“If you hit me that much, I’d tell everyone all of your secrets.”

“Why’re you always sticking up for Woods, Violet?”

“Because you never hold back…”

“That’s how brothers are,” said Zech, poking at the fire with a long stick. “Mine used to beat me all the time.”

“How did you get them to stop?” asked Woods, a bit of desperation in his voice.

“Easy. I just beat them back!”

For some reason Alistar thought of the snake that had nearly eaten him in the days that followed his release from Crystellum. “You know, Woods. If you poke a predator, it’ll probably attack you. Maybe think some things instead of saying them sometimes?”

Woods nodded along in thought, staring at the ground for a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “Jaden’s saving up to buy Lily a gift.”

Alistar sighed as he watched Jaden chase the heavier boy for a few fleeting seconds before tackling him to the ground and packing snow into the inside of his coat.

“Ah! Isn’t anyone going to help me?” Red in the face from all of the snow, he called out with a yelp. “Violet, please! If you stop him, I’ll reluctantly make you my wife!”

Everyone watched as Jaden taught Woods the valuable lesson that Alistar had just tried to convey, to know when to keep one’s mouth shut. A short while later as a red-faced, runny-nosed Woods was frowning into the fire, Helen asked Lily a question with a quiet stutter.

“D—did you two really kiss?”

“I want to know too,” said Emely, big, innocent eyes fixed on the eldest of the flower girls. “I always thought he was just having shameful dreams. I never imagined that it had actually happened.”

“Leave me alone…”

Seeing Lily’s bashful figure, Jaden clenched a discreet fist and stared up at the cloudy sky with a resolute expression.

“What about you, Alistar?”

“Hmm?” Looking at Helen’s bright, rosy expression, he felt a rising discomfort under the tall girl’s stare. “Um, whatever they do on their own is none of my business.”

“That’s not what she’s talking about,” said Lily, desperate to shift the focus of the conversation to someone else. “Have you had your first kiss yet?”

Alistar cleared his throat, caught off guard by the question. While he didn’t want to lie to his friends, he also didn’t want to discuss this matter.

“Remember back when we just met him? He only glances to the side like that when he’s embarrassed.” Zech kicked some snow at him. “You sly dog, you. Was it Lessa or Anne?”

“He wouldn’t that with Anne,” said Rosa in a timid voice. “They’re cousins, after all.”

“Nine out of ten nobles marry their cousins,” said Corrie, who was kneeling by the nearby riverbank and manipulating a small amount of water. “In Baldor, most people marry within their families in general.”

“You act like you’ve been there before,” huffed Jaden, who still seemed a bit annoyed from earlier.

“I’ve read about it.” Corrie tapped his head with a finger, eyes never leaving the flowing waters before him. “So in a sense, I have. You wouldn’t understand, though, since you can hardly read.”

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Gritting his teeth, Jaden let out a sigh of restraint after making eye contact with Lily. “And Violet says I’m the one that doesn’t hold back.”

“So it was Anne, then?”

“It was after Edmun kissed her. She…wanted to do it properly.”

Let alone the others, even Corrie turned around with a raised eyebrow. As they all began to pile on disbelieving words, Alistar quieted them down and then calmly explained how Edmun had snuck into Anice’s room one night and stolen a kiss from her.

“That bastard,” spat Zech, who punched the ground with an angry fist. “If only there was some way we could get back at them.”

“I already took care of it.”

“What do you mean?”

He told them what had happened on the path that connected Caedmon’s estate to the city. By the time he finished speaking, Zech and Jaden had both stood up to clap him on the shoulders as if his actions had vented some of their heavy feelings of animosity towards the other Silverkin boys.

“You really beat them?” said Helen, just as shocked as the other girls. “But Anice said they were training to be arcanites. Isn’t the older one already an adept swordsman?”

“That wasn’t a good idea, Alistar.” Corrie returned to the fire, staring within its flickering depths with the ghost of a frown on his pale face. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to have you killed. Edmun is about to inherit a county bigger than Distan, isn’t he? He’ll have a lot of people working under him soon.”

“I know. But I just couldn’t hold myself back after I saw him try to hurt Anne.”

“After what you’ve been through, I can see why you reacted that way. It was still foolish, though.” Everyone else quieted down as Corrie continued to talk. “Silverkins are infamous for killing each other, after all.”

“I’ve heard that too,” muttered Zech, a bit sombre. “It can’t be true, though. Otherwise, we’d have all heard a ton of different stories by now. I mean, it’s a pretty big deal when a noble dies, isn’t it?”

“You should read more.”

Everyone was overtaken by a heavy mood.

“It’s reasons like this why training is so important,” said Zech, looking down at his broken sword with sad eyes. “Those slives. I wouldn’t put it past them to give us trouble too, because we’re all friends.”

“That probably won’t happen,” said Helen, who didn’t seem convinced by her own words. “They don’t even know us.” A bit nervously, she tucked a few loose strands of hay-coloured hair into her cottony hat.

“It might happen.” Corrie walked away from the fire, making it evident that he was about to leave. “Even if Alistar didn’t do anything, it would have only been a matter of time. You remember how they’ve been with us in the past. Just imagine what would happen if one of them tried to wed Anne and she refused? They would threaten us to make her go through with it.”

“So talkative all of a sudden,” said Jaden, glancing at Lily with a bit of worry in his eyes.

“From what Alistar said, Edmun already has his eyes on Anne.” Walking away from The Spot with slow steps, he added, “I suggest you all take up Alistar and Lessa’s offers to teach you a bit of magic. Like Zech would say, it’s better to know how to use a sword and never need it than to need one and not know how to use it.”

With that, Corrie disappeared into the woods with careful steps, chartering a path that constantly hid him behind the nearby trees so that only brief glimpses of him were visible.

“You know,” said Helen, a bit thoughtful, “I’ve lived with Corrie for over ten years, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk so much.”

A unanimous voice of agreement swept throughout the group.

“Can we really practice magic?” asked Rosa after a few moments, her voice quivering with unease. “Ah, forget I asked.”

“You should be able to.” Alistar stood up as well, collecting Zech’s and Jaden’s swords along with the empty sack that he’d brought along. “My teacher’s one of the best magi in the kingdom, and he has a lot less inner energies than I do. If you guys start practicing now, your bodies will get used to using magic and you’ll naturally build up more inner energies.”

Violet seemed unsure. “But, isn’t the amount of energy you have determined at birth?”

“Sort of, though it’s more accurate to say that the amount of energy that you could potentially have is determined at birth. Since I started practicing, my energies have been growing a bit faster.” Flashing all of the jewelry on his hands and wrists, he added, “And it doesn’t look like they’ll stop anytime soon.”

From what he could tell, of the friends of his that had come into their energies, all of them had decent potential. If they worked hard, becoming a full-fledged mage on some distant day wasn’t out of the question.

“I wish we could go to an arcannia like Lessa,” sighed Emely. “Then learning would be so much easier.”

Alistar’s heart suddenly froze over. “What do you mean?”

As everyone else looked at Emely, she realized that she’d said something that she shouldn’t have.

“It can’t be that…she only told me?”

“But the only arcannia in the kingdom is in Valay.” Where his uncle Antoine lived, he almost said. “Is she really going to study there? When is she going?”

Looking embarrassed and slightly ashamed, Emely clutched Ms. Parsnip tightly against her chest and quickly fled from her spot by the fire.

“I’m not saying anything else!”