“Yield, brother,” she smiles.
“No.”
We turn our heads at the word, and there he stands. Clad in black armor beneath the swaying boughs. The greatest warrior our people have ever known. The Waywalker elders bow their heads in fear. My mother sits silent, a shadow fallen over her. My father speaks, and his voice is steel.
“What did I teach you about mercy, daughter?”
“It is the province of cowards, Father,” Saedii replies.
“Then why ask your foe to yield?”
My sister pinches her lips and looks down at me. Mother is standing now, staring at my father and speaking as no one else dares to.
“Caersan, he is only a boy.”
He looks through her as though she is glass. “He is my son, Laeleth.”
Father’s eyes fall on Saedii. His command unspoken.
Her fist splits my lip and black stars burst in my eyes. Another blow lands, another, and I taste blood, feel pain, splintering, breaking.
“Enough.”
The beating stops. My sister’s weight upon my chest eases away. I open the eye that is not swelling shut and find my father standing above me. I can see him in my face when I look into the mirror at night. I can feel him behind me when I think I am alone. My mother watches, her expression one of anguish as I roll to my belly, push myself to my feet.
Father sinks to one knee before me so we are eye to eye. He reaches out and drags one thumb across my cheek. But where once he found tears, now there is only blood.
“Good boy, Kaliis,” he says.
I nod. “Tears are for the conquered, Father.”
“Kal, please wake up… .”
… I am in my room aboard the Andarael, and I am nine years old.
My fists are torn, my blood deep purple in the low, warm light. The engines thrum as I fish inside the deepest gash with tweezers, and wincing, I draw it out from my swollen knuckle—a pale sliver of broken tooth.
I did not mean to hit him so hard. I do not remember most of what happened after my first punch landed. But I remember the words he spoke about my father—the words that smelled like cowardice. The Warbreed denounced the Inner Council’s treaty with the Terrans, attacked Earth’s shipyards, crushed their navy. And now we will turn our attention to those among our own people who cry for peace when there can be only war. Because war is what I was born for.
Isn’t it?
The door opens with a whisper, and my mother enters the room, clad in a long, flowing gown, a string of Void crystals glittering about her neck. I stand as is proper, head bowed, voice soft.
“Mother.”
She glides to the viewport, staring to the dark beyond. I can still see the echoes of the battle out there in my mind’s eye—those vast ships burning away in the light of Orion. All those lives snuffed out by my father’s hand.
I see the faint bruise at the corner of my mother’s mouth, a dark smudge in the starlight that kisses her skin. An ember of rage flares inside me. I love my mother with all I have. And though I love my father also, I hate this thing within him, this thing that makes him hurt her.
I would tear it out of him with my bare hands if I could.
“Valeth is in the infirmary with a broken jaw and nine broken ribs.”
“That is unfortunate,” I reply carefully.
“He says he fell down the auxiliary stairwell.”
“They can be treacherous.”
My mother looks to me, eyes shining. “What happened to your hand?”
I keep my gaze on the floor, speaking soft. “I injured it training.”
I hear quiet footsteps, feel her touch, cool on my cheek. “Even were I not Waywalker born, even were the locks upon your heart not open doors to me, still I am your mother, Kaliis. You cannot lie to me.”
“Then do not ask me to. Honor demands I—”
“Honor,” she sighs.
Her fingertips brush the new glyf on my forehead, the three blades branded there on my ascension day. I know she and Father fought about which cabal I would become part of. And I know he won.
He always wins.
“How do you think that boy will feel when he lies to his father about the beating you gave him?” she asks.
“He made himself my enemy,” I reply. “I do not care how he feels.”
“Yes, you do. That is the difference between Caersan and you.”
She lifts my chin, gently forcing me to meet her eyes. I see the pain in them. I see the strength. And I see myself.
“I know you are his son, Kaliis. But you are my son also. And you need not become the thing he is teaching you to be.”