“I wouldn’t have let Brannal kill him,” Perian assured them.
Brannal huffed a breath. “I probably wouldn’t have killed him. It helps when he’s actually using sentences that make sense and not just yelling, ‘Demon, demon, demon must die!’”
Trill’s breath caught, and everyone froze. Perian’s smile became a little fixed.
“I guess you didn’t get all the details?” Perian said carefully. “You don’t need to be worried, I promise. I’m a—”
Trill’s breath shuddered out of him in an unsteady whoosh, because suddenly a lot of things made sense.
“—child of two worlds,” he whispered.
Most of the room froze again.
Cormal said, “What?”
Perian was looking at Trill like he’d never seen anything like him before. Then he let out a wet noise that was maybe supposed to be laughter.
“Really?” he said unsteadily.
Trill nodded, his own eyes tearing up. He knew carnalions, but he’d never met another child of two worlds.
“Can I hug you, please?” Perian asked.
Trill nodded hurriedly, holding out his arms, and Perian was soon in them, and they were clinging to one another, holding on tight.
“Oh, wow,” Perian breathed. “This is so amazing. I thought I might be the only one in the whole entire world, and you’rehere.”
“Hold on,” Cormal said. “Are you saying—?”
Molun whirled on him and demanded with deadly precision, “Is he sayingwhat?”
Cormal held up his hands. “Hey, just trying to understand the situation. What’s a child of two worlds?”
Perian gave Trill another squeeze and then pulled back, stepping in front of Trill protectively.
“We’re only half-carnalions. We each had a parent who was human.”
Cormal stared at him, looking shocked, and then slowly, he nodded. “Child of two worlds.”
Perian nodded back. “It’s part of why I didn’t always seem enough like a carnalion to tip anyone off. It’s why I didn’t know what I was. Or what I was capable of.”
Trill grimaced. “No onetoldyou?”
Perian shook his head. “I never knew my mother. She apparently visited in secret until I was seven or so, but I didn’t know. My father wrote me a letter, which I found several years after he died—and only after things went wrong at the castle first.”
Trill peered around Perian to look at Cormal. “Is that what you’ve been apologizing for?”
Cormal swallowed and nodded, looking ashamed. “I wouldn’t accept what I actually knew about him as a person. I assumed he had to be dangerous, that he had to be tricking people. I tried to get him away from Brannal by, uh, any means necessary.”
Trill nodded again. Right. Because in the astonishment of finding another child of two worlds, Trill had kind of… revealed himself without thinking about the possible consequences. Not to acastlefull of Mage Warriors, but still kind of a lot of Mage Warriors. Just because they’d accepted Perian, who apparently hadn’t known what he was, that didn’t mean they would acceptTrill, who absolutelyhadknown, and—
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Molun was suddenly in front of him, enfolding him into his arms. “You know how much I hate it when you look like that. It’s all right, Trill, we’re not upset. I’m not making species generalizations because that isprejudiced and harmful”—he was glaring at Cormal—“but we’re really fond of all the children of two worlds we’ve met so far.”
And then Arvus was there, too, wrapped around him from the other side, and Trill sagged into them with relief, feeling warm and protected in their embrace.
“It’s all right,” Arvus said, stroking his back. “You’re all right, you’re safe.”
Because against all odds, this group of Mage Warriorsalreadyknew about children of two worlds, and they were all right with it. Well, they might mostly be all right with it?
