Cormal closed his eyes for a moment, letting this feeling of being understood wash through him.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely when he opened his eyes again. The Prince was still gazing steadily at him. “That’s very generous of you. Because you also weren’t wrong before. I sawatruth, and I turned it into everything when it wasn’t. The others took in all the information I ignored, all the behavior that I didn’t want to acknowledge. A good Mage Warrior has to be able to adapt to circumstances, or he’s going to die.”
Weirdly, the Prince was beaming at him.
“What?” Cormal asked.
The Prince pointed at him. “You know what you just did?”
Confused, Cormal said, “What?”
“You just adapted.”
Cormal felt those words like a lick of flames, heat washing over his whole body.
“Instead of dying, you mean?” he whispered.
Because that wasexactlywhat it had felt like. He’d backed himself into a corner, thrown up a wall of flame, and thought that was how he needed to live now.
He’d let himself fall into the trap of believing that he’d made all his decisions, that the only thing he could do now waskeepreinforcing those decisions.
“What do you do when everything you’ve done is wrong?” Cormal asked rhetorically.
But the Prince had an answer. “You admit it. You apologize. And you see if things can be rebuilt.” His eyes were shining, his expression soft. He looked beautiful. “I can’t promise you that it will fix everything. But Icantell you that nothing will be fixed if you don’t try.”
Cormal had wanted to know why everyone couldn’t just get over what had happened because itwasover now and he couldn’t change what he’d done… but he’d never once acknowledged that he’d made a mistake or apologized.
“Son of a wraith,” Cormal swore. “No wonder everyone’s been calling me an asshole.”
The Prince frowned. “Who’s been calling you an asshole?”
Cormal waved his hand. “Oh, everyone. It’s clearly what they’re thinking when they say ‘Summus.’”
The Prince looked weirdly torn between amusement and distress.
“Is that truly what you hear every time someone calls you Summus?”
Cormal nodded.
“And you never call them on it?”
“What was there to say?” Cormal shrugged. “It’s my title, and everyone in the entire castle knows what I did to earn it.”
The Prince was looking at him strangely. “Brannal chose to leave.”
Cormal shot him a look. “I thinkchoiceis scarcely the right word.”
“But you thought he’d stay.”
Grimacing, Cormal said, “Because I’m an idiot. In retrospect, it was actually entirely obvious what he would do. I can’t blame him for assuming I did it on purpose. I never particularly wanted to be Summus, you know, no matter what everyone thinks.”
“I know,” the Prince said simply.
Cormal thought that was an awfully generous acknowledgment.
But then the Prince said quietly, “Just occasionally, you looked a little afraid of your father.”
Cormal froze, then a shiver washed through him. He stared out at the water. “Everyone knows what a great Summus he was.”
