“A ducat for your thoughts,” Luc said, flicking a coin from his pocket my way.
I caught it on reflex as I said, “I was just thinking of how you were both raised here. How difficult that must have been.”
“Well,” Luc said, popping a grape into his mouth. “In many ways, Yseult and I are very Valenian. We were raised in your customs, your politeness. We don’t remember anything of Maevana.”
“Our fathers have not let us forget it, though,” the queen added. “We know what the air tastes like, what the land looks like, what a true brogue sounds like, what our Houses stand for, even though we have not yet experienced it wholly for ourselves.”
An easy lull came about us as we each took a final swig from the flask.
“I hear you are Maevan on your father’s side,” Yseult said to me. “So you are similar to Luc and me. You were raised here, you love this kingdom, embrace it as part of yourself. But there is more to you, which you cannot begin to fully know until you cross the channel.”
Luc nodded his agreement.
“Sometimes I imagine it will be like our time here was all just a dream,” the queen continued, glancing down to a stray thread in her sleeve. “That when we return to our fallen lands, when we stand in our halls among our people once more . . . it will feel like we have finally woken.”
We were silent again, each of us lost to our own thoughts, our own imaginations quietly blossoming as to what it would be like to see Maevana. Yseult was the one to break the reverie, brushing the crumbs from her shirt, and then she tapped me on the knee.
“All right, let’s do one more guard, and then we will call it a day,” Yseult said, drawing me back into the center of the dirt. We gathered our swords, Luc lazily chewing the last of the bread as he watched us with hooded eyes. “This is called the close left guard, and . . .”
I lifted my practice sword, to mirror her as she demonstrated the guard. I felt the wooden hilt slide in my sweaty palms, a steady ache drum up my spine. And then she was suddenly, unexpectedly lunging for me. Her practice sword shed its wood and shimmered into steel as it cut for me. I lurched back, fear piercing my stomach as I tripped and heard an irritated male voice snap, “Hanging left, Tristan! Hanging left, not close left!”
I was no longer standing in an enclosed courtyard with Yseult. The sky was cloudy, troubled above me, and a cold wind washed over me, smelling like fire and leaves and cold earth. And him—the one cutting his sword at me, the one who had barked at me as if I were a dog. He was tall and dark-haired, young but not quite a man yet, as his beard was still trying to fill in along his jaw.
“Tristan! What are you doing? Get up!”
He was talking to me, pointing the sharp tip of his sword at me. I now realized why he looked so irritated; I had tripped and sprawled out on the grass, my backside throbbing and my ears ringing, my practice sword fallen uselessly beside me.
I clambered for the discarded sword, wooden and scuffed, and that’s when I noticed my hands. Not mine, but the uncertain, grubby ones of a ten-year-old boy. There was dirt under his nails and a long scratch across the back of his right hand, still swollen and red, as if it wanted to break its scab.
“Get up, Tristan!” the older one shouted, exasperated. He took hold of Tristan’s collar—my collar—and hauled him up to his feet, lanky legs kicking momentarily before boots found the earth. “Gods above, do you want Da to see you like that? You’ll make him wish we were daughters and not sons.”
Tristan’s throat tightened, his cheeks flushed with shame as he retrieved his sword and stood before his older brother. Oran always knew how to make him feel worthless and weak—the second-born son, who would never inherit or amount to anything.
“How many times are you going to get that guard wrong?” Oran insisted. “You realize I nearly cut you open.”
Tristan nodded, angry words swarming in his chest. But he kept them locked away, bees buzzing in their hive, knowing Oran would hit him if he talked back, if he sounded the least bit defiant.
It was days like that one when Tristan fervently wished he had been born a Kavanagh. If he had magic, he would blast his brother into pieces like a broken mirror, melt him into a river, or turn him into a tree. The mere thought, however impossible with his Allenach blood, made Tristan smile.
Of course, Oran noticed.
“Wipe that off your face,” his older brother sneered. “Come on, fight me as a queen would.”
The anger stirred, dark and blazing. Tristan didn’t think he could hold it in much longer—it made his heart rot when he held it in—but he settled into middle guard, just as Oran had taught him, the neutral guard that could shift into offense or defense. It wasn’t fair that Tristan was still forced to wield a wooden blade, a child’s blade, while Oran, who was only four years older, was holding steel.
Wood against steel.
Nothing in life was ever fair, was always set against him. And Tristan longed, more than anything, to be inside the castle, in the library with his tutor, learning more about history and queens and literature. Or exploring the castle’s hidden passages and finding secret doors. Swords had never been what he wanted.
“Come on, maggot,” Oran taunted him.
Tristan shouted as he lunged forward, bringing his wooden sword down in a powerful arc. It lodged into Oran’s steel, stuck, and Oran easily twisted the hilt from Tristan’s hands. Tristan stumbled and then felt something hot on his cheek, something wet and sticky.
“I hope that scars,” Oran said, finally yanking Tristan’s wooden sword off of his blade. “It’ll make you at least look half a man.”
Tristan watched as his brother tossed his training sword in the grass, lifting his fingers to his cheek. They came away bloody, and he felt a long, shallow cut down his cheekbone. Oran had purposely cut him.
“Are you going to cry now?” Oran asked.
Tristan turned and ran. He didn’t run toward the castle, which sat on the crest of the hill as a dark cloud that had married earth. He ran past the stables, past the weaver’s guild, past the alehouse to where the forest waited with dark green invitation. And he could hear Oran pursuing him, shouting at him to stop. “Tristan! Tristan, stop!”
Into the trees he went, weaving deep within them, bounding like a hare, or like the stag of his heraldry, letting the forest swallow him, protect him.
But Oran still trailed him; he had always been fast. His older brother rudely broke branches, blundering through the pines and alders, the aspens and hickories. Tristan could hear Oran gaining on him, and he nimbly jumped a little creek and shot through a thicket, finally reaching the old oak.