“So why keep stuff like that from me? You are already training me to protect myself, but I can’t protect myself if you aren’t going to tell me everything. Just saying it’s for protection when I can’t protect myself without it … It doesn’t make any sense.”
He had spoken in circles the way he always did when he was agitated, the way I used to when I was his age. Despite the circles, however, I knew he had a point, one I was foolish for missing.
I stared at him, the obviously blank look on my face causing him to smile even more.
I know how to wipe that grin off his face.
He was smug. He had won. He knew he had gotten me. I didn’t know why, but that made me uncomfortable—being upped by a kid.
I had been rattling over everything for days. Risha and I had gotten in far too many conversations about what to tell him when he had figured it out all on his own, understanding the ins and outs of it enough to make what I thought had been sound, simple logic seem fickle.
I groaned a bit and turned away, my hand moving toward my curls, ready to drag its way through. I pulled it away quickly, not really wanting to be compared to Ilyan by an eight-year-old again.
It’s pathetic that you have picked up so much from your brother.
You are better than him.
You were supposed to destroy him.
No.
Kill him, Ryland.
Stop waiting.
Do this.
For me.
“Don’t worry; you don’t have to say it. My dad didn’t like it much when I was right, either.” The words came out so easily, the certainty of truth behind them, spoken with a grin and a flip of his hand.
Like it was nothing.
Yet, I felt responsible, felt so … parental?
My stomach flipped.
Is that what this was? This weird feeling of uncomfortable failure and of failed responsibility? I had never really had a parental figure to know. In fact, the closest I had ever had to a dad was Sain, and I was currently plotting to kill my biological father with him.
Even though I had watched plenty of TV shows, I had missed my own father in so much of my life I had never once contemplated how a parent felt in this type of situation. I was too busy sticking myself in the kid’s shoes, too busy trying to imagine what it would be like to have a father who cared and wanted to be in their kids’ lives, not just destroy them.
Now, somehow, I was standing where that TV dad had been, staring down at some kid with this weird feeling of sorrow and disappointment. A feeling I had somehow wronged this kid, that I hadn’t given him what he needed.
I had failed him.
You have failed me.
Be a good son, Ryland.
I felt like I had been kicked in the groin.
It was a sensation I was used to thanks to Rugby. Nevertheless, I didn’t think I would feel it quite so perfectly again, especially when no groin kicking had actually happened.
I was way too young to be dealing with this stuff.
Too late now.
“You’re right.” Those two words were so much harder to say than I would have thought.
Who would have guessed that accepting defeat to a kid would be so hard?
“Whoa,” Jaromir gasped, his eyes widening exponentially. “My dad never did that.”
“Did what?”
“Admitted it.”
It’s because you are weak.
I narrowed my eyes at him. It seemed like such the logical thing to do. If you made a mistake, you owned up to it. Then you made it better. Wasn’t that how this stuff went? I could already tell this was going to be a lot harder than I had thought.
Thank goodness I wasn’t his real father.
“Well, I made a mistake, didn’t I?” My voice was much harder than I wanted it to be. It was more with frustration from trying to figure this out than from anger. Jaromir didn’t really see that, though.
He looked at me with worry before shrugging his shoulders. “I guess.”
This whole thing was getting much too complicated.
“Well then, I’m sorry for it.” While I paused awkwardly, he gaped at me uncomfortably, and I did the only thing I could think of. “Now try it again.”
“Try what again?”
“The inverted flame.”
“But I thought—”
“You already seem to know more than your fair share. I promise no more secrets. And anything else you want to know, we will talk about it later. I promise.” And preferably not when I was still trying to figure out what in the world had happened and what role I had taken on.
Besides, I knew he had been dying to talk about what he had seen with Joclyn all afternoon. It was not something I wished to reiterate quite yet. I still needed to talk to Sain and figure out what in the world he had been thinking.
What he was doing.
I supposed it was a good thing we had already scheduled dinner tonight, even though we had planned on card games and trying to figure out where the rest of the Soul’s Blade was. I would have to add a Q&A to the schedule.
Jaromir caught my meaning quickly enough and grinned widely before running back to the center of the courtyard, leaving me trying to catch my breath while the space filled with streams of smoke and fireless flame.
“Why do I feel like I have just run a marathon?” I asked the question to the empty courtyard then jumped when someone responded.