She spat the last word out and then turned on her heel and stalked out, her brother at her heel, still something of a shadow.
Prince Kinan had spent almost seven years able to be seen and heard only by his sister, unable to leave her side. Although he was now visible, he was still intangible. He continued to spend a lot of time with Princess Larenia, and Cormal couldn’t quite determine if it was habit, if he felt safest or more comfortable with her—or if he thought she needed protection.
Cormal suppressed a frustrated sigh.
“I will speak to her again,” the Queen told him. “Perhaps when you aren’t present, she will be more reasonable.”
Cormal rather doubted it, but he bowed anyway. “Thank you, my Queen.”
He sighed when he left, but whatcouldshe do? Princess Larenia was screaming defiance from the rooftop, and Cormal was probably lucky that she’d decided that silence was the best way to deal directly with him. Imagine if she told him how she really felt every time she saw him.
He wasn’t sure what he even wanted the Queen to do. The Princess appeared to have been pushed to the breaking point, and he realized now, in a way he hadn’t before Brannal left, that a breaking might not take the form they expected.
How could the Queen inhibit a child who’d been trapped in her bed more times than she had been free to be active for the last seven years? Since the Princess feared no punishment they could mete out against her, what was left?
There was one thing that he suspected she feared, and Cormal knew that if they threatened Perian, any hope of cordial relations between them would be gone forever, making it a weapon they couldn’t wield.
It was endlessly frustrating.
Brannal had occasionally expressed what a challenge the position of Summus could be: competing priorities, so many people, striving to protect the whole country…
Cormal had had no idea. He wasn’t sure if it was just because the castle was falling down around his ears or if Brannal had failed to explain the scope of the job. He’d thought he’d understood it as Secundus, but no, his comprehension had fallen well short.
Cormal went to check on the training again, where everyone told him—some in so many words—that everything was under control and they didn’t need his help. Was it his imagination, or were they making it clear that on top of everything else, they really didn’t need someone who could only wield fire when that was the one element that no one else in the castle wielded? Put Arvus and Molun in the room, and just like that, you had instructors who could help every Mage there control their elements.
But as always, Cormal was on his own. He wasdifferent. He had a temper, and it wasn’t like he was doing a great job these days of demonstrating that he had control over his element. This left him slinking off back down the corridor, feeling even more useless than usual.
The worst of it was, the more they looked at him like that, the less in control he felt. And heknewthat. Heknewthat he was doing it to himself, that he was letting them get to him, andhe was doing it anyway.
His hands were shaking.
“You know—”
He didn’t think, he just reacted, and a fireball went sailing through the air… and passed right through the man who’d spoken.
Cormal could actually feel the blood drain out of his face, making him sway on his feet even as he frantically pulled the fireback, shut itdown, because he couldn’t set the corridor on fire, not when, if it had been anyone else who’d found him, he might even now be rushing them to the doctor.
“Cormal! Look at me this instant.”
His eyes snapped open at the stern command.
“Come with me.”
He might not have been visible to anyone except his sister since he was sixteen, but Prince Kinan’s voice and body were every inch the twenty-two-year-old he’d grown into when no one else had seen it. And he’d definitely mastered the royal command. Cormal followed him instinctively, trailing after those soundless footfalls, letting the man lead him wherever he wanted. The dungeon, maybe? He was pretty sure that you wound up in the dungeon for attacking a member of the royal family.
He remembered the maelstrom of elements that Brannal had summoned when Cormal and the Queen pushed him too far. But he’d never unleashed it. He’d let it out, but he’d controlled it, had never let it harm anyone.
He stumbled a little when they hit grass, and then the Prince spoke again.
“Take off your boots.”
“What?”
“Take them off,” the Prince repeated sternly.
Cormal took off his boots.
“Now sit down and put your feet in the water.”
