And yet now a threat hung in the air between us.
I tried again. “I thought we could spar with swords. We used to be a pretty even match.”
Jaik eyed me. “I don’t suppose I should turn down a request from a teacher.”
“Well, I’m not coming to you as a teacher, I’m coming to you as—”
“Don’t say my brother.” Jaik’s voice turned dangerous.
The others had wandered over. Branok and Lynx stepped behind Jaik, and Talisyn looked grim-faced. Lucien’s lips fell apart, and he looked stunned by Jaik’s ire. Maybe now Honor would understand.
Arren stayed across the yard, always unamused by the tension. It bothered me they heard Jaik reject me even more than it would’ve if the two of us were alone.
I only stayed there for Honor.
“You can go,” Jaik told his friends, the invitation an order.
Lynx gave me a sympathetic smile and Branok gave me a curious look as if he couldn’t make sense of what I was trying to accomplish. Tal grabbed Lucien’s shoulder and dragged him off, as Luce seemed inclined to linger.
“Maybe I should make you fight as our soul creatures,” Jaik muttered, as if he regretted having given way to my wishes in any way at any time.
I ignored him, drawing a practice sword from the rack.
“Why did you want to spar with me?” he demanded. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Well, Jaik, there aren’t many people that put up a good fight for me. You’ve always been my best competition.”
Jaik’s face in response looked more like a baring of his teeth. There was something feral in the air between us.
Honor would have been annoyed by us both, baiting each other. I wanted to be a better, kinder man, but that was difficult because everyone around me was irritating.
“And what’s the real reason?” he asked as the two of us crossed swords.
“I wanted to apologize. I hope we can work through our past.” The words came out flat, because they felt torn from my chest. I meant them, but even I could hear how fake they sounded. I cleared my throat, trying to figure out what else to say.
Jaik slashed at my legs, and I jumped over the sword. The two of us moved apart, circling each other, looking for an opening.
Jaik looked both perplexed and furious. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“No, I’m not kidding. The two of us used to be close. I miss that.” I couldn’t bring myself to say that I missed him, because the truth was I didn’t. My brother was an arrogant, self-centered wrecking ball, but he hadn’t always been that way.
Maybe I’d been part of making him into the man he was now.
Jaik launched himself at me, letting loose a furious series of blows. I parried each sword strike, the force of his blows stinging up the blade and into my hand.
“I want to remind you of something.” Jaik almost clipped me, and I dove to one side, blocking his blade with my own. “This is a story that I’m not sure if you remember, or if you’ve lied to even yourself so badly you don’t remember what you did, Caldren.”
“Go on.” There was a weight like a stone in my stomach.
“Father had sent us with Damyn to stop the Scourge attack on a village. We’d gotten separated from Damyn. We were overwhelmed by Scourge, the two of us trapped inside the temple.”
I did remember that day. We’d been stuck. It hadn’t looked good for the two of us.
I thought that maybe if I made it clear to my brother that I remembered too, that I saw my own faults, we could start to leave the past. “I’m not proud of how I acted that day, Jaik.”
Jaik was not to be deterred. “Oh, so you do remember? So you tell me the story. What happens? After all, I wasn’t awake for all of it.” His voice had taken on a bitter quality.
“I was trapped by the Scourge,” I admitted. “We both were—trapped on opposite sides of the altar, ringed by Scourge. Dozens of them. And you saved me. You used all your magic to blast the Scourge away from us both, and you threw me your sword since I’d lost mine. I’d be dead without you.”
Jaik probably wished I was.
“No, that’s not the whole story. I used all my magic to save you, all my energy, every ounce I had. I knew I’d be knocked unconscious but it was that, or let you die. I was trusting you to take care of me—”
“And I did take care of you. I got free and I made sure that you were safe. You were already unconscious and I carried you out.”
“And here for a minute I thought you were actually going to admit to something,” Jaik said. “That for once in your self-centered, glory-chasing life, you might take responsibility.”
“All right. After you were knocked unconscious, I carried you out. I would’ve told Damyn everything that happened, but our father was there. He asked me what had happened. How we’d survived the dozens of Scourge that surged into the temple. For once he seemed like he actually gave a damn about both of us. He was proud, worried. He was scared for you.”
“And what did you tell him?” Jaik’s voice was dangerous.
I had to force the words. “I told him it was my magic. I told him I’d saved you.”
“And after that, he mocked me mercilessly for needing my big brother to save me. He said, in front of everyone, it was clear which one of us would be the dragon. There was no point in trying to defend myself. Everyone had heard the story by then. It just looked as if I was ranting, trying to defend myself so that I wouldn’t look weak.”
“I was an asshole, Jaik, but we were both kids. If I could go back and do things differently, I would. I’m not the same person anymore.”
“None of that changes what you did to me.”
“You’re right, nothing can change what I did to you in the past. Do you want me to go tell the others what happened? Do you want to beat me like he would’ve beat me then if I had confessed about lying? Would it make you feel better if I told Pend everything that happened?”
“Maybe it would. But you don’t actually have the courage. You weren’t a good brother, and you won’t be good to Honor.”
“I’m not the same man.”
Jaik shook his head, rejecting the idea.
“Why do you insist on us being enemies?”
“You’re the one who made that choice.”
Sometimes, when I looked at my brother’s stony face, the way his hair was tousled in the wind even though his face might’ve been carved from marble, I saw the kid he used to be.
“You’ll always be the same man. Nobody changes that much.” Jaik’s voice was cool.
I was exasperated. “Not if you don’t give them the chance, no.”
“Fine,” he said. “You want to talk it out? Let’s go to my quarters and talk it out.”
The invitation surprised me, but I nodded. I’d take any sign of a truce.
I would’ve expected my brother to keep me out of his life as much as possible, so it felt like a tentative offering on his part, even though the two of us were silent going up the stairs.
“You know what I still wonder about,” he mused, as we reached the dragon’s wing of the academy and he pushed open the carved dragon’s head door, which was so heavy that some shifters couldn’t open it.