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My voice peels out louder than I expected over the warble of the forge’s fire. Dad startles and whirls around, my name already on his lips. “Aleks?—”
The last syllable dies as his gaze jars on my face. He doesn’t quite flinch, but his jaw tics as if he’s restrained one.
And there’s that curl of the lip.
I step farther into the shop and continue before he can say anything else. “I won’t be staying long. There’s something important I need to talk to you about.”
Mom’s surprised voice carries from the large warehouse room at the back of the shop. “Is that Aleksi?”
She comes hustling out with wide eyes and a hesitant smile. When her gaze finds me, her eyes widen even more—and the smile vanishes.
“Hello, Mom,” I say through the constricting of my throat. Imagining their reactions wasn’t a tenth as painful as experiencing them firsthand.
She doesn’t even bother to return my greeting. “What happened to you?”
I’m not going to lie. “I made some bad decisions—but I learned from them. It was years ago. I’ve put it behind me.”
My father finally manages to sputter a response. “It’s right here in front of us. This is what you let happen to you at that useless school? This is the face you show the world now?”
My hackles come up in an instant. Just like old times.
“It’s the face I have,” I grit out. “And the school wasn’t useless.”
Mom moves tentatively toward me, her arms crossing in front of her. She shakes her head. “I knew there wasn’t anything good to come of surrounding yourself with people who’d rather think about words than what’s real. But you were so stubborn.”
“It was still the right choice. Everything I studied was real. What I look like doesn’t matter in?—”
Dad cuts me off with a dismissive snort. “Tell that to anyone you need to barter with while you’re showing them that mug. What are you doing here? Did you finally get tired of those stuck-up scholars?”
Another sharp retort prickles up my throat. In the same moment, my hand clenches by my hip—and my fingers brush the lump in my pocket that’s my most vital cargo.
That object is the reason I’m here at all. It has nothing to do with my career choices or my parents’ opinion of them.
The mission I’m on is so much bigger than all the bitter past behind us that I’ve nearly stumbled right back into.
I’m not the boy they knew. I have the ear of the future queen. The love of a riven sorcerer.
I’m not someone for a couple of weapons merchants to sneer at—I deserve their respect.
Gods above, would I ever have stooped so low in the first place if I hadn’t been so desperate for respect back then? If I’d gotten even a smidgeon of support from the people who raised me?
My scars are marks of my shame, but I had a childhood of rejection and disdain to bring me to that point. Everything I’ve earned since then, all the things I’ve accomplished are completely thanks to my own strength, rising above the foundation these two people built for me.
I draw my stance up straighter and swallow down my rancor.
I won’t speak to them like their disappointing son. I’m here as Queen Petra’s representative.
My tone evens out, both harder and steadier than before. “I didn’t come to discuss my schooling or what happened to my face. There are more pressing matters to address. Have you been doing business with the Order of the Wild?”
Dad’s momentary shock at my change in tone shifts into a disgruntled expression at my last words. “Crazed rabblerousers, throwing the whole country into chaos,” he grumbles, setting his hammer down on the forge. “What business is there anyone can do with them? They don’t think they should have to pay for anything. Marched in here not long after King Konram’s death was announced and took half our inventory.”
As he says King Konram’s name, he taps his fingers down his front in the gesture of the divinities, honoring our former ruler. The hope that brought me here expands in my chest.
Mom lets out a huff and then lowers her voice as if afraid she might be overheard. “They’re meddlers, is what they are. Want to take over everything. Seems like every other day they send someone in here wanting to know what orders we’ve gotten and from who.”
“Trying to dress themselves up as some sort of salvation when they’re nothing but murdering traitors.” Dad grimaces. Then he gives me an abruptly wary look. “You haven’t fallen in with that lot now, have you?”
I have to swallow a slightly hysterical laugh. I’m not sure what’s more insulting—that they think so little of me it didn’t occur to them that I could be a threat when I first asked the question or that they don’t realize I’d reject everything the Order stands for even more vehemently than they do.
