THE WINTERCHILD | onc 2021

iii. disappointments

I let Kanos guide me through the Academy hallways until we reached my room. Fortunately, I had aged beyond sharing my room with another mage in training, so once I heard the definitive click of my closed door, I released the sobs I'd restrained thus far.

Kanos looked at me, impassive. But after a moment of my gasping hiccups, I heard his spell.

"Dosilae."

His summermagyk enveloped me like a blanket, pressing down with a calming weight. My hiccups subsided, and soon my tears did as well.

"Thank you," I managed after taking another moment to collect myself. He tilted his head in acknowledgment. Removed from the source and immediacy of my distress, I finally assessed the state of my brother.

My first thought was that he looked older. He was my eldest brother, true, with seven years' seniority on me. But it was more than simple aging. Since he had graduated to battle, my brother's every return brought fresh scars of both flesh and soul. The latter scars were not visibly apparent, but there was a weight to his gait and a look in his eyes. He would never admit to the emotional toll of his new life, but that made it no less plain to me.

Here was I, weeping over a childish spar, while my brother looked as if he hadn't slept in weeks. "You look terrible," I admitted to him. "I see your battles have been weary."

His lips curved to a wan smile. "My baby sister is as charming as ever." He then assessed the state of my room, ambling in a circular fashion in unhurried wordlessness. I grimaced, knowing he saw the unopened spellbooks, the scattered poultices, and the disarray of my carelessness.

He returned to me with his lips downturned and eyes darkened with disappointment.

"Kaneiva. Is it any wonder a summerchild has so roundly defeated you if this is the state of your studies?"

My cheeks flushed, and I could feel the heat swell my body even to my fingertips. "A winterchild once swept the floor with you, if you recall," I snapped.

My insult did nothing to his calm. "Do you depend on historical successes to carry you to future victory?" He scoffed. "Have you not yet learned every fight is a new opportunity, equally likely to end in defeat as it is in victory?"

My eyes blazed white with winterfury. "Then let us rematch to underscore your point, Kanos."

He did not engage, as I knew he would not. Kanos never sparred with me anymore, not since he had been elevated to battle.

"I did not come here to fight, sister." With a deep sigh, he sank into his favored armchair, a green-and-gold patterned wingback I had stolen from his old Academy room before his departure.

"Then what was your purpose, except to witness my humiliation?"

He cast a sharp look at me. "You must not linger on such things, Kanei. Wallowing does you no favors."

"She is ten!" I screeched. Did he not understand? I was a rarity. This was not my first loss by any means, but it was the first time I'd been humiliated by a mage junior to me. It was always I who humiliated my opponent. Not since I was an untrained child had I been so soundly beaten.

"Then may you learn some empathy, my rare sister, from all the times you accomplished what this child has done to you."

I glowered. Kanos was insufferable in this state. There were times I appreciated my eldest brother dispensing fatherlike wisdom, but this was not such a time.

"Come, sister," he soothed, "I did not return to chastise you."

"No, you cannot help yourself," I retorted. But I accepted his graceful exit from my woes nonetheless. "Why have you returned to the Academy then?"

His eyes cast downward to deliver his news. "To welcome Aunt Ferika to her retirement."

I sprung up in disbelief. "She is barely in her fourth decade! Hardly middle-aged, how dare they —"

"You know how it is, Kanei." He cut off my diatribe with a look. "The Academy has decided teaching is now the best use of her talents."

Kanos parroted Academy doctrines like a diplomat, but I narrowed my eyes. I should be happy, I knew. This transition meant not only increased audiences with my oft-traveling aunt but also the benefits of her full-time teaching. I should not have been surprised that this day had come for Ferika. My mother and Aunt Aenalik had been recalled to the Academy some years now. There was no magyk to stop the tides of time.

"Yet, is that what Aunt Ferika has decided?" I lifted my head in challenge. "Surely she knows the best use of her own talents."

The look Kanos gave me was infuriatingly contemptuous. He was older than me by a mere seven years, but he lorded those seven years with insufferable knowing.

"Do you mean to speak for Mage Ferika, then?" He scoffed. "You have no idea of the toils of war. Perhaps she is happy to finally escape the battlefield."

To at last join the battlefield was the greatest honor — it was all any of us in training could dream of. For Kanos to speak of leaving it prematurely as a gift was impossible for me to grasp. "Do you wish to flee already, Kanos?" I spat the question with unveiled contempt.

He did not answer. Instead, he faced my window, leaving me to read his disapproval in the rigid tension of his back. I had never known my father, but I imagined his disappointment would sting me just as keenly as this.

After a long silence, he sighed. "You spar like a child. And that is why a child can defeat you."

"I—"

"I am tired, Kanei. I have no interest in humoring you when you choose to be difficult." He faced me again, and somehow, the darkness under his eyes seemed more pronounced than before. "I will see you again at the family dinner, sister." He pressed a gentle kiss to the top of my head in farewell then slipped out of my room like sand in an hourglass. With a click, my door closed, leaving me alone with my thoughts and disappointments.

I was warier of tonight's family dinner than I had been for any of these dinners in a long time.