“I don’t know what came over me,” I said contritely.

“It’s called gluttony,” he callously replied. He had excellent control over his features. As he spoke so quietly to me, his eyes roved around the room. He nodded to someone he saw there. He smiled as he said, “I have never been so ashamed of you. Do you hate your brother? Do you seek to humiliate me? What motivates you, Nevare? Do you think to avoid you military duty? You will not. One way or another, I’ll see you do you serve your fate.” He turned his head, waved at another acquaintance. “I warn you. If you will not maintain your body and your dignity and earn a commission at the academy and win a noble lady as your wife, why, then, you can go as a common foot soldier. But go you shall, boy. Go you shall.”

Only my mother and I could hear the venom in his questions. Her eyes were very wide and her face pale. I suddenly realized that she feared my father, and that right now her fear was extreme. He flicked a glance at her.

“Excuse yourself, my lady, and flee this scene if it distresses you. I give you permission.” With an apologetic look to me, she did. Her eyes were anxious, but she put a bright smile on her face, rose, and gave us a tiny wave of farewell as if she regretted having to leave us for a time. Then she fled across the room and out of the hall.

I glued a smile on my lips and cursed my own creeping fear of him. “I spoke the truth to you, Father. I told the servant to bring me a small serving of meat and bread. Once that quantity had arrived and Lady Poronte had witnessed it, what was I to do? Waste the abundance they shared with us? Claim the food did not suit me and turn it away? The servant placed me in a bad position. I made the best of it that I could. Tell me. What should I have done?”

“If you had served yourself a simple meal, instead of waiting to be attended like an old noble’s heir son, none of this would have happened.”

“And if I had been born with prescience, that is precisely what I would have done,” I retorted tightly. Where, I wondered in the shocked silence that followed my words, had that retort come from?

Astonishment that I would stand up to him jolted my father’s smile off his face. I was tempted to believe that I had seen a brief flash of respect in his eyes before he narrowed them at me. He took a short sharp breath as if to speak, and then snorted it out in disdain. “This is not the place nor the time, but I promise you, I will have a reckoning with you over this. For the rest of the day, say little and eat nothing. That isn’t a request, Nevare. It’s an order. Do you understand me?”