Just like we all did.
Maybe, I thought with a cringe, it is a bad thing I am trying to sugarcoat it the way I am.
Yes.
Be more like your father, Ryland.
I couldn’t keep the disgusting truth of what was coming from him forever. Besides, I didn’t have to tell him all of it right now.
“I twist my wrist that way because of how my father trained me,” I said with a sigh, keeping Jaromir’s focus on me, despite wanting to look away. “He broke my wrist every day to teach me how to heal while still teaching me other abilities, so things like the wrist flick are because I couldn’t move my body the right way and had to make do.”
That’s a good boy, Ryland.
Jaromir’s smile faded little by little with each word I spoke. This tiny, little fact about my father and what he was capable of seeped into him and replaced his awe with worry.
I groaned a bit at the shocked look he had now fixed me with, instantly grateful I had elected not to say anything more. I wasn’t sure what it would do to the kid.
“Your father broke your wrist?”
“My father is not a very nice man, Jaromir.”
He doesn’t seem to think so.
Look at him, Ryland.
“Every day for a year?” He continued speaking as though I hadn’t said anything, like he hadn’t heard the little asterisk mark that I was attaching to that or, worse, like he didn’t care.
“That is not a good thing, kid,” I reiterated as I turned back to him, my heart dropping to see the awe seeping back into Jaromir’s eyes. Please don’t let it be for what I think it is.
It is, Ryland.
It is exactly what you think it is.
“My father is … well… He’s not very nice.”
“I know that.”
I froze.
“How do you know?” We had been very careful to shield him from knowing my connection with Edmund, something that had been nearly impossible, all things considered. “You don’t know my father.”
Jaromir smiled, his lips spreading wide to reveal rows of perfectly straight and white teeth. “Yes I do,” he said through the grin. “It’s Edmund.”
I felt like I had been punched in the gut. My mouth opened automatically, my brain struggling to catch up, to find something to tell him, some way to respond.
“I figured it out,” he said, the smug look growing as he rubbed his fingers over the mark on his cheek, as though, if he pressed hard enough, he could make it disappear. “It wasn’t that hard. I knew Ilyan was his son, and you and Ilyan are obviously brothers, what with your weird eyes and the crazy things you both do and everything…” He smiled broadly at that, his hand dragging over his hair before he pinched the bridge of his nose, his smile increasing in mockery.
He laughed.
I didn’t.
“Were you trying to keep it from me?”
“Well … yeah…” I dragged my hand through my hair in embarrassed frustration again before stopping halfway through and dropping it to my side. Of all the things to give us away …
Jaromir’s smile stretched to inordinate proportions.
“There are some things you probably shouldn’t know yet,” I finished in a desperate hope he would let it drop.
I was a fool to think there was even a chance at that.
“That’s dumb,” he spat, the quick change in demeanor taking me by surprise.
The awe had gone; the pity had gone. He was just a lanky boy who stood before me in angry defiance.
I didn’t miss those mood swings.
You were always more powerful with them, just like him.
Whoever said only girls got those during puberty had never tried to control the magical rage of a boy trying to figure himself out.
Just standing here, I could feel the heat of his magic begin to grow, my own magic reacting in warning.
“How so?” I was careful to keep the hesitancy out of my voice.
“You’re training everyone for war, right?” He already knew the answer to this, but I nodded my head in acceptance, anyway. “Which means you are training me for war, too, so why hide things? Why lie and say things are different than they are?”
So that it’s easier for me to defeat you.
“So we can protect you.”
“That’s dumb,” he repeated, a smug, little smile springing over his face, his nose turning up at me as if he smelled something disgusting.
In any other circumstance, I would have laughed at the look, but I couldn’t. Not right then when the tense ball in my gut made it impossible.
“Why is that dumb, Jaromir?”
His smile grew. “Because isn’t that what you are training me to do? To protect myself?”
To die for me, you mean.
No, Father.
“Well … yes…” The words broke out awkwardly, my heart thundering as even I began to question who I was responding to.