She seemed… almost amused?
“You don’t do a very good job of courting people, do you?”
Cormal swallowed. “Uh, no, not at all. I tend to lose my temper and throw fireballs and make everything worse.”
Kinan stepped in front of Cormal, making Yannoma suck in a breath. Cormal itched to move him.
“He’s been working so hard to be better,” Kinan told her earnestly. “He’s learned so much since Perian came into our lives. We’re all learning how much we still don’t know, but we’re trying to be better, I swear.”
“I have heard promises from humans before.” She looked unconvinced.
“But not from us,” Kinan answered, his voice painfully earnest. “If you hold us responsible for what everyone has done in the past, how will we ever move beyond it? We must acknowledge the harm we’ve done, but can’t we try to move forward from here?”
“It’s easy to say that when you’re on the winning side,” Yannoma answered.
Cormal didn’t think that was fair at all, given what had happened to Kinan, but Kinan nodded.
“You’re right. We have a lot of work to do. Perian helped me and has been exiled here. That’s not acceptable.”
Cormal nearly groaned. Because telling heranotherway they’d failed would surely be helpful at this point.
“What are you doing about it?” she demanded. “Telling me pretty words?”
He nodded. “Not enough, you’re right. But Brannal left his position as Summus and Mage Warrior because he cared so much about Perian and disagreed so much with what we did to him. We haven’t all followed in his footsteps yet, but we’re not insensible to what he’s done and how poorly he was treated for it.”
“You speak with passion, little prince,” she said, and she almost sounded slightly regretful, “but you see, this is simply history repeating itself.”
“We can’t change what happened in the past—” Kinan tried again, sounding a little desperate.
She interrupted. “You call it the Great Cataclysm. We call it the Great Betrayal.”
Fire and water.
Cormal had actually thought it couldn’t get worse than what he, Brannal, and Cormal’s father had done.
“What did we do?” Perian asked.
He was still wrapped in Brannal’s arms, his eyes red, but his gaze was intent on Yannoma.
She stared at him for a long moment, and then she spoke.
“The worldwasbeing overrun by demons, as your history books say. The veil between the two worlds had torn catastrophically. Wraiths, lesser demons, and nightmares were everywhere. The wraiths were the worst, but they were all causing havoc. Elemental Mages couldn’t fix it—not alone.”
She fell silent, and it was Perian who spoke again. “They needed Life Magic?”
Cormal jolted.Life Magic? Wait, did that mean—?
“They did,” she agreed. “At that time, there were many more carnalions and children of two worlds. We proposed a solution: Life Mages working with Elemental Mages.” Her eyes were distant. Cormal was frozen in shock. “There has never been such a working before or since. The amount of energy they generated and directed, the elements fused together with Life Magic to heal the breach… It was truly astonishing. So many demons were driven back, and the tear was sealed forever. But what we didn’t realize was that some of the humans had decided it should bealldemons that were destroyed. Including us. Once the tear was mended, they attacked. We tried to defend ourselves, and ourmates and bonded died alongside us. So many of our children died.”
“I’m so sorry,” Perian breathed. “That sounds terrible and unfair.”
Cormal still felt like he couldn’t breathe.
“And yet you ask me to help again.”
Perian came to stand in front of her. Brannal’s fists clenched, but he let Perian go.
“I don’t know how else to help Kinan. He’s a friend. I have to try. But you’re right that we seem to be proposing taking a lot from you without giving anything in return. Maybe I can undo a little bit of the damage. May I try to heal you?”
