Page 25 of The Amber Sunburst

“No. It’s not. What I gave you… I never expected you to take to it like you did. You’re so talented. And you care so much.”

That’s the thing. He does care so much.

And he wants to not be selfish. He wants to be good—to be who everyone thinks he is.

But there are a few things in this world that make him not good. Things that he wants so badly he becomes greedy just to keep them. So instead of comforting his dad, he responds, “What would you have me do? Play with Alexander there in the room? He’ll report me.”

“I think⁠—”

“Look, can we just not? I don’t blame you. But this is hopeless.”

“Alexander is from far away. I don’t think he’ll have a problem with it.”

“Are you serious?” Zeno scoffs, failing to tone down his antagonism. “Everyone knows that Plato forbids music for pleasure among the Leadership Classes. Even people from the countryside. And it’s his first day, he doesn’t want to get in trouble. He will report me.”

“The rules in the countryside are different. People are kinder there—more lax. Just ask him. Just try.”

What his dad is proposing is impossible—no one would accept breaking the rules so obnoxiously. Except for Eudoxia, of course, but she’s not just anyone. Eudoxia is perfect.

But Bios is right. Zeno lives for the smooth expanse of ancient wood, the taut strings, tuned and retuned, the bow of horsehair from thousands of years ago. The instrument has been preserved so carefully for so long, and he cannot let it sit neglected and unloved.

“What would I even say?” he asks, despite himself.

“Be direct. And don’t be nervous. I really don’t think he’ll care. Where he’s from they don’t… they don’t care.”

He’s sure this will go poorly—that this might be the end for him, his last night at the Academy. But he’d rather be kicked out than never play again.

He’d rather die than never play again.

“I’ll try. And if he tells and something happens… Well, I love you.”

His father gets to his feet, pulling Zeno up and into a hug as he does.

“I love you too, buddy. Forever and always.”

“Forever and always.”

When Zeno quietly opens the door, he has to suppress a sigh of frustration. If Alexander were asleep maybe he could have pushed off this talk till morning.

But here Alexander is, sitting on the floor surrounded by open textbooks.

When he hears the door click, his head lifts and he smiles in greeting. “These history textbooks are pretty sparse, huh?” he asks, ignorant to Zeno’s inner turmoil.

“Oh… um, yeah. After everything was wiped out in the Fall of Nations, the Republic took a while to find its footing, and they didn’t really write down anything about the founding or the fifty years after.”

“Wiped out?” Alexander asks with wide eyes.

“Yes.” He gets a little sadder for Alexander every time they reach a gap in his basic cultural knowledge. It makes Zeno wonder what they even teach in the countryside. “I mean, there was a world before the Republic, you know. It’s just gone now. Quite sad, in my opinion. How everyone tore each other to shreds in the end.”

“Tore each other to… right. Yes. Of course we believe that there’s nothing out there. That nothing survived.”

Zeno’s not sure what to say to that. He wants to give Alexander time to process, but he also needs to have this conversation or else he’ll explode.

“So, Alexander. I wanted to ask you something,” he says. “It’s not, like, super important or anything. Like, it is to me, but not to you. Or it might be depending on how you… feel about certain things. Like rules. Some rules.”

His dad would definitely laugh if he saw how loosely Zeno took his ‘get to the point and don’t be nervous’ advice.

Alexander stands and places a hand on his shoulder. “Look, man. If this is something about why you didn’t want to live with me, you can just tell me. I don’t want to keep you from whatever it is you usually do.”