Blood Heir (Blood Heir Trilogy #1)(46)

And the ones you hurt tended to be the ones closest to you.



* * *



—

Ramson had been seven when he met Jonah Fisher, on the first day of their military training. He’d sized up the gangly, dark-haired boy who looked as though he’d been stretched from a shadow, stalking down the stone halls with a steady, slouched gait. When they announced his name, a titter ran through the boys and girls. Fisher wasn’t a real last name; Fisher was a last name they stuck on Bregonian boys from the orphanages of Sapphire Port.

And it struck close to home.

Ramson himself had been close to inheriting that name. It had something to do with his mother not being properly married to his father, he’d gathered. But while some children like Ramson were never seen again, Ramson’s father, Admiral Roran Farrald, the second most powerful man of the Kingdom of Bregon, had instead plucked Ramson from the small town of Elmford where his mother resided and elected him for placement at the Blue Fort, Bregon’s elite military school. Only the most capable were selected, Affinites among them, and Ramson took this as a gesture of trust. He vowed he would never disappoint the father who remained as distant as the moon in the night sky, monochrome light cold and bright.



But children were the most perceptive of creatures, and the underhanded slights Ramson had received for most of his life were not lost on him. Neither were the whispers of bastard and packsaddle son.

The jeers of his new classmates struck a quiver of fear within him, and he joined them, making his taunts the nastiest and his voice the loudest among them.

Jonah Fisher paused. He looked around, expression bored, as though he’d rather be anywhere but there. “You got nothing better to do or what?” he asked.

The class burst into laughter, Ramson included. He’d heard people speak with Jonah Fisher’s accent before, down at the fish markets and out in the poorest outskirts of Sapphire Port. Ramson was a city-bred boy, and his father had paid for his tutoring since he’d turned five. He prided himself on being the quickest thinker and fastest talker of his class.

A crack rang through the hall. It echoed and reverberated as utter silence fell.

Jonah Fisher held a sparring rod from the racks at the side of the training hall. He stood before the class, still wearing that uninterested expression. “All of you better walk your talk.” His voice was calm, but an undercurrent of threat ran through his words. “Show you know how to really fight. Go on,” he goaded, to the dead stillness of the children.



Ramson looked around. The trainer had stepped away; there were no adults nearby. Just a class of several dozen children who would one day become Bregon’s elite marines. Who would fight for the top rank in his father’s navy.

Packsaddle son.

He’d show them. He’d show them all that he was no Fisher, no bastard, no throwaway shunned by his own father. He was Admiral Roran Farrald’s son.

He would prove it.

Ramson stepped forward. He felt all the eyes of his classmates shift to him, and the attention was wind in his sails, propelling him forward and lifting his courage. “We walk our talk here in the Blue Fort,” he said coolly, grabbing a rod of his own. He’d never held one before that day; it was heavier than he’d expected, the wood rough against his palms.

Fisher cast his black eyes on Ramson. He lifted his rod in an unsettlingly familiar way. It shifted loosely in his hands, flowing like an extension of his body.

Ramson mimicked him, lifting his own rod. It swayed unsteadily, off balance. His heart hammered in his chest, and he could feel his courage evaporating as quickly as a puddle of water on a Bregonian summer day.

Jonah Fisher struck. He reminded Ramson of a bird—a common raven, dark and unkempt and unimposing, but surprisingly quick.

The rod thwapped Ramson and he stumbled back, gritting his teeth against the pain that singed across his chest. He aimed a clumsy swing at Fisher, but Fisher pivoted easily out of the way.



Another blow to Ramson’s thighs, and this time Ramson cried out. A third blow buckled his knees, and before he could even draw breath, the fight was over and he was lying on the stone floor, Jonah Fisher standing over him. Ramson was panting hard, and he could taste the salty tang of tears rising in his throat as he stared at the other boy.

What happened next was one of the biggest surprises Ramson could remember encountering in his life.

Fisher held out a hand.

There was no trace of arrogance on his pale, thin face. His features were arranged in that same bored expression, as though nothing in the world could interest him.

Ramson did the only acceptable thing he could think of. He slapped Fisher’s hand aside. “I don’t need your help,” he snarled, pushing himself to his feet. “We’re not friends. We’ll never be.”

As Ramson hobbled away to join his stunned class, leaving Fisher behind him, he caught sight of a figure at the doorway. A flash of suntanned skin and sandy brown hair, navy-blue tunic emblazoned with gold, sword flashing at hip.

Roran Farrald turned from the entrance and walked away.

Disappointment and shame burned in Ramson’s cheeks. He threw a final glance at Fisher, who stood alone on the other side of the hall, and vowed that he would defeat this boy if it was the last thing he did.

Everything had changed with a boat, a storm, and a voice.

The Bregonians had the best navy in the world, but first and foremost, they were sailors. And every Bregonian child training for the Navy spent half their days on the seas.