“It can be practiced,” Cormal said encouragingly. “And I wasn’t talking about the book, although every pair of eyes helps. You brought them focus, and that’s very important. So thank you. I mean it.”
The Prince looked a little taken aback, and then he nodded, his expression turning pleased. Yes, it had been too long since the Prince had felt useful, and Cormal determined that he woulddo better. He’d come up with tasks the Prince could do if the Queen decided she wanted to wait.
“May I ask you a question?”
“Uh oh,” the Prince said.
Cormal eyed him.
“That was so polite that I justknowit’s not going to be a question I like.”
Cormal huffed a breath, more amused than offended. “Icanbe polite, you know. If I’m being totally honest, it was more to show you that I’m calm than worry that you’re not.”
“All right,” the Prince said, though he was still eying Cormal cautiously.
“Whatever you didn’t want to tell me about Perian before, will you tell me now?”
The Prince’s face went completely blank, which told Cormal his guess had been right. The Prince didn’t say anything.
Cormal swallowed and thought about what he needed to say. “It’s not about him. And I promise you that I won’t try to use anything you say against him. He’s out of my reach. I’m just looking for anything that could help us to help you. I swear. Getting you well means more to me than getting at him.”
The Prince considered him for a long moment, and Cormal felt very much as though he was being judged—and as though he was likely to be found wanting.
But then the Prince said, “I will take you at your word. Please don’t disappoint me.”
Cormal shook his head. He’d like not to disappoint anyone, though he was clearly failing at that in so many ways.
“He felt different than anyone else,” the Prince said quietly. “Touching him—or sharing space with him, I guess, since we couldn’t touch—was different than touching anyone else, like those sparks were a hundred times bigger. And when I saw himbefore he helped me at the end? It was a hundred times bigger than anything before. A thousand.”
“You can feel the energy of people,” Cormal said wonderingly, not sure that could help them, but it was still learning something, and he couldn’t help but think it was important. Or at least that it could be. “The more energy Perian had, the more you could feel it.” Cormal considered this. “I wonder if you could find carnalions that way?”
The Prince let out a huff of sound, and it wasn’t until Cormal saw movement that he realized the Prince was stalking out of the room—and then he realized how what he’d said sounded.
“Fire and water,” Cormal groaned.
For once, he actually hadn’t meant it that way. By the time he made it to the corridor, the Prince was gone.
Cormal sighed and made his way to dinner. He’d messed things up with the Prince there at the end, but he felt like the afternoon had been productive. It wasn’t answers, exactly, but it was eliminating non-answers. Every book they crossed off increased their progress. And it was making people feel like they were making a difference, and that mattered.
Cormal was just realizing how much.
But he was going to need to apologize to the Prince.
Chapter Five
Trill
Trill tried to stay away from the pub for a few days, but it was harder to do than he expected. He didn’t like to be away from the pretty man and his partner, which he recognized was probably him being ridiculous because he didn’tknowthem. But Trill had always gone with how he felt about things. His mother had said that made him infuriating, but Trill liked to think ithelped make him happier than she had been. Where was the joy in dwelling on things from the past that you couldn’t change? Where was the pleasure in staring into the future, demanding it be one way, and then getting frustrated when it wasn’t like that?
He couldn’t believe that his mother’s instincts had really been telling her to make herself and everyone around her miserable. He thought that maybe her bad feelings had gotten so loud that they’d drowned everything else out. He didn’t want to be like that. So he helped where he could, and surely it didn’t do any harm to simplyseehis pretty Mage Warriors. (Apart from the fact that they were Mage Warriors, and that meant they were dangerous to him. But he wasn’t seeing them in the castle. He was being careful. He just… didn’t like that pain. It skittered along his skin. It couldn’t be wrong to want to make it better, could it?)
So he lurked. But it was a pub, and basically everyone lurked. The pretty man seemed to be there by himself. Trill scanned the pub several times, but he didn’t see his partner. Arvus, the pretty man had said. Where was Arvus, and why was the pretty man here alone?
Oh, Trill didn’t like that. Was everything all right? He continued to look anxiously, and then he saw that the pretty man had company who’d just come from the bar: two women, one fierce-looking, and the other older and with a no-nonsense look about her. At least he had friends with him. Maybe Arvus wasn’t feeling well, so the pretty man had come with his friends?
This didn’t really make Trill feel any better, because if Arvus was ill, then he needed to be made well, and Trill couldn’t do that if he wasn’t here. Could he go up to the table and ask the pretty man if his partner was sick? No, no, he knew that wouldn’t sound very normal. He needed to know the other man better first.
Trill reminded himself that he needed to be careful. Even though every part of him was saying that he should go ask to join them, Trill didn’t let himself do it. He continued to lurk—just spending time in the pub, everyone did it!—and eventually, he went to the dance floor for a little while, because then he could more easily refill on energy.
