His final evening at home, Corin found his father in the east study again, exactly as he had that first night, the same fire burning low in the hearth, the same blanket arranged over legs that would never properly answer him again. Corin sat in his usual chair without needing to be invited.
FTH: Your last night.
COR: Yes.
FTH: It went faster than I expected. I thought two weeks would feel considerably longer, once I finally had you home again.
COR: I thought so too.
They sat together in the particular comfortable quiet that had, across the past two weeks, replaced the earlier careful distance entirely, the fire crackling softly, the winter wind moving faintly against the study's tall windows, and Corin, watching his father's face in the firelight, found himself thinking of the recruiting notice he'd passed in the market square his first evening home, and of everything that notice had represented.
COR: I've been thinking about something. I want to tell you, before I leave tomorrow.
FTH: I'm listening.
Corin gathered himself, the particular careful composure he'd inherited so completely settling over him even now, even here, in the one room where he'd finally begun learning to let it slip.
COR: I'm going back to Solmere tomorrow, and I'm going to finish my studies there. Two more years. I understand that's what's required, and I don't intend to abandon it early, whatever I might want in the moment.
FTH: Good. I'd be concerned if you suggested otherwise.
COR: But when it's finished. When I've completed my third year, and chosen my specialization, and learned everything that place has to teach me. I'm coming home. And I'm going to drive the Ruined God's forces from our northern border myself.
He said it plainly, without theatrics, the particular quiet conviction he'd carried since the Sunspire Gardens finally given its full, deliberate shape, and his father, listening, went very still.
FTH: Corin.
COR: I mean it. Not as some vague ambition I'll abandon once the difficulty of it becomes clear. I mean it as a promise. Two years, Father. I'll return, and I'll end what's been testing our border, whatever that actually requires of me.
His father studied him for a long moment, the firelight catching the particular tired, considering weight of his expression, and Corin, watching him, braced himself for the argument he half expected, the careful, reasonable objections about danger and readiness and the wisdom of a seventeen-year-old promising to accomplish what trained soldiers had failed to manage for years. The argument did not come.
FTH: Two years.
COR: Two years.
FTH: You understand what you're promising. Not simply the danger of it, though that's real enough. You're promising to become, in two years' time, something you currently are not. A person capable of actually accomplishing what you've just described. That requires considerably more than conviction alone.
COR: I know. I intend to spend those two years becoming exactly that.
His father was quiet for a long while, the fire settling lower in the hearth, and when he finally spoke again, his voice carried a weight Corin had rarely heard from him, even now, even across everything the past two weeks had shown him.
FTH: I sent you away two years ago because I could not bear the thought of losing you the way I nearly lost myself. I want you to understand that clearly, before you make this promise. It wasn't about your capability, or lack of it. It was about my own fear, dressed up as prudent judgment.
COR: I understand that now. I didn't, before. I do now.
FTH: Then I want you to understand this as well. I am not going to ask you to abandon this promise. I could try. I could invoke every argument a frightened father has available to him, and perhaps some of them would even land. But I watched you these past two weeks, Corin. I watched you learn things I never expected you to need to learn, and do them without complaint, and grow, in ways two years at Solmere apparently couldn't manage on their own. I don't think the boy I sent away exists anymore. I think a different person came home to me instead, and I think that person has earned the right to make a promise like this one, and have it taken seriously.
Corin felt something catch hard in his chest, the particular overwhelming weight of being seen, finally, completely, by the one person whose judgment he had spent his entire life measuring himself against.
COR: Thank you.
FTH: Don't thank me yet. I haven't finished.
He straightened slightly in his chair, the particular careful effort of a man gathering what remained of his old, commanding presence despite everything his body no longer permitted him.
FTH: I accept your promise, Corin. Formally, as your father and as the lord this province still, technically, considers me to be. Two years. Return to us, and end what's testing our border, and know that whatever it costs you along the way, you will have done it with my full faith standing behind you, not simply my fear.
COR: I won't fail you.
FTH: I know you won't. Or if you do, it won't be for lack of trying with everything you have. That's all any promise like this can honestly guarantee, in the end.
He reached out, and Corin, understanding the gesture, crossed the small distance and took his father's offered hand, the grip weaker than Corin remembered from childhood but no less firm in its intention, and they held the handshake for a long moment, the fire burning low around them, the whole weight of the promise finally, properly settled between them.
FTH: Two years.
COR: Two years.
He released his father's hand and sat back, and for a while neither of them spoke, the particular full, comfortable silence of something important finally, correctly said, and Corin, looking at his father in the dying firelight, felt, for the first time since arriving home two weeks before, entirely and completely at peace with the whole shape of what waited ahead of him.