Chapter - 16 War Mistake

A knock at the study door interrupted them before either Flare or Lady Borghanai could say anything further about the letter.

“Come in,” Flare called.

A servant entered and bowed. “Champion. Master Orin Reincastle sends word. He would like to see you, if you're able.”

Flare felt her whole body go still, the letter momentarily forgotten in her hand.

Lady Borghanai watched her reaction with soft features, and after a moment, smiled. “Go to him.”

“Is it really all right? With everything—”

“It will keep until you return.” Lady Borghanai took the letter from Flare's fingers, folding it away again. “Tell your father when you see him. He should know before anyone else does.”

Flare nodded, and used everything she had just to not dash.

The walk to the training grounds felt longer than it should have. Every step gave her more time to imagine the worst of what waited at the end of it. Orin too weak to sit up or unable to speak, or maybe looking at her the way half the city did, as something to be wary of rather than proud of. She'd avoided him for weeks specifically to avoid finding out which version of that fear was true.

She reached his door and hesitated with her hand raised, unable for a moment to make herself knock.

She knocked a second later.

A young girl answered, no older than seven or eight, dark hair in two uneven braids. The moment her eyes landed on Flare, she let out a short, startled shriek and bolted back into the room without a single word.

“Hey…” Flare started after her on instinct, following into the small, sun-warmed room before she'd thought better of it.

The girl had already thrown herself behind the chair where Orin sat, half-swallowed in blankets despite the mild afternoon, peering out from behind his shoulder with wide, frightened eyes.

“Forgive her,” said Orin, and his voice weaker than Flare remembered, but unmistakably his. “My granddaughter. She's learned stories about you lately more than manners, I'm afraid.”

“I don't mind,” Flare said, managing the smile she was good at. “I'm used to it.”

Orin studied her for a long moment, his sharp eyes—dimmed slightly by illness, but no less perceptive than they'd ever been—moving over her face with the same critical attention he used to bring to a bad stance in the training yard.

“Then why do you look so hurt?”

Flare opened her mouth to deflect it, like she'd deflected everything for months, but she found that she couldn't quite manage it here, in this small room under those peculiar pair of eyes.

“Sit,” Orin said gently. His granddaughter slipped out from behind him at last and disappeared through a side door, leaving the two of them alone with only the afternoon light and the uneven sound of his breathing between them.

Flare sat.

“They tell me it's my heart,” Orin said, matter-of-fact. “Old news to a body that's spent sixty years absorbing blows it probably shouldn't have. They think I can’t tell what part of me has gone bad. The healers say I've a while yet. I choose to believe them, mostly because the alternative isn't a particularly pleasant thing to wish for.”

“I should have come sooner.”

“You should have,” Truth offered plainly, the way he'd always offered everything. “Why didn't you?”

Flare looked down at her own hands. “I thought—I ignored everything you tried to teach me. You told me to pull my strikes, to remember the point of what I am, and I just—” She shook her head. “I didn't listen. And now half the city calls me a demon child not a hero, and I thought if I came here, you'd just see proof of everything you were afraid I'd become.”

Orin was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone flat.

“Flare, do you know what I remember most teaching Hercules?”

The question caught her off guard so much that she looked up.

“He was a gentle child,” Orin said. “Everyone remembers that about him. What they don't remember, because he never let them see it, is how much work it took him to stay gentle. That boy had the same terrible strength you carry now, from the very first day his title came to him—and more anger underneath it than most people ever guessed, given who his mother was and how this court treated her for it. He wasn't born calm, Flare. Do you think he was fond of human realm when he learned he was the living example of war mistakes? What Aldric Solmere did to his mother. He built it, Flare. Every single day, for years, deciding over and over again not to let the anger win.” He paused. “I imagine that's a harder thing to become known for than just being strong. Nobody writes songs about restraints, or do they?”

Flare felt something tighten in her throat. “I didn't know that.”

“He wouldn't have told you. He liked being your older brother far too much to burden you with how much effort it cost him to be anything else.” A faint, fond smile crossed Orin's tired face. “But I watched him build it, year after year, the same way I watched you break walls. You're not so different from him as this city seems to think. You're only just starting in the work.”

“I got him killed,” Flare said, the words came out raw in a way she hadn't let them be with anyone since the funeral. “He died protecting me, and I ran, and now people die every week in the raids and the famine and I can't fix any of it no matter how hard I fight, and I don't know how to be what he was. I don't know how to be gentle when everyone keeps asking me to be strong instead.”

Orin let the silence take a moment before answering, unhurried despite the effort each breath seemed to cost him.

“Strength and gentleness were never opposites, child. Not for him. Not for you.” He reached over, and set one weathered hand briefly over hers. “The mistake isn't being strong. It's believing strength is the only tool you're allowed to use. You came to those craters because you couldn't bear to lose one more person the way you lost him. That's not a demon's instinct. That's the exact same thing that made Hercules who he was.” He withdrew his hand, settling back into his blankets with a small, tired exhale. “Grief makes people reckless but in time it also makes them wise, if it ever does at all. You're not failing him by struggling with that. You'd be failing him by giving up to be one thing forever.”

The study's afternoon light shifted slowly across the floor between them.

“I miss him,” she said finally, quietly. “I don't say that to anyone. It feels like it isn't mine to say. Everyone else lost the Champion but I just lost my brother.”

“You're allowed cry for both,” Orin said. “Grief doesn't divide itself neatly by title. I mourn him too, you know. He sat in that very chair you're in now more times than I can count, complaining about you the entire while.” A small, genuine laugh escaped him, quickly swallowed by a cough he waved off. “He was so proud of you, Flare. Even irritated as he so often pretended to be. I don't think he ever once doubted what you'd become, given time. I don't intend to either.”

Something in Flare's chest finally came undone in a bearable way settling into place.

“Thank you,” she said. “For seeing me. Even like this.”

“Come back,” Orin said. “Whenever you like. An old man appreciates company.”

She left his rooms some time later.

The evening outside seemed absurdly matching to what was she feeling in her bones. The sky over the capital had gone a deep, warm gold as the sun dropped toward the western hills, clouds catching fire in a way Flare didn't remember ever noticing quite so vividly before. She walked slowly, in no hurry to return to the weight waiting for her in her father's study, letting herself exist for a few minutes in a version of the world that felt, for once, worth being part of.

Then she saw them.

At first her mind refused to accept what she was seeing, some instinct insisting it must be smoke, maybe a hallucination or distant storm clouds. But the shapes kept climbing, dark and coiling against the gold evening sky, unmistakable once she let herself actually look.

Funnels, the same violent shape she remembered tearing open two mountainsides, except there weren't two of them this time.

There were dozens.

They rose from the southern hills and the eastern horizon. Multiple ragged advancing line of them stretching farther than she could count in a single glance, each one climbing higher by the second, each one turning slowly, unmistakably, toward the capital.

The warmth Orin had left in her chest drained out all at once, replaced by ice-cold dread.

Blood left her face. Her hands went numb around nothing at all.

They were coming for the city.