Chapter 10: Brother
POV: Kai
I didn't sleep.
I sat at my desk until the city outside went from twilight to something darker and then back toward twilight again, because in Nocturne City the light never fully committed to either direction. The letter was open in front of me. I'd finally opened it somewhere around the third hour of staring at it, and now I almost wished I hadn't.
[I'm not asking you to come back to the kingdom. I'm asking you to come back for me. There's a difference. I think you know that. I think that's why you haven't written in six years.
The Council will move the moment I'm gone. You know what they'll build if there's no one to stop them. You left because you didn't want to be their instrument. I understand that. I've always understood that. But there's a difference between refusing to be used and leaving the door open for something worse.
Come home, Kai. Not as heir. Just as my brother. We can argue at a nearer distance.]
I'd read it four times. I folded it and put it in the desk drawer and then I took it out and read it again and then I put it away and didn't take it out after that.
The seals on my arms were restless. They did that when I was close to something I couldn't resolve, the power underneath them pressing at the edges like it could feel the tension and was offering, in its own destructive way, to help. I pressed my thumb against the one on my left forearm until it settled.
I thought about Crimson at twelve years old, standing between me and our father with his arms out and his chin up, taking the punishment for something I'd done because he was the heir and heirs were handled more carefully. I thought about him at twenty, placing the crown on his own head because our father was gone and someone had to and I'd already started moving toward the door.
I thought about his handwriting with the tremor in it.
Then I thought about the girl, because apparently that was what my mind did now when it needed somewhere to go.
She'd found the margin note. I knew she had. I'd written it six years ago in a moment of something I hadn't fully examined and then given her the book without thinking about the handwriting, which was careless. I was not usually careless. I was finding that she made me careless in small specific ways that added up to something I needed to address before they became a pattern.
She'd come to find me after reading the last entry. I'd told her to. I was regretting that slightly, not because I didn't want her to come but because I did, and wanting things in this particular school at this particular moment in my life was the most efficient way I knew to lose them.
She reminded me of Mara. That was the truth I'd told her and the truth I hadn't. The girl from the last entry. The nullifier who'd broken four Council members and two ancient seals and survived three termination attempts and still died. Mara had been seventeen and fierce and completely convinced that being hard to kill was the same as being safe, and I had been twenty and arrogant and completely convinced I could protect her, and we had both been wrong in ways that were still taking up space in my chest six years later.
Raven Nightshade lifted her chin when she was scared and held eye contact when she should look away and asked me questions I didn't answer and came back the next day and asked again. She was running out of time in this school and she didn't fully know it yet, and I was sitting here reading a dead man's letter and thinking about her pulse under my fingertip when I'd applied the blend.
I needed to get her power under control before the festival. That was the priority. Everything else was noise.
I put Crimson's letter in the drawer.
There was a knock at the door.
Which meant it was either a student, which was unusual, or Corvus had learned something in the last twelve hours.
I opened it.
Corvus. Civilian clothes again. He held out a small sealed envelope, different from last night's letter. No royal mark on this one. Just my name in Crimson's handwriting.
"He wrote again?" I said.
"This morning. He was lucid for about an hour." Corvus kept his voice neutral. "He wanted me to give you this one in person. Without the formal delivery."
I took it. Didn't open it.
"How long does he actually have," I said.
Corvus looked at the wall just past my shoulder. That was answer enough.
"The Council," I said. "How far along are they."
"Far enough that they've already begun drafting succession documents that don't include your name." He paused. "Or the Prince's."
I looked at him. "Who then."
"They're building a regency structure. Collective governance. Themselves."
Of course they were. Three hundred years of working toward it and they were finally close enough to reach.
I looked at the envelope in my hand. Crimson's writing. The tremor worse than last night.
"If I come back," I said, "I come back on my terms. My timeline. My conditions."
Corvus said nothing, which was the diplomatic version of agreement.
"There's something I need to resolve here first," I said. "It'll take three weeks. Maybe four."
"My lord—"
"Three weeks, Corvus." I looked at him. "Tell him I'm coming. Tell him to hold on." I stepped back. "And tell him I read his letter. Both of them."
Corvus nodded. He turned to leave.
"One more thing," I said.
He stopped.
"The Council's representative at the school festival." I kept my voice even. "Find out which member they're sending. I want the name before the event."
Corvus looked at me with the particular expression of someone putting pieces together and not loving the picture they were making.
"Is there something at this school I should know about?" he asked carefully.
I looked at him for a moment.
"Get me the name," I said, and closed the door.
I stood in the quiet of my room with the envelope in my hand and the sealed letter inside it and the knowledge that I had just committed to going back to a place I'd spent six years leaving, for reasons I was only partially being honest with myself about.
I sat back down at my desk.
I opened the second letter.
Three lines. Even shorter than the first.
[I knew you'd come back when something was worth coming back for. I'm glad it didn't take longer. Whatever it is — don't let them take it from you the way they take everything else.
Your brother,
Crimson]
I sat with it for a long time.
I folded the letter carefully and put it with the first one.
Then I picked up my pen and started writing the lesson plan for tomorrow, because three weeks was three weeks and every day between now and the
festival was a day she needed to be better than she currently was.
There was no time for anything else.