She squared her shoulders, looking more resolute. “And I’ve got the bucket of water by my bed, just in case.”
“Exactly,” he agreed.
She’d not needed it once so far. Accidents during training or while she was awake, yes. But not while she was sleeping.
“Even if an accident happens, that’s all right,” he assured her. “We’ve got mitigations in place, and you’ll keep training until it’s second nature.”
Cormal’s father had always emphasized the need for perfection. Any failure was a disappointment, and the controlthat Cormal had desperately pulled together as a result had so many faults in it.
Livala leaned in and hugged him, wrapping her arm around his waist. “Thanks, Cormal.”
Surprised, it took him a moment to hug her back, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder.
He’d assumed that the time she now spent with Princess Larenia would rid her of any nascent affection she had for him, but so far, that didn’t seem to have happened.
She pulled away, beamed at him, and headed off to her next class.
His father was anass, but Cormal was more glad than he could say that Livala was here.
Setting everything up was easy, because proposing asurpriseinspection was just the sort of thing he could be expected to do. He played up the idea of catching people misbehaving. This made Molun roll his eyes a lot, but he didn’t actually object, and it neatly took care of the concern that anyone might be looking out for his coming when he didn’t actually intend to arrive. With luck (so much luck), he would set out on the actual inspection only a few days later than everyone else thought. He’d deliberately kept the timeline vague.
“Who knows what I’ll find,” he pointed out. “I’ll stay as long as I’m needed.”
“Maybe everyone actually knows how to do their job,” Delana suggested dryly.
“Maybe,” he agreed blandly. “Maybe they’re not all having parties just because we’re not there to watch them.”
Molun huffed, but he looked amused.
Cormal continued as casually as he could, “So there’s no point in locking in plans. That would defeat the whole purpose. And since it’s just me, I’m not inconveniencing anyone; I can find an inn to stay at without a lot of advance planning, or if I really need to, I can sleep outside.”
Delana looked skeptical. Cormal hated winter inspections for a reason.
He conjured two fireballs. “I can always keep warm.”
She rolled her eyes.
With his best supercilious expression, he added, “I don’t know what you two with all the water do, but I’m quite comfortable outside.”
As he’d intended, the discussion devolved at this point into slinging insults about one another’s elements and Delana reminding him about the many,manytimes she’d heard him complain about cold-weather inspections.
And then it was just running through the last of the plans. Molun and Delana were perfectly able to handle the castle without him. Livala had plenty of support, including her grandfather, who’d always been able to calm her at home.
All the Mage Warriors could keep reading without him, and the Prince and Princess would still be here for extra motivation.
It was all coming together perfectly.
He thought he had it all planned out and knew exactly what the stakes were, which made it all the more gutting when Kinan asked him a question a few nights before he planned to leave.
They were lying in bed together, side by side, because Cormal had realized that Kinan liked to be close to him, even if they couldn’t touch. Too many people gave him a wide berth, like they were worried the condition was catching or thought there was nopoint in getting close when they couldn’t touch. (All right, and some probably didn’t get close because he was a prince, but that wasn’t helping anything!)
Cormal was happy to get as close as Kinan wanted as often as possible.
It was late, and Kinan’s voice was soft and uncertain. “Do you think if Perian gave me more energy, it would help?”
Cormal stared at him, stunned speechless.
Perian had passed out following his attempt and been in a coma for days. If Brannal hadn’t put a shield up to separate them, who was to say what might have happened? It had been obvious that Perian was at the end of his abilities, and Cormal and the Queen had assumed that meant he’d done everything that he could forever.
