Kingdom of Ash

cold—he was prowling one of the lower
turrets as dawn broke. Up here, the wind was
so much wilder, icier.
Stalking, steady footsteps sounded from
the archway behind him. “I spotted you up
here on the way down to breakfast,” Ren said
by way of greeting. The Allsbrook court’s
quarters had always been in the tower adjacent
to Aedion’s—when they’d been boys, they’d
once spent a summer devising a signaling
system to each other’s rooms using a lantern.
It was the last summer they had spent in
friendship, once it had started to become clear
to Ren’s father that Aedion was favored to
take the blood oath. And then the rivalry had
begun.
One summer: thick as thieves and as wild.
The next: endless pissing contests, everything
from footraces through the courtyards to
shoving in the stairwells to outright brawling