I struggled to keep my face calm as the full import of his words swept over me. I remembered Dara and Quirin visiting more than once when I was young and Mother was still alive. But it had somehow never occurred to me that they might have invited our family to join them here.
I could have grown up beside Renley and a whole host of other children, perhaps called Dara and Quirin aunt and uncle. When father grew sick and died, I wouldn’t have been alone to shoulder the burdens he laid down.
From some of the things Dara let drop during our times cooking together, it had been a different community back then. The General had still been a young man and not yet in charge, and the camp had lived by scavenging and hunting just across the border, much as our own family had.
The original settlers had found each other after fleeing the massacre, setting up a camp by the lake when they realized Calista was barred to all except them. They had thought it only a temporary home, but the problem of the rogue protections never died down. And unlike ordinary Calistan citizens who possessed one of the other three affinities, they hadn’t been able to seek refuge in Tartora or among the nomads. With a death sentence hanging over their heads, they had instead been forced to build a life here, among the ruins of their old home, their combined abilities enough to keep the rampaging protections away.
In short, it was precisely where my own family had belonged.
A sick feeling grew in my stomach as I considered my father’s endless allusions to a future of glory and power for our family. He had kept us apart while telling us we were special—or at least Cadence was.
The queasy sensation grew stronger and stronger, until it began to eat away at a dam inside me. I tried to pull back, to shore up the damage, but it was too late. The cracks grew until the entire thing shattered, releasing wave upon wave of blazing anger.
It was my father’s fault, all of it. He had lied to me about so many things, withholding any truth that didn’t keep us under his control. He had tasked me with protecting Cadence while leaving me exposed through my own ignorance. And then he had left us, leaving me alone to shoulder all his burden.
I balled my hands into fists, my nails biting into my palms. All these years I had blindly followed his directions, holding myself to the promises he had wrenched from me. And now I discovered it was all for what? To seize the throne of a destroyed kingdom—a throne that had never belonged to our family in the first place?
He had deprived us of friends and family so that he could instead thrust us into a dangerous fight for a future neither of us had ever desired. His efforts had never been about us—it had always been about him and the legacy of our family.
I looked across the desk at the General, seeing him through new eyes. He might have faults, but at least he cared nothing for any legacy that wasn’t built from his own efforts.
“You see the problem,” the General said in a deceptively mild voice, given the light in his eyes. “Calistans across the kingdoms are suffering. And they need us to come together to rebuild our home, not to each stand alone. That is all I’m asking. As a fellow Calistan, join us and leave those who murdered our families to look after themselves. All we ask for is our own kingdom returned to us. But thanks to the arrogance of those who once ruled us, we must clean up their mess first. If we are to forge our own path forward, we need those with enough strength to undo the damage they wrought.”
I bit my lip. His words were enticing. Too enticing when combined with the anger still pulsing through me.
“If the throne of Calista never belonged to my father, it doesn’t belong to you, either,” I said, clinging to my defiance.
He steepled his hands, appearing to consider the matter. “A monarch governs only by the will of his people. Without their support, he will fall. And so, by extension, they can choose to set up a new ruler. That is what the old king failed to recognize. He believed strength was the way to secure his throne, but he was wrong. That so-called strength provoked his neighbors into destroying him—and if they hadn’t, his own people would have done it eventually.”
“Did the people really dislike him so?” I asked skeptically. “I thought the Calistan royal family spent generations wooing all the power mage families over to their kingdom, until they were the only ones with any power mages at all. Surely they must have liked him if they were willing to move their entire life for him.”
“The most powerful mages approved of the royal family, certainly. At least at first. But the last king became erratic and dangerous, obsessed with his pursuit of power. Such a person couldn’t help viewing the powerless among his own people with increasing scorn. But no one is truly powerless—especially not when they have the numbers on their side. And more and more of the mage families were seeing the danger he posed as well.”
“Storing power, you mean? That seems more fanciful than dangerous. I’ve heard the rumors since I’ve been here, but it seems a fairy story.”
“It’s not.” He sounded certain. “It’s a process that requires a very specific…tool. One that has been lost to us. But it was possible once. Just as it is possible to increase a mage’s strength.”
“Increase someone’s strength?” I shook my head. “If that were possible, I wouldn’t have been so feted in Tarona.”
A slow smile spread across the General’s face. “It isn’t possible for the Tartorans or the nomads. But how do you think I come to be so strong? Or Lawson, or my other mages? How do I have mages at all when the Guild hoards anyone with a strong seed?”
I hesitated. Renley had hinted at the same thing, and I couldn’t deny some of the mages among the raiders seemed unnaturally strong. Given their small community, it certainly seemed more than flukes of heredity could account for.
The General fixed me with his piercing gaze. “Join me, and I’ll tell you how it’s done. Soon, you could be even stronger than you are now.”
“If what you’re saying is true, how come you need Cadence so much? Why don’t you simply increase the strength of one of your followers with a power affinity?”
He frowned. “Unfortunately, the method only works for the other three affinities.”
I snorted. Renley was destined for bitter disappointment, then.
“But you aren’t a power mage,” the General said. “It can work for you. All you have to do is accept my offer and help me build a new world.”
I swallowed. I wasn’t a power mage. Was that the crux of my anger and resentment? Our father had been a power mage like his father before him, and he had wanted a strong power mage child to carry on the family’s dream of seizing the Calistan throne. His response to Cadence made that obvious.
He had wanted a child unique in all the kingdoms. According to Quirin, my father had been disappointed when his own seed was weaker than his father’s, and he had sought a powerful mage as a wife in consequence. I should have realized when Quirin said it that my father had hoped to combine his affinity with my mother’s strength. But his firstborn had been born with her elements seed. What a disappointment I must have been to him—a child fit only to protect her sister.
I opened my mouth to tell the General that I would join him. But I couldn’t quite get out the words.
One lingering thought held me back. Renley.