Kingdom of Ash

in the Great Hall. Rhoe had tried to defuse it,
but Rhoe had never been a comfortable liar.
Had refused to deny to Ren’s father that
Aedion was the one who’d swear that oath.
And by the end of that summer, even the
Crown Prince had begun to look the other way
when the two boys launched into yet another
fight in the dirt. Not that it mattered now.
Would his own father, would Gavriel, have
encouraged the rivalry? He supposed it didn’t
matter, either. But for a heartbeat, Aedion
tried to picture it—Gavriel here, presiding
over his training. His father and Rhoe,
teaching him together. And he knew that
Gavriel would have found some way to calm
the competition, much in the way he held the
peace in the cadre. What manner of man
would he have become, had the Lion been
here? Gavriel likely would have been
butchered with the rest of the court, but ... he