Cormal laughed, too, even though it haddefinitelynot been funny at the time. “I can quite honestly say that I have probably never been more surprised in my life. Nor that I didn’t deserve it.”
Even if Cormal had been sort of right, he’d gone about it entirely wrong.
He sighed. “All I could imagine was what would have happened if the Princess had suffered her illness, or been attacked or injured, when no one was there to protect her. I wasn’t thinking about little girls or feeling trapped or anything except how she was doing something stupid, and I needed to stop it and keep her safe.”
Kinan’s expression was soft. “You know,” he said, “I think there’s a streak of stubbornness in both of you that probably explains why you’re at an impasse now.”
Cormal squinted at him. “Are you saying I have the maturity of a thirteen-year-old?”
The Prince chortled with laughter. “Maybe I’m saying Renny is really mature for her age.”
That was absolutely not what he’d been saying, and Cormal couldn’t help but laugh as well. Maybe Kinan wasn’t totally wrong. At thirteen, Cormal had still been anxiously waiting to see if he was going to get an element and be able to train to be a Mage Warrior like Brannal and his father. He’d been waiting to find out if he was going to be acompletedisappointment, and maybe there was part of him that had never… quite grown out of that mindset.
Kinan looked at him, and his gray eyes were both soft and wary. “I’ll ask. But just… please don’t expect too much.”
Cormal shook his head. “I won’t. Promise.”
If Molun was any indication, then it wasn’t going to go well, but he would at least have tried. In the last few months, all he’d done was tell himself that there was nothing to be done, that everyone else would have to change.
Hewouldtry.
(He still remembered the look on Princess Larenia’s face when he’d yelled that her brother was dead. He’d been so focused on correcting her behavior, on making hersafe, that he hadn’t thought at all about the cost. The grief had been scalding, and when she’d screamed that she hated him forever… well, he’d meant it when he said he’d deserved that knee to the groin, even if he’d been furious—and blamed Perian—at the time.)
“You’d better get to dinner,” Kinan said after a moment. “Not all of us can go without eating, right?”
Cormal nodded, finally, because the alternative, saying that he’d be happy to not eat with Kinan and keep him company was… not smart, right?
“Thanks again for talking with me,” Cormal told him. “I appreciate it more than I can say.”
Kinan flashed him a smile. “You’re very welcome.”
Maybe Cormal really could get through this. It felt so much more doable with someone supporting him, even if Cormal knew he needed to do the work himself.
The next morning, he went to see Onadal and apologized for the false report.
The older man had the best impassive face of anyone Cormal had ever met outside of maybe Brannal and the Queen.
“This entire system runs on trust and loyalty,” Onadal told him sternly. “We have to be able to believe the reports we receive and that the Mage Warriors have our backs. If that system is undermined, it all falls apart.”
Cormal nodded. He knew that. He just hadn’t thought about the way what he’d done had jeopardized the system.
Onadal poked him in the chest. “Ifyouundermine that, then it all falls apart.”
Cormal nodded. “I made a bad call. I thought the ends justified the means—and I picked the wrong end.”
Onadal continued to stare at him, eventually shook his head, and then finally said, “If you ever do something like that again, we’re through, understood?”
Cormal nodded. He wasn’t actually sure what that would mean. Would the man quit? Would he make Cormal quit? Would he kill him and bury his body where no one would find him? That might actually solve a lot of problems. But Cormal was really trying to demonstrate that he’d learned his lesson.
He’d shaken a lot of people’s trust in him, and Onadal was right—how could they do any of this if they didn’t trust one another? If Warriors went out into the country thinking that a report might be false and it wasn’t, it was a good way to get killed. Or what if they ignored a report that they didn’t think was true and then people were killed? What if anyone else did what Cormal had done?
Not everyone knew what had happened, thankfully, but enough people did. Cormal’s gaze strayed past Onadal.
“Is it all right if I talk to Xametta for a few minutes?”
Onadal nodded, and Cormal thought that maybe that was a tiny bit of respect in his eyes. Improving from rock bottom wasn’t exactly stunning success, but it was better than staying at rock bottom.
Besides, it shouldn’t be surprising that after being lied to—even if he hadn’t thought of it like that at the time—people had trouble taking him at his word now.
