6

“I did not replace Mother.”

“Valere...” Vehase’s voice softened and he cupped Valere’s cheek with a gentle hand. “I do not fault you for loving the only woman who became a mother to you by every deed a mother gives. I ask only this of you, my little brother, do not ask me to love her as you do.”

“I will not,” Valere yielded at last.

“How was the examination?” Vehase changed the conversation.

“Long, and somewhat easy, though the fourth question nearly declared war upon me,” Valere sighed.

“Then Guru Amaeren wrote it,” Vehase sounded certain. “The woman feasts upon the suffering of her students as though it were the finest course ever served.”

“Is she truly that fearsome?” Valere asked. “I had expected Guru Ayhsate to be the one everyone feared.”

“Guru Ayhsate is the gentlest among the gurus,” Vehase said. “Guru Amaeren is the terror of Aethoria."

“Now you are declaring war upon me as well.” Valere held the next bite towards Vehase's mouth. “Eat before you ruin my appetite together with my nerves, our last luncheon," his gaze drifted, only once, to the third chair left empty at the table.

Vehase caught the glance before Valere could hide it, and his heart broke at the quiet longing that lingered in his brother's eyes despite everything. “Father is...”

“You need not make excuses for him,” Valere cut him off. “I know well enough he has no wish to see me, and, truth be told, I carry no wish to see him either.”

“Then tell me instead,” Vehase said after chewing thoughtfully, “did Guru Ayhsate spend a full hour delivering one of his dry speeches?”

“He did,” Valere laughed, shaking his head at the memory, but something shifted across his face before the laughter had fully faded. “I saw a Vianian girl, Jye.”

“Was she Draconian?”

“I did not see properly,” Valere answered. “But her hair was gold.”

“Gold...” Vehase set his fork aside. “Only Draconian bear hair of that color," his eyes sharpened with quiet concern. “Tell me truthfully, did you see any hand of ours raised against her?”

Valere remembered the murmurs that had followed her through the hall, whispers traded behind hands, glances that lingered a heartbeat too long, the peculiar cruelty of a crowd too civilized to speak its prejudice aloud yet not nearly civilized enough to bury it entirely.

“Only whispers,” he said, and his thoughts wandered back to the moment she had collided with him.

Rude girl, he thought. Does she sit somewhere feeling even the smallest measure of guilt for barreling into a stranger and offering him nothing in return but a snapped hand? He liked imagining it, the realization on her face that courtesy owed even a stranger the grace of a glance. More likely, he shook his head, she sits somewhere entirely unbothered by the whole affair, already three thoughts removed from sparing me so much as a second's consideration.

The wind, having lingered long enough to steal the whole of Valere's private musings, drifted onward until she found Ryska tucked into a quiet corner of the university grounds, and found no guilt written anywhere across her face, no trace of remorse for a stranger's chest struck during her panicked flight.

It is nothing, Ryska thought, pressing her hand firmly over the cut until its sting dulled into something she could ignore. A blade, and a shallow one at that, was the least of what the world had already tried to take from her. She wrapped her arms around herself until the pain yielded beneath her palm, but the wound of helplessness had cut far deeper than the knife ever could, for it had wounded her pride.

Rhovyn, from across the grounds, spotted her, she sat with her back on his side, he then saw her fingers plucking absentmindedly at the grass, watched her make herself smaller with every passing moment, and wondered whether something had happened to her, or whether the whispers of people were slowly tearing her soul apart.

She is frightened, he concluded and lingered where he stood, wondering whether he should go to her, but if he did, what could he possibly say that would not seem strange? He wrestled with the thought until another girl came and sat beside her, and only then did his mind find a measure of relief.

“How did you get hurt?” Nehara asked, seeing the blood staining Ryska's wound but when Ryska did not answer, she tried again. "Did you eat?”

Ryska answered neither question. Her mind had already wandered two months into the past, to the day fate had denied her even a final glance at her family, not one last embrace, not even the mercy of their last rites. It had spared only her, leaving her alive when everyone she loved had been taken, and now the very world that had torn her soul apart the moment her father left it renamed her a war criminal.

“Stay here,” Nehara said. “I shall bring you something to eat, as quickly as I can," she rose to her feet, hurried towards the gate and returned soon with waybread.

Ryska took a bite, but it lodged in her throat and tears spilled down her cheek. How strange life could become in the span of two months. Once, she had a father who would have set kingdoms ablaze before allowing a single hand to be raised against her. Now she lived in a world where boys scarcely older than herself could draw her blood and name her a war criminal as though the words belonged to her.

She could not even rise to answer them, for survival was no longer a gift she could spend as she pleased; it belonged to the dead who had purchased it for her and those dead were not nameless, forgotten soldiers. They were her family, her guards, her army and her handmaids.

Nehara did not understand what storm raged inside Ryska, but she understood enough, that war had likely orphaned her but she asked nothing, offered no comfort made of empty words, and simply rested a hand upon hers, letting her grieve in the silence she seemed to need.

Ryska forced herself through a few more bites and did not move from her place again until evening the Bell of Results tolled across Aethoria and students from every corner, who had been sitting, waiting, or wandering began making their way towards Vaerhold Academy. Aethoria grounds filled with the sound of twelve hundred lives walking towards the future they would, and would not, be permitted to become.

The parchments stirred and whispered beneath the evening wind before the stewards fastened them to the notice board beside the administrative office. One steward called for everyone to form a line before quietly slipping away, already aware of the outcome.

The crowd surged forward before the stewards had managed more than a few paces away. Eyes swept across the lists in frantic search of familiar names and those who found theirs cried out in triumph, embracing whoever stood nearest, whether friend or stranger while those who did not find their names fell back beneath the weight of bitter disappointment, accepting, blaming, grieving, or grasping at whatever might help them endure the knowledge that they had not been chosen.

Bram offered a prayer to every god whose name had ever reached his ears, then to every god before whom the Nine Peoples had ever bowed their knees, unwilling to leave even a single deity unasked for mercy before he began at Rank Two Hundred and Seventy-Eight, searching from the bottom upward. He climbed through the two hundreds, then the hundreds, yet still found nothing and his heart sank.

“What is your name?” a voice asked beside him. “I shall look for you.”

“Bram Laebaedore," Bram turned toward the man.

“Let us find you, Bram," the stranger's green eyes swept across the list for scarcely a heartbeat before his finger came to rest upon Rank Twelve. "Here you are.”

“Rank Twelve?” Bram blinked once, then again, his vision blurred and he scrubbed furiously at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Gods, this is humiliating... to weep over a ranking,” he tried to laugh but his voice faltered. “I just... they will not have to do it anymore," he swallowed hard. “My father... my mother... they will not have to break their backs each day merely to keep food upon our table.”