Changing Fate

  “How are your hands doing?”

  “Ha, ha. Very funny, tactician.”

  “What will the boys at school say if your hands get too dry from washing all these dishes?”

  “Oho, you’re not ready for the answer to that question.”

  Ty narrowed her eyes at Cyril as she took another dish from him to dry. “You still haven’t told me about a single escapade, you know.”

  For once, Cyril looked thoughtful, stopping to shoot Ty a surprised look. “Huh. You’re right. Most of them are too short to say over dishwashing, though. And it sounds pitiful if I tell you several at a time.”

  “How about a long one?”

  “Hmm. Those aren’t as fun, though.”

  “That’s okay.”

  The healer took a deep breath, grabbed another dish, and ran it under the steady stream of hot water coming from the large, heated basin above them. “This summer, I took a weekend off to visit a friend…kinda. See…he’s a classmate. From our year. A certain tactician we know. His father runs a bookstore in Lidell, and he hadn’t invited me or anything; I just wanted to see it for myself.”

  Ty nodded and kept silent. She had never seen Cyril look so pensive.

  “The bookstore was small. It was barely considered a store, really, compared to what we have in the Academy village. It was dark, run-down, and the owner only came out from the back once they heard me enter. They didn’t speak to me or anything, just sat behind the counter.

  “There were a lot of books. Piles of them, leaving barely enough space for a single person to walk between the shelves. Some magical tomes, some research books, some fiction stories. Most were old. But at the very back of the store…was a glass case on a table. A single black hardcover book in it. There was no title. No price tag. ‘But surely,’ I thought, ‘surely this could be purchased?’

  “When I returned to the front, I observed the owner. He looked like the spitting image of my friend. Though his gaze was severe, his hair was long, blond. The furthest thing away from the royal line; I’m sure he could see from my own jet-black hair that he wasn’t dealing with a typical shopper.

  “I asked him what the book in the glass case was, and he glared at me. He asked me how I had chanced upon a place such as this, and I replied that I was passing by before asking about the book again. And that was when he asked me: ‘Do you know my son?’”

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  Cyril stopped and reached up to turn off the water. He let his hands fall and gazed down at the remaining dishes. “In truth, I had known about the book’s existence beforehand. My friend had told me about it. I had wanted to retrieve it for him. But his father did not relent. He asked me again: ‘Do you know my son?’

  “I finally replied ‘yes’ after the third time. And his eyes widened. He said, ‘I’ll give you the book for free if you bring me my son.’ Of course, I immediately denied his proposal.

  “‘I’ll pay for it,’ I offered, watching the old man’s face contort into a scowl. But I was adamant—I would not leave without the book. Even if it were a hundred gold, I would have paid the price.

  “‘I can’t give it to you,’ he replied after I offered him enough money to have probably bought out half the store. ‘I want to see my son again. That’s the last remaining book of his that I have. Without that, I have nothing.’ But I knew the truth. I knew that there was a reason why my friend never returned. And I knew I could not go home empty-handed.

  “So…I walked to the back, his father following. I grabbed the case. If he wouldn’t sell it to me, I would take it from him. The book belonged to my friend. He brought it up often, telling me that it was filled with pictures of his childhood. His old friends, his first pet, his late mother, who had passed away when he was a child. He couldn’t remember any of them anymore. He had nothing from that time except for that one book that was no longer his.

  “His father, upon seeing me take the case, seized me. He was taller than me, perhaps frailer, but his grip was iron as he sunk his nails into my wrists.”

  Cyril sighed and turned the water on again. He picked up a plate and resumed washing it. “I did not release the box; I had brought a tome with me. I did not relish hurting him, but I felt like I had to. I had heard stories. I had heard of what he had done to my friend. I had seen what he had done. He did not deserve mercy.”

  Ty froze, staring at Cyril as he passed her the cleaned dish. She did not take it.

  There was a desolate look in his eyes as he turned to face her. “He did not deserve mercy,” he repeated weakly. “Not an ounce. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t have the courage to.”

  He placed the wet dish on the table in front of the still-frozen Ty so he could start working on a new one. “I broke both his arms and left enough gold so he could pay to get them fixed. And then I…I left with the book in its case. I did not know where my friend lived, so I visited the Academy. I saw Callie; I saw Darius. I did not see him. So I brought it home. I was going to give it to him once class started again.

  “But then…one day, there was a knock on the door. My mother, in a grim tone, one that usually prefaced a rebuke and a strike across the face, told me that there was someone here for me, in the foyer. I thought to myself that there was no way he had found me here, all the way in the Royal Capital.

  “But…but it was him. It was my friend. Barely recognizable, in plain clothes that looked more natural on him than the Academy uniform. Staring at me. ‘I heard,’ he said once. And then again, a whisper. ‘I heard.’

  “I went up into my room and brought down the unopened, untouched case. When he saw it in my hands, he crumbled. He buried his hands in his face and sobbed. And then…he opened the box when I placed it in front of him. Hands shaking, he took out the book and flipped it to the first page.”

  Placing the last dish onto the pile that he had created in front of Ty, he offered a hopeful smile with tears in his eyes. “It was a portrait of his mother. Smiling. She was beautiful, more magnificent and real than any other sketch I had seen of his.”

  Shutting off the water, Cyril dried his hands with a towel before patting Ty on the head. “Not very fun, I told you.”

  There were also tears in her wide, unblinking eyes. “You promised.”

  “I did.”

  “You kept it. You really kept it.”

  “I did.”

  She couldn’t believe it. It was done.