Promises Made in Secret

Five times Akherien kept silent, and one time Katreia spoke up.

The Fever

She lay flushed with heat, almost too small among her sheets with eyebags dark as bruises. When Akherien found her there, shivering despite her covers in the winter breeze, he quickly realised it was the first time he had ever had a way to help her.

Through the weeks of winter, the young mage had felt a change creeping over him. Since he had joined the castle, he had believed he didn’t deserve Katreia’s friendship. But she had persisted anyway, as if there were something about him that he did not see in the mirror each morning.

He had always tried to give her reasons to be proud of him. She was the beacon that told him which way his heart should point. But these feelings refused to be expressed—the words kept getting tangled in his throat—so he only ever let it move him to act.

Kat didn't make it easy: she never needed any helping. She had always been the one pulling her friends along, the one with a plan up her sleeve.

This evening, though, he saw her pulling the covers around her in the shuddering throes of illness, and suddenly, here was something he could do.

So he did the only thing he knew how, and stayed.

He stayed, flame crackling in his hand, till Cendreile’s gentle playing dwindled to silence and she slipped away from the room with a whispered, “good night.” He stayed, afraid to let the cold wake Kat, till he gave out and fell asleep at her bedside—till Cendreile and Katreia woke him in the morning and told him he had been keeping a fire alight all night.

All of a sudden, he felt too visible, too vulnerable, like a deer exposing its underbelly to the arrows of hunters.

Maybe it was because they had noticed the intensity of his feelings before he had, before he’d even known to guard them. Maybe—and he realised this as Katreia complimented him and the words scalded like lava in his chest—his heart had decided she was different from everyone else.

The Secret

Everyone said Akherien was one of the best mages they had ever known, from his teacher Enere to the nobles in the halls.

He didn't know what to do with that excess of praise, because it didn't quite feel real. He didn't feel like the person who had earned those compliments—as if the words were meant for someone else whom they had mistaken him for.

All he did was what he had always done—make fire, and try not to hurt anyone with it.

He knew he was very lucky he had gotten the chance to hone those skills. At the swordsmanship tournament that year, Katreia made it perfectly clear that she wanted to learn the sword, and her mother made it perfectly clear she would not allow it.  As the spat unfolded, Akherien felt a sickening twinge at the thought that his friend could be so brutally denied.

To him, there was never any question about whether she should get to learn, or whether he should help her attain it. He saw she wanted it to tears, and that was a directive.

It was a methodic affair, planning the heist. He had been around the armoury enough to know it wasn't watched nearly as closely as it should be, and he quickly noticed a tunnel straight through its defences: at night, when it was locked up—he had learned his way around locks after his parents had put him away one too many times. He only had to stay unseen while he was creeping through the halls.

But what if he were caught? The question only crossed him once he was holding the sword in his shaking hands outside the princess’ room, and was just as quickly dismissed.

He didn't think to consider his place in all  this, beyond his pleasure at being a vessel for her victory. Nor did he wonder if everyone felt this way about their best friend—not until she flew to hug him in the dark, laughing with unbridled disbelief, and he stood there suddenly reminding himself that she had already been promised in marriage.

The Banner

“That’s one of us who has fallen. Anyone else?”

The instant the words were out of Katreia’s mouth, Akherien froze.

It had taken him till she had invited him with her to Maen-orin to finally wrestle with the notion that—perhaps—he was nervous about going because he would be seeing her every hour of every day.

Short of exploding with his own nerves, he had finally owned up to Cendreile that the journey was making him nervous, and she guessed the cause accurately after a few tries.

Inside his mind, he had built a wall wide as the keep around the idea that he might be falling in love. It wasn't right—it was futile—it wasn't fair to Kat.

If she ever found out, then she would have to let him down, to find a way to say the words that would rend him in two. And he could never put her in that position.

In any case, they had grown close enough to share secrets, to banter—to play at the closest thing to flirting that the circumstances would ever allow. And that was enough to him—that she wished for his company, that she saw him as a friend—and he was not about to waste it all in one impulsive spate.

So when she asked that question, he did not speak. But maybe his silence said more than he intended.

When Katreia turned to him with a glare and said, “You—is there someone?”, he almost budged.

Right there, he made the choice again—like the last hundred times—to spare her the mess and the heartache of the truth. He said no, looking straight at the person whose name was the answer to that question.

The Blaze

Akherien always felt an inch away from becoming a burden again. It was comfortable to feel useful; it meant he would be tolerated. Whenever Lady Kalen asked him to pass a message to the Queen, his heart leapt at the thought that she trusted him to hold it in confidence, to carry it unblemished and unaltered until its contents were received.

And when the lady forgot to put out her candles and the flames leapt her the curtains, and when those flames then devoured the entire nobles’ hall, Akherien grew certain that it had been his fault somehow.

Even though his duties had ended at dinnertime and he had been nowhere near her room at the hour of the accident, a thousand questions still rambled through his mind. Had he failed to warn her of the danger? Should he have volunteered to stay a few hours longer, in case of precisely this eventuality?

He raced through the burning halls to evacuate the nobles spurred by bisected motives: first, because he was the best person to do it, immune to flames and able to divert them—and second, so that he could make up for something he had not done.

They always said he was one of the castle's best mages. If he couldn't be what they had asked him to be, then what was he?

Later that evening, as Akherien leaned against a windowsill gazing out over the entire dark sweep of Dei-orin, memories of the rescue flashed between those of a day much older. 

Being under threat still locked up his body, as if he still carried his parents’ voices inside his head, demanding that he never conjure a single spark.

Then he heard Katreia calling his name, and he turned. She smiled as if her room hadn't burned down today, inviting himself into his presence as easily as slipping into a hot tub after a long week.

Their conversation meandered to the subject of her looming departure, and she turned to him and said, “I'll miss you the most, I think, when I go to Kerade.”

Akherien wondered if she knew how those words woke a storm inside him. He had grown familiar with the ache of being close to her, but now and then, she still said and did things that made him feel unsteady on his feet.

Katreia wasn't Enere, or Lady Kalen, or her parents, couching orders or lessons in flattery. When she said this, she spoke with raw feeling.

She would miss him, and she would miss him the most. Looking into her face was almost too much this time, for he could see how it pierced her to think of such a future. 

And he yearned to reach out and hold her, just like he had held her as they had burst from the fire—to make up for the decades of separation that were soon to come.

His face burned at his own thoughts, and he only thanked the darkness for hiding his shame from view.

The Blossom

Akherien almost hoped he wouldn't run into Katreia tonight.

Sure, he had spent half a day visiting city tailors with Lady Kalen asking for sartorial advice, and another hour toiling to remove every crease from his shirt, just in the hopes that the princess might pause and give him a second look tonight.

But as the chatter and the music swelled through the hall and he glimpsed her through the milling dancers, proud in bright vermilion, he suddenly lost faith that a single word would come out of his mouth right.

Each time their eyes met, he found a way to lose himself in the crowd again—finding more dances, trying to camouflage himself in the chaos.

It was only when he saw her talking to Cendreile in the orchestra that he thought, with someone to diffuse the tension, he might have a chance of not blundering severely.

But Cendreile only egged them on toward each other, the cunning fiend.

So Katreia took his hand.

And then they were dancing, their faces dangerously close, her hands clinging to him almost as tightly as he was clinging to his self-restraint.

He could see the sword training in her motions, agile and precise in a way no one else had been tonight. She wore a ballgown bright as flame, the back cut dangerously low, and at times his fingers brushed her bare skin and a pang of longing rolled through him.

It almost wasn't fair, how hard it was to play perfect neutrality.

Eyes sparkling up at him, Katreia said, “You really are an extraordinary friend,” and Akherien knew that she really did mean it—she always did—that she regarded him as above the rest: the one she would miss, the one she felt lucky to know.

For the rest of those harrowing minutes, Akherien was taken over by a fever of adoration that had nowhere to go. The way she smiled made him want to do things he couldn't.

When the dance ended, she said she wanted another, and he almost acceded—but he knew he might not survive proximity with Katreia much longer. So he made a flimsy excuse and fled.

The Legend

When the theft was finally found out, six years after the fact, Akherien simply began preparing for prison.

Now and again, he wondered if the lack of self-preservation on his part was the same thing that had glued him to the ground as his home had burned down around him.

Wasn't it the same thing, after all? If he burned down together with the house, then the world no longer had to worry about the threat he posed. If he went to jail, and not Katreia, then she would get a few precious years longer to pursue her dream.

Akherien had never cared where he figured in those situations.

But today, something strange and startling began to clarify itself to him:

Katreia did.

Katreia cared what he did to himself. She had always cared—even back when she had heard his cries from a few streets away and had braved the burning house to save him.

Today, as he had stood professing guilt to Istra, she had decided all at once to reveal the sword to save him again.

She was her mother's daughter, and she used that to shield him from harm—but in the end, it was all moot, for it turned out she had fulfilled an ancient prophecy in the process of defying the court.

Confronting Akherien after the hearing, Katreia fixed her eyes on him and said, “You need to think about yourself, too.”

For a minute, he tried. Who was he, really? What did he want?

He wanted to stop being a curse. He wanted to be worth the space he took up. Everything he did was an apology for existing.

“But I wasn't going to try and incriminate you. You saved my life when we were children. I wanted to return the favour.”

“There's no need to repay that,” said Katreia. “You being alive is all the repayment I need.”

Katreia had always had a much stronger will than Akherien did. She had fistfought fate itself to clinch the life she wanted to have. He had always admired that about her.

So when she then said she wanted to fight for him, he first wondered how he could deserve that.

But she kept talking. She had known him longer than she had been betrothed. She didn't want to be with her promised husband.

No, actually, she wanted him.

For ten seconds or so, Akherien's living reality felt like the sort of scenario he would invent while lying sleeplessly in bed. There was no explanation other than that he had misheard.

Then Katreia began to explain, voice wobbling, and it became clearer, word by word, that he had not misheard—that she did want him, fiercely, and she would let no rule nor promise stop her.

Then, for just a few seconds, Akherien let himself do something because he wanted to.

Well, Kat seemed to want it too, but he wasn't completely sure. Not until their lips met and she stayed to take it all and she dragged him back in for more after he withdrew.

She had always had a stronger will than he, and when she wanted something, she chased it with all her might.

This time, Akherien realised, the thing she was chasing was him.

And for once, he didn't feel sorry for being who he was.