The announcement arrived at breakfast with the particular volume Finn reserved for discoveries he considered genuinely important, and the table's assembled attention, reluctant but inevitable, turned toward him.
FNN: EVERYONE. LISTEN. I have found something. The Sunspire Gardens. Rowan mentioned them, actually, before he got busy being an upperclassman and forgot the rest of us exist. Apparently it's the best sunset view in the whole city. We're going. This weekend. All of us.
BRR: All of us?
FNN: All of us. I already told Corin and Talon.
Across the table, several eyebrows rose.
ELS: You told them?
FNN: I told them. They're coming. Talon seemed pleased. Corin seemed like he was pretending he wasn't pleased, which is basically the same thing where he's concerned.
Nobody argued the point further, and by midday Saturday, the whole group, all eight of them, was climbing the wide stone path toward the Gardens' entrance, the autumn air carrying the particular crisp gold quality that made everything look slightly more beautiful than it likely was. The Gardens exceeded even Finn's enthusiasm.
They spread across the whole of a gentle hillside overlooking the western harbor, terraced paths winding between beds of flowers still holding their color despite the season, and at the hill's peak, a slender white tower rose above the treeline, the Sunspire itself, its upper platform visible from nearly every point in the gardens below. Other visitors moved through the paths around them, families and couples and small clusters of other students, the particular busy peaceful crowd of a genuinely popular public space, and Arthur, walking through it all with the noise of his friends around him, found himself struck by the simple, uncomplicated pleasure of an ordinary afternoon spent somewhere beautiful.
The group scattered gradually as they explored, the way groups always did, splitting into smaller, shifting clusters, Finn dragging Briar toward a hedge maze with tremendous enthusiasm and rather less sense of direction, Mira and Talon drifting, without any particular plan, into an orbit around each other that neither of them seemed inclined to comment on, and Arthur found himself, for a stretch of the afternoon, caught firmly between Elsie and Yseult, both of whom had apparently decided, independently and simultaneously, that this was an excellent occasion to compete for his attention.
YSE: You should sit with me for the sunset. Best angle from the eastern terrace.
ELS: The western terrace has the better angle, actually. I checked.
YSE: You didn't check anything, you're simply disagreeing with me on principle.
ELS: I'm disagreeing with you because I'm right.
They continued in this vein for some time, both increasingly focused on each other rather than the actual subject of their disagreement, and Arthur, watching the exchange escalate with the particular helpless amusement he'd come to associate with moments like this, found himself, at some point in the debate over terrace angles, quietly forgotten entirely. He took the opportunity without hesitation.
He slipped away down a side path while they were still arguing, and did not look back to see whether either of them noticed, and found, some minutes later, a quiet stretch of garden near the hill's western edge, mostly empty of other visitors, where Corin stood alone at the low stone wall, looking out toward the harbor and the sinking sun beyond it. Arthur approached and stopped a respectful distance behind him.
ART: It's a good view.
Corin did not turn immediately.
COR: It is.
ART: Better than Castelgard's?
COR: Different from Castelgard's.
He said it quietly, and something in his tone made Arthur move closer, standing now at the wall a few feet away, both of them looking out at the same darkening gold horizon.
COR: The sunsets there don't look like this. I used to think it was simply the terrain. Different hills, different angle of light. I've come to suspect it's something else.
AR****T: What do you mean?
COR: The air there carries a different color, most evenings. Not gold. Something closer to crimson, though I don't think that's the light either.
He did not elaborate further, and Arthur, understanding the shape of what wasn't being said, waited in silence rather than pushing.
COR: My province has been at war with itself for longer than either of us have been alive. Border disputes, mostly, old grievances nobody living remembers the origin of, kept alive by people who find it easier to keep fighting than to stop. It hasn't helped that the Ruined God's forces have begun testing our northern border, the stretch that meets the ocean. Small incursions. Nothing the histories will remember. But enough that my family decided, two years ago, that I would be sent here instead.
ART: To Solmere.
COR: To safety.
He said the word with visible distaste, his jaw tight, his gaze still fixed on the horizon.
COR: I did not want to come. I want you to understand that clearly. I am not here because I chose it. I am here because my father looked at what's happening on our northern border and decided his heir was worth more locked safely away in a garden than standing on a wall doing something useful.
ART: That's not weakness. Wanting to be safe.
COR: I didn't say I wanted to be safe. I said I was sent here regardless of what I wanted. There's a considerable difference.
He finally turned, and Arthur, meeting his gaze directly, found something raw beneath Corin's usual composure, something that had been sitting there, Arthur suspected, since long before this conversation began.
COR: I am the heir to a province that is bleeding out slowly at its own borders, and I am here, learning sword forms in a garden four hundred miles from where I'm actually needed, because someone decided I was too valuable to risk and too weak to trust with my own safety. Do you understand how that sits, Arthur? Every single day?
Arthur considered the question honestly, and found, in the end, that he did not have an easy answer to offer, only the truth as he understood it.
ART: I don't think I fully understand it. But I don't think you're weak, if that helps at all.
COR: It doesn't, particularly. But I appreciate the attempt.
He turned back toward the horizon, his composure settling back into place with visible effort.
COR: Astoria's borders are strong. Stronger than anything my province has managed to hold in decades. You've grown up entirely inside that strength, safe, without once having to consider what it costs to hold a line that doesn't hold on its own. I don't say that as an insult. I say it because it's true, and because it means you can't understand what I'm describing, not really, however kindly you mean the attempt.
ART: Maybe not. But I can still listen.
Corin was quiet for a long moment, the sun continuing its slow, golden descent toward the water.
COR: I intend to get stronger. Considerably stronger than I currently am. And when I have, I intend to end whatever the Ruined God's forces are doing at our northern border myself, so that no one else's father ever has the option of sending them somewhere safe instead of trusting them to stand.
He said it with total, quiet conviction, and Arthur, listening, felt something in his own chest settle into a shape he recognized completely.
ART: You won't be the one who defeats him.
Corin turned, an eyebrow raised, something between offense and genuine surprise crossing his features.
COR: Excuse me?
ART: The Ruined God. You won't be the one who ends it. I will.
The silence that followed carried a very different weight than the one before it, and Corin studied Arthur for a long moment, something calculating behind his eyes, before a short, disbelieving laugh escaped him.
COR: You speak like a child.
ART: Maybe.
COR: An entire province's worth of trained soldiers hasn't managed to hold that border, and you intend to simply walk up and end the thing responsible for it, on the strength of what, exactly? Sword forms and stubbornness?
ART: I don't know exactly. But I intend to.
Corin looked at him for a long moment longer, and something in his composed, aristocratic features shifted, the disbelief folding, slowly, into something that might almost have been the beginning of respect, though he seemed reluctant to let it show fully. A small, sharp smirk touched the corner of his mouth.
COR: Fine.
ART: Fine?
COR: You've declared your intention. I've declared mine. We can't both be the one who ends it, so it seems we're at an impasse. I suppose that makes you my rival, Arthur Lyerm.
He said it with the particular formal weight of someone making a genuine declaration rather than a passing remark, and Arthur, caught entirely off guard by the sudden shift, felt something bright and unexpected rise in his chest, a small, startled pleasure at being taken seriously by someone who had spent months treating him as barely worth acknowledging.
ART: I can live with that.
COR: I imagine you'll have to.
Before either of them could say anything further, the rest of the group arrived in a loose, noisy cluster, Elsie and Yseult apparently having resolved their terrace dispute by simply following Arthur's trail, Finn and Briar trailing behind with hedge-maze leaves still caught in their hair, Mira and Talon arriving last, walking close together without quite touching.
ELS: There you are. We looked everywhere.
FNN: THE SUN'S ALMOST DOWN, EVERYONE, HURRY.
The whole group gathered at the wall, Corin's earlier rawness folded back beneath his usual composure so completely that Arthur might have doubted the conversation had happened at all if he hadn't just been standing inside it, and together, all eight of them, they watched the sun complete its long, slow descent into the water, the whole western sky catching fire in long streaks of gold and deep, burning orange, the harbor below turned to hammered copper in the dying light. Nobody spoke for a long while. It was, Arthur thought, standing among people who had, in the span of a single autumn afternoon, become something considerably more than classmates, exactly the kind of view worth the whole long climb up.