Corinn found it disturbing that there were no words to adequately describe the love a parent feels for a child. Before she’d become a mother she’d known so little. All those years she had understood nothing of what her mother and her father must have gone through raising four children. It rankled her to think how foolish she had once been. It was a strange, unpleasant emotion to follow so quickly on her adoration. It concerned her that she might, at some point in the future, look back from a place of greater wisdom and again find that the self she now was—at thirty-three, the mother of a single child, the widow to a lover who had planned her murder, a sister to two living siblings and one dead, an orphan who could no longer look to her parents—had been ignorant on some matter of import.
She kept such thoughts exclusively to herself, of course. To the outside world she was a display of statuesque certainty. And why shouldn’t she be? She was the queen of a vast empire and the keeper of the most powerful knowledge the world had ever known. She owed it to her people to be certain in all her actions. Hesitation, deliberation, second thoughts: these were signs of weakness, the kind of flaws that kept her father from being a truly great king. The failings that temporarily lost the empire.
No matter, she thought. Acacia now had a great queen. The nation would thrive because of it; she promised it would. A queen to stand strong, a mother to raise the nation’s next king. That was what Aaden was to be, even if the world was not yet as sure of it as she was. Born outside of an official marriage, Aaden was not guaranteed the throne. He could succeed her, but not without challenges and protests from other Agnate families, those who would rather she marry among them and bear a legitimate child. Also, any child of a marriage of her siblings—like Mena and Melio’s—would step before Aaden in the line of succession. But there was no such child yet, and before long Corinn would surprise them all.
As focused as the young swordsman had been, when he reached the end of his memorized routine he dropped his role completely. His sword arm went limp at his side and he strolled toward his mother’s desk, a look of sudden boredom on his face. “That’s about all I’ve learned. I wanted to learn the end bit, but Thotan said I had to begin at the beginning.”
“Aaden,” the queen said, “that’s wonderful. You’ll be a fine swordsman someday. Better than Dariel, I’d wager. Better even than Mena!”
The child accepted the praise with a curt nod. He assured her that he already was a fine swordsman. No someday needed to qualify it. Still, something about the compliment rekindled his focus. He turned his attention back to the Form, determination etched in the lines of his forehead, the tip of his tongue pinched between his front teeth.