Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(7)

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He met Callie on the second day of his training. She had eyes so blue they almost hurt to look at, and was a little older, but since there weren’t that many children in the Refuge for this “season of life”—as his mother put it—they all had to practice together.

When the trainer asked Callie to show him an exercise she’d already learned, Alexander told himself to be careful—because even though she was older, she was smaller, more slender. Then she kicked his legs out from under him, landing him hard on his behind, and he realized she was tougher than she looked.

He stopped holding back.

Given that he was the newest member of the class, he never had a chance against her, but she didn’t laugh at him for his mistakes, just told him why he’d lost and what he could do to fix it. A week into the lessons, he went to sit with her for their break. She allowed it, but later, on their walk home, he decided to climb a tree and somehow fell out of it. The movement dislodged a heavy bunch of ripe fruits.

They splattered and burst on her neat and tidy tunic.

“Alex!” Face red, she ignored his apologies to stomp off home.

It soon became clear that Callie did not consider him a friend. Not that he was sad. He liked her but he couldn’t imagine anything worse than being invited to a lunch or party where he had to be on his best manners—because that was what Callie liked to do. He didn’t understand. She was an incredible fighter . . . then she went and had honey cakes and tea with her friends, all of them in their best clothes.

In training though, it was different. He understood her there—she continued to push him with each lesson, each time she put him on the ground . . . until one day, he put her on the ground.

They both stared, eyes wide.

Then he threw his hands up into the air and did a lap around the training ring. “One to me, one hundred to Callie!”

Lying there in the dirt, the black of her hair sticking to her face, she laughed so hard that she cried, and he knew that she didn’t mind that he’d beaten her.

Their bouts got better and better from then on, Alexander’s body stronger and more flexible, his thoughts less childish—and his future path ever clearer. But he didn’t tell Osiris or his parents that. Not yet. Gzrel and Cendrion had taught him to consider things before he decided, whether it was his opinion on a new kind of food, or his thoughts on a piece of information.

Alexander hated waiting. It was a waste of time. He always knew his mind straightaway and never changed it, but he also knew that his family liked to spend time thinking. Yesterday, he’d walked in on his mother just staring at the wall where she’d chalked drawings to do with her work even though she should have been packing.

A hard knot formed in his stomach when he remembered why they had to pack: because a senior member of their archangel’s court wanted their home on the edge of a cliff. He’d argued with his parents that they should fight the preemptory relocation order, but they’d looked at him with faint smiles on their faces that weren’t about smiling at all.

His father had said, “We’re no one to the archangel, Alexander, simply two low-level scholars who are only attached to her court because it means others can’t steal our research without picking a fight with her. It’s not as if our dry specializations give any particular cachet to her court. She’d consider our request a petty matter, be annoyed by it.”

“It’s not petty!” Alexander hated that people could just push his parents around this way.

“Oh, baby.” His mother had patted his chest, leaving chalk dust in her wake. “We lose nothing by not wasting our energy on this. Our new residence has room for all our scrolls and tablets and the like, and we shall be together. Politics don’t interest us, so we don’t play them.”

Alexander could’ve said a hard thing then, a cruel thing about weakness and lack of spine, but he hadn’t. Because he loved his mama and papa and they’d never ever done anything to hurt him.

That was also why he pretended to think even though his mind was made up.

And this decision . . . “I don’t want to hurt their hearts,” he told Callie one day when he was a youngling halfway to adulthood, long legged and lanky, and she’d decided she could stand him for small periods.

They still weren’t friends, but he knew he could trust her and he hoped she knew she could trust him. “My brother has already guessed, I’m sure,” he added, “but my parents have a vision of a continuing line of scholars.”

Caliane bumped his shoulder with her own. “They won’t mind, Alex. They won’t understand, but they’re so sweet, they’ll love you regardless.”

Alexander clung to that reassurance when he spoke to his parents about his choice at last. “I wish to follow the path of the warrior,” he said, swallowing hard. “It fits me like it’s always been meant to be my skin.”

No anger or disappointment on their faces, just the love that had always been a part of his life.

“Whatever makes you happy, Alexander.” His father squeezed his arm before turning to look at Alexander’s mother with a tenderness that made Alexander blush. “Gzrel and I’ve always known that you’d walk your own path. Haven’t we, my heart?”

His mother’s laughter filled the room with sunshine. “I remember telling you that you couldn’t stay on with Osiris when you were little, and the arguments you gave me about it!” Dancing eyes. “Another child might’ve thrown a tantrum, but you used every one of the words in your vocabulary to try to convince me that I was wrong, wrong, wrong. If memory serves me, I believe you used exactly those words in that tone.”