Jade War

She remembered, strangely, that for years she used to take a secret cruel pleasure in angering Hilo. As children and even as teens and into their adulthood, she’d always been able to provoke him and inwardly smirk at the spectacle he could make of himself. She was ashamed of herself now, for all the times she had done that.

She kept speaking, as if facts could dull reality. “Anden’s hurt and in shock, but he’ll recover. They’re not sure about Wen yet. It depends on how long her brain was without oxygen. The Espenian doctors are running tests, and once she’s back in Janloon—”

Hilo crossed the space between them in a heartbeat and struck her across the face. Shae reacted with instinctive Steel, but even so, the Strength of the blow crumpled her to her knees. She put a hand to her cheek, blinking at the pain. Her head felt as if it were vibrating on her spine like a beaten gong. She Perceived rather than saw Hilo about to hit her again, his eyes alight with insensible fury, and she threw a reflexive Deflection that sent him staggering backward.

Shae got to her feet. She didn’t think she could talk; her face was throbbing and felt frozen. She tried anyway; “Hilo—” but her brother launched himself at her with an inarticulate noise. His enraged blows fell on her Steeled arms and shuddered through her frame; their jade auras crashed against each other, shrill and explosive, rippling and grappling like tangled, sparking wires.

“How could you?” Hilo might have whispered the words; he might have screamed them—Shae was not sure. She could only feel the force with which they landed, harder than his fists. “How could you?”

Shae staggered from his maddened blows. In desperation, she planted a thrust kick in her brother’s stomach, following it up with another Deflection that flung Hilo into the training room’s cabinets. The force of the impact snapped hinges and buckled the wood. Hilo shook his head, dazed, but was on his feet again in a second, and Shae was suddenly afraid—not of Hilo, but of what might have to happen: One of them would have to beat the other unconscious for this to end—but then the door of the room slid open partway with a rasp. Ru and Niko stood peering inside, their eyes wide, mouths open in confusion and astonishment. “Da?” Ru ventured.

Hilo spun toward his sons, his face contorted. “Get out!”

The boys were so stunned at their father’s sudden and inexplicable wrath that they froze like rabbits. Ru’s mouth trembled, then he turned and ran toward the main house, crying. Niko ran in the other direction, into the room and to Shae, grabbing her tightly around the waist and burying his face against her stomach as if to hide. She put her arms around him without thinking.

Something in Hilo’s expression shifted and collapsed like a crumbling tower; he sagged and slid to the ground, his back against the broken cabinets. He put his face in his hands.

“Go back to the house with your brother,” Shae whispered to Niko, her voice strained but as reassuring as she could make it. She rubbed his back. “Your uncle and I are training and can’t be interrupted right now. He’s not angry at you, I promise. We’ll be out soon.” Gently, she loosened the boy’s arms. Niko glanced uncertainly at Hilo, wanting to go to him, but his uncle, who was usually so quick to smile and roughhouse with him, neither looked up nor made any move to rise from his spot on the floor. Reluctantly, the boy shuffled out of the room. Shae closed the door quietly behind him and turned slowly back around.

Hilo lifted his face from his hands and stared up at her, and she was startled to see tears in his eyes. “You once asked me if I trusted you, do you remember?”

“You said that you didn’t have a choice,” Shae said.

“I didn’t,” Hilo agreed. “Even though I knew all along that you never wanted to be in the clan, never wanted to be a Kaul, never really wanted me as a brother either.” His voice deadened, turned cold and remote. She’d seen it happen before: the explosion of fury and hurt, then the rejection, the pulling away. “Get out,” he said. “You’re not my Weather Man, not anymore. You’re free, Shae, like you always wanted.”

Shae put a hand on the door of the training room. For a second, she imagined obeying her brother—sliding the door open and stepping out, returning to her house and packing a few items, walking down the long driveway and through the iron gates of the estate her grandfather had built, not looking back. She had done such a thing once before, years ago. She’d been a different person back then. A young woman who’d not yet lived abroad, suffered heartbreak and terrible loss, or wielded power over clan and country. She had not yet fought and nearly died in a duel of clean blades, taken lives out of vengeance and one out of mercy, or rocked her niece and nephews to sleep in her arms. She could not have imagined such things, not back then.