out Jatin was either ignored or idealized more than picked on at school, wrote the love notes on a bet, and doesn’t like wide-open places like the deep ocean. And even though the information is about Jatin, since it comes from Kalyan’s mouth, I feel as if I’m discovering more about him than about my fiancé. He talks about Jatin’s fears and history so freely, without any anxiety his raja will punish him for it. That tells of a level of closeness not even Riya and I could ascend to.
Then our conversation devolves and we forget our little game. Kalyan and I talk about Naupure’s current poverty bill, which hopes to furnish jobs to the Untouched. We come to the agreement that thirteenth- through fourteenth-year class are tied for the worst in life. We discuss the ethics of the truth accords even though we both agree chanting someone to tell the truth is better than the past judicial system where rajas had to constantly hold trials. We eventually revert to the issue of Bloodlurst and the Vencrin. And what we did tonight comes back to me. All the stolen firelight comes into focus. I still have no proof Moolek has anything to do with it yet. Kalyan seems to be thinking the same thing.
“What are you going to tell Adraa about tonight?” he asks.
“That we have a problem.” I peer into his eyes. “What are you going to tell Raja Jatin?”
He smiles. “That I met a witch.”
Life as raja of Naupure isn’t much different from being at the academy. Instead of mind-numbing history and geography lessons, I attend mind-numbing meetings about the fate of all that geography and culture. Okay, it’s completely different from school. I have to make decisions constantly. I have to read reports and letters incessantly. I have to still find time to study spells, without designated training time attached to such memorization.
Life like this is what I always imagined it to be. Advisors stretching out their hands, but not daring to grab hold as I wobble along a cliff’s edge. Me walking through the palace as faceless wizards and witches buzz with demands or questions, mostly both. A voice sounding like the amalgamation of my teachers and my father yelling, “Learn, train, you must because one day you will rule! Messing up or giving up means not only personal failure but also your country’s demise!”
I never realized it before, but training was my release. After hours filling my brain, letting my Touch cast off spell after spell was my way to shout back at the voice, “I’m working! I’m trying! I won’t fail!” So when I spot Kalyan and other guards sweating in the heat on the long patch of the training yard, I rise from my father’s chair.
I had gone through every single type of magic besides pink, and only because I haven’t broken anybody’s bones. Next to me stands a tree singed with fire, stabbed with spears, and with every leaf blown off. The ground is muddy with water and melting snow. I’ve lifted boulders and I’ve turned practically invisible. It’s been a morning of release.
Kalyan plops down in the dirt next to me when I finally sit. I told him everything about Adraa hours ago. He’s been quiet the whole time I wrestled with nature. But I presume he will say something now. It’s like he knows when I’m ready to be talkedto.
“Let me try to understand this again. You are telling me Adraa doesn’t know who you really are, at all?”
