Trill liked that solution… but it depended on the goodwill of a lot of people he didn’t know. All right, all right, Trill was going to be patient, because then they could probably pass it off as Molun having a good healing ability. Arvus had sounded like they were still making progress, and that meant Trill had come in time.
“And here’s the quadrangle,” Arvus said, and led him… outside? But like… an inside outside? Trill was surrounded by four walls, but they were so far apart that he almost couldn’t see the far ones.
Trill twirled around to take it all in—and a pretty, very well-muscled man went jogging by on a dirt track that Trill hadn’t noticed them walk over.
“Ooh,” he said appreciatively.
Arvus laughed. “Told you you’d like the quadrangle.”
It did not, at all, serve the purpose that Trill had intended—he was sure that was a Warrior uniform—but he was equally sure it would be lovely to explore.
Chapter Twelve
Cormal
Of course apologizing didn’t go the way Cormal wanted it to, but he’d… really hoped, apparently, even though he’d tried not to. He’d wanted to actually mend some of those bridges the same way that he seemed to have mended them with Prince Kinan.
But of course it wasn’t that easy, and he wasn’t sure, now, why he’d thought that starting with Molun was a good idea. Except, you know, he was Cormal’s Secundus, and Cormal had… honestly thought he’d be happy about this?
Molun heaved himself out of his chair, wobbled a little, and stared at Cormal like he was the lowest of the low.
“Let me get this straight: after driving Brannal out of here and depriving us of the best Summus we’ve ever had, you’re just going to abandon the post, too? Is your goal to wind up with no Mage Warriors at all? I mean, I know that you’re a selfish jerk, but I actually thought you cared about the Mage Warriors!”
“Of course I—!”
“And asking me if I’d like to be Summus? Seriously! That’s not funny, Cormal!”
“I wasn’t—”
Molun’s eyes were spitting fire, and worse, there was a trace of hurt there. “I know I can’t do it, all right? You don’t have to rub salt in the wound!”
“I wasn’t—!”
But Cormal didn’t actually manage to get a complete sentence out because then Molun was slamming out of the room—slower than normal, still limping, although Cormal noticed that he didn’t have the cane today, which was good. He was slow enough that Cormal could have stopped him, but as much as he wanted tomakethe man sit down and listen to him, he didn’t let himself move.
If the only reason he could catch Molun was because he was injured, then he couldn’t do it. He was sure if Molun would just listen to him—
Well. Cormal huffed to himself. He was sort of the expert on not hearing people, wasn’t he? It had become entirely obvious that if there was a way for Cormal to say what he wanted to saythat Molun would actually hear, this wasn’t it. Talking more was no guarantee that someone else would actually hear you.
(It was still dawning on him just how frustrating this had to have been for Brannal, for Perian, for their friends. They had kept trying to tell Cormal the truth, and hehadn’t heard it.)
He laid his head down on his desk and just rested it there for a moment.
He’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. But he’d made the mistake of thinking that Molun’s dislike of Cormal and of his being in this position would predispose him to listen to him about it. Instead, he seemed to have assumed that Cormal was either joking or was trying to make mattersworsewith the Mage Warriors.
Should he have started with the Queen instead? She was the one who was actually going to appoint someone as Summus, after all. But he didn’t really need to apologize to her. Well, maybe a little. But if anything, she needed to be apologizing to other people, just like he was—and he wasn’t about to tell her that.
He could apologize for the part he’d played in getting her support for his plan, but she’d made her own decisions. Would she have decided differently if all of her Mage Warriors had supported Perian? If he and Brannal had been on the same side, would they have convinced her that Perian was safe? He really wasn’t sure. She was a mother and a queen, and she’d been determined to protect her children and the country. It had seemed to him that their beliefs aligned, but who was to say? Maybe he’d been scaremongering with her as well as with the rest of the castle, just as Brannal had accused. Cormal didn’t know anything anymore.
“What did you do to piss Molun off?”
His head popped up off his desk. Delana was at the door, leaning against the door frame with one ankle crossed over theother, regarding him with amusement. He could do what he liked in his office… but he was pretty sure she’d never caught him in so undignified a position before.
He sighed. “He thought I was mocking him about his injury and, uh, trying to wreck the Mage Warriors worse than they already are.”
Delana blinked at him, then her gaze narrowed. “Cormal.”
“I really wasn’t trying to do that,” he told her. “I swear! Not that I can blame anyone for thinking I mean the worst whenever I do something.”
