Cormal looked up at the Prince. “Do you think Brannal could ever forgive me?”
“I honestly don’t know,” the Prince admitted.
It wasn’t the answer that Cormal wanted, but he appreciated that the other man wasn’t simply placating him.
The Prince continued, “If you apologize truthfully and from your heart, you can at least find out if there’s any possibility. I think it would be good for you regardless of what else happens. I know losing him has hurt you, and you might not be able to get him back. But if you’re honest about what you feel and what you’ve done, you may be able to find some closure.”
Cormal drew in a deep breath and then let it out. It felt like he could suddenly breathe again, when it had previously felt like hewas being crushed under a weight that he’d mistakenly assumed he had to bear.
“We aren’t made only of the past,” the Prince told him earnestly. “We can’t forget it. It helps make us what we are. It shows us a path of the decisions and choices we’ve made, good and bad, up to this day. But we need to look forward, too. And sometimes, we can take what we’ve done in the past, and we can use it to help us shape a new future. I think you could have a very beautiful future, Cormal, if you wanted to.”
Cormal drew in another deep breath and let it slide out of his lungs. He stared out at the water for a moment, at the vista that seemed almost endless, that was so different from the castle and everything in it. He was glad the Prince had found this place, that he had let Cormal share it—and that he’d thought to bring him here now instead of letting him stew in his anger.
He turned to the man.
“Thank you,” he said earnestly. “I don’t think anyone has believed in me in a long time, and I let that pull me down until I didn’t really believe in myself. And being me, I dealt with that by yelling as loudly as I could that I was right, that Ididbelieve in me. It means so much to me that you looked at me and saw someone worth preserving, even after everything I did to you.”
“You didn’t do anything to me.”
Cormal scoffed.
The Prince made a face, and then said, “All right. Then let us say that if you did anything to me, I feel that you’ve adequately apologized, and I forgive you, all right?”
Cormal sucked in a surprised breath, feeling a heavy weight on his heart lighten again. He was sure it wasn’t going to be this easy with everyone, that it was probably going to get harder, but…
The Prince gave him hope. Maybe he was right that Cormal needed to acknowledge it, needed to apologize even if he wasn’t forgiven.
“Thank you,” he said again, swallowing because he really didn’t need to cry any more tears. “How did you get so smart?”
The Prince smiled at him, but his beautiful gray eyes were a little shadowed. “There’s nothing like being forced to examine the world and everyone around you without interacting for seven years to teach you to observe carefully.”
Cormal reached for his hand, forgetting for an instant, and watched it pass through him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly. I can’t imagine what it was like. And I’m sorry I didn’t believe your sister.”
The Prince’s lips quirked up. “It was hard to believe. Maybe we could have convinced everyone before Perian, but it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like it would really help, you know? I worried that it would make the situation worse for Renny.” He eyed Cormal pointedly. “On the other hand, I also didn’t scream at her that her brother was dead.”
Cormal groaned. “That was not one of my better moments. I was genuinely worried for her safety since I thought she was sneaking off alone. What if she had a dizzy spell or collapsed? But I do realize there were many better ways of expressing that concern… Did you know I have a bit of a temper?”
The Prince laughed. “Yes, I had noticed that.”
“And I overreact when I’m worried about people.”
“I noticed that, too,” the Prince said, his expression soft. “You don’t always express yourself very well.”
Cormal huffed a breath. “I think we can agree I do it very poorly.”
His father hadn’t been much of a believer in expressing his emotions, and Cormal and Brannal hadn’t really done so, either. They’d just fallen in together and then been united by the rareelement of fire. They hadn’tdiscussedthings very often, to Cormal’s clear detriment. His father had tried to raise both of them in much the same way, he supposed.
“Can I blame my father for everything?” he asked, only realizing belatedly how whiny that sounded.
Thankfully, the Prince laughed. “Maybe not foreverything.”
Because Cormal was his own person, and if he’d allowed himself to react in a certain way to his father, that still ultimately came down to him. He needed to deal with the consequences. He could try to fix it now, but he might discover that when he’d razed everything to the ground, there was no restoring it.
But that didn’t mean Cormal couldn’t try to plant seeds. Maybe they would all wither and die; they certainly weren’t going to grow without water, and Cormal had never been good with water. But he could be the sun, and he could see if anyone would meet him halfway. If they wouldn’t, at least he would know that he’d tried, just like the Prince had suggested.
As much as he wanted to say that he’d tried and been ignored before, he wasn’t so sure that it was true. He thought, rather, that he’d yelled and other people had yelled, and no one had listened to anyone.
