He’s a male several decades older than me, close to my father’s age, if I remember correctly.
To be honest, I remember little about the season of my life that involved Orion.
“Your Highness,” says Orion by way of greeting, though there is scant hospitality to his tone.
Orion is a fae of tall build, dark brown hair, and skin the color of tanned parchment. He has the sort of angular face that’s particularly unfair, especially when he’s also as naturally talented at magic as he is.
The Fates had not distributed advantages evenly when it came to this male, and I suspect he knows it.
“Has your father sent you back here for another round of ‘garnering your inherited skill set’?” he asks, little enthusiasm garnishing his tone.
Immediately after Jerad’s death, my father had tasked Orion with tutoring me in my magic, my father claiming he hadn’t pushed the subject enough when I was in school.
Honestly, I figured my father had wished to punish me, as well as keep me busy enough with Orion’s lessons that I didn’t have time to bother him with my presence at family dinners. My father’s always blamed me for Jerad’s death and would have rather not suffered my company.
“Not this time,” I say. “This time, it’s me who wants the lessons.”
Orion cocks an eyebrow, no amusement in the expression. “Now why would you want that, considering our previous attempts were so fruitful? Surely you have nothing left you could possibly learn from me.”
I sigh. I hadn’t expected Orion to agree without heavy convincing. Our “lessons,” which he’d been forced into—probably because my father also hated him, though for entirely different reasons—had consisted of me showing up at his door, in the best cases hungover, in the worst, wasted out of my mind. If I remembered to show up at all, that was.
I don’t remember much from our lessons, but I can’t imagine I made them all that pleasant for Orion.
“Listen. I can apologize, if that’s what you want,” I say. “But I figure you probably don’t care much for my word or my opinion, so I can’t imagine an apology would be all that worthwhile to you.”
“Can’t argue with that,” says Orion, still not bothering to open the door further.
We stand there in silence for a moment. It takes me far too long to realize Orion is waiting for me to produce an argument.
I sigh. “Listen. I know I was a horrible student. My father knew that, and that’s why he stuck me with you, so he could make both of us miserable. And I know I haven’t touched my magic in years, at least not until a few weeks ago. But when Ellie and I traveled to the Rip, when those things attacked her… Orion, I was helpless. It was like there was all this fear, all this pent-up energy, all this magic welling inside of me, and there was nothing I could do to channel it, control it.”
“Magic is like any other muscle. If you refuse to exercise it, it withers,” says Orion, going to shut the door.
I stick my hand out, stopping him. “Unless you start exercising it again. Muscle can come back, right? And magic too?”
Orion taps his foot. “It has been a very long time since you’ve accessed your magic, Evander. You haven’t just let the muscle shrink. You’ve let it atrophy. Wither. Die.”
“Yes, I get the idea. Believe it or not, I do know what the word atrophy means,” I say. “But my magic’s still there. I used it, at the Rip.”
Orion frowns. “From what I’ve surmised, magic becomes more potent the closer it comes to the Rip. If it was weak there, it’s probably close to nonexistent here. I don’t have an abundance of time to waste, Your Highness.”
“No, perhaps not. But it’s not exactly wasted time if you’re getting paid for it, is it?”
Orion stares at me. “My stipend already compensates for anything I could ever want and more. I don’t have to pay for housing or food, since the crown provides as much. And believe it or not, some of us don’t feel the need to douse ourselves in extravagant living.”
“You live in a castle, Orion. I wouldn’t exactly go about claiming you live by humble means.”
“I live in the dungeons of a castle, Your Highness. And I quite like it down here. It’s quiet, and I don’t often receive visitors. Especially ones who are uninvited.”
“Am I really a visitor if I’m technically the heir to this castle, including its dungeon?” I ask, which is apparently the wrong thing to say, because Orion goes to shut the door again.
“Wait,” I say, too late this time to stick my fingers into the doorway if I don’t want them squashed.
The lock bolts behind the door.
Surely there’s something I can do to convince him.
“Please.” I lean my forehead against the door, the vines scratching my nose. “I couldn’t protect them. Ellie—I heard her screaming, and I had to watch as that thing ripped into her. I thought I was going to lose them both, and I knew in that moment that if I’d only tried, I would have had enough magic to save them. I don’t know why the Fates granted me a second chance. They know I don’t deserve it. Maybe they did it for Ellie and Cecilia, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. But whether they meant it for me at all, I still got one. And if I don’t use it to protect them, to defend my family, then what does that make me?”
After a moment, Orion’s voice drawls from the other side of the door. “I suppose, the same sort of male you’ve always been.”
The words sting, piercing through my ribs, burying their way inside my chest. I want to run off, forget this interaction ever happened. But no. Orion is only speaking the truth.
So I sit in front of his door, propped with my back up against it, pull a manual on vinecasting out of my satchel, and begin to read.
Hours later, when Orion opens the door and finds my weight still against it, so that I almost fall back on him, he groans in irritation.
“How long do you plan on waiting out here?” he asks.
“As long as it takes to change your mind.”
“You’re spoiled rotten, you know that. So used to getting your way, having everything handed to you, you don’t know how to be denied.”
I shrug, standing to face him and wiping the dust from the dungeon floor off my pants. “So I’ve been told. And you know, I might have taken that as an insult. But you’re correct. I am used to getting what I want. And I do expect what I want to come to me, eventually. But this time, things are a little different.”
“And how is that?”
“This time, what I want is for the good of others.”
