kind of magus born once a generation. After studying at Hoth’salar, the Healers’ School on Gandu, and mastering all they had to teach him by the time he was sixteen, Dorian had come to the school of fire and mastered fire magics while not even pretending to be interested in them. He’d only stayed because he’d become friends with Feir and Solon. Solon’s talents were almost solely in Fire, but he was the strongest of the three. Feir wasn’t sure why the two had become friends with him. Maybe because he wasn’t threatened by their excellence. They were so obviously the kind of men who’d been touched by the gods that Feir didn’t even think to be jealous for a long time. Maybe it helped that he’d been born a peasant. It probably also helped that whenever he was struggling with his studies and started to be jealous, one or the other of his friends would suggest sparring with him.
Feir looked fat, but he could move and he trained daily with the Blademasters, who kept their central training facility mere minutes from Sho’cendi. For Solon or Dorian to volunteer to spar with him was to volunteer for bruises. Dorian could heal bruises later, but they still hurt.
Dorian had half-packed saddlebags open on the bed.
Feir sighed. “You know the Assembly’s forbidden you to leave. They don’t care about Cenaria. Honestly, if Solon weren’t there, I wouldn’t either. We could send him a message to leave.” The school’s leaders hadn’t phrased it that way, of course. They were more worried about delivering the continent of Midcyru’s only—perhaps the world’s only—prophet into the Godking’s hands.
“You don’t even know the best part yet,” Dorian said, grinning like they were children.
Feir felt the blood draining from his face. The wards to keep magic in the room suddenly made sense. “You aren’t planning to steal it.”
“I could make the argument that it’s ours. The three of us were the ones who tracked it, found it, and brought it back. They stole it from us first, Feir.”
“You agreed it would be safer here. We let them take it from us.”
“So I’m taking it back,” Dorian said, shrugging.
“So it’s you against all the world again.”
“It’s me for all the world, Feir. Will you come with me?”
“Come with you? Is this the madness?” When Dorian’s gift for prophecy had surfaced, one of the first things he’d tried was to tell his own future. He’d learned that no matter what he did, he would go mad one day. Delving into his own future would only hasten that day’s arrival. “I thought you said you had still had a decade or so.”
“Not so long, now,” Dorian said. He shrugged like it didn’t matter, as if it didn’t break his heart, exactly the way he’d shrugged when he’d asked Solon to go to Cenaria, knowing it would cost Solon Kaede’s love. “Before you answer, Feir, know this: if you come with me, you will regret it many times, and you will never again walk the halls of Sho’cendi.”
“You make such a convincing plea,” Feir said, rolling his eyes.
“You will also save my life at least twice, own a forge, be known throughout the world as the greatest living weaponsmith, have a small part in saving the world, and die satisfied, if not nearly so old as you or I hoped.”
“Oh, that’s better,” Feir said sarcastically, but his stomach was doing flips. Dorian rarely told what he knew, but when he did, he never lied. “Just a small part in saving the world?”
“Feir, your purpose in life isn’t your happiness. We’re part of a much bigger story. Everyone is. If your part is unsung, does that make it worthless? Our purpose on this trip isn’t to save Solon. It’s to see a boy. We will face many dangers to get there. Death is a very real possibility. And do you know what that boy needs from us? Three words. Maybe two if the name counts as only one. Do you want to know what they are?”
“Sure.”
“‘Ask Momma K.’”
“That’s it? What’s it mean?” Feir asked.
“I have no idea.”
Sometimes a seer could be a pain in the ass. “You ask for a lot from me,” Feir said.
Dorian nodded.
“I’ll regret it if I say yes?”
“Many times. But not in the end.”
“It might be easier if you told me less.”
“Believe me,” Dorian said, “I wish I didn’t have such a clear view of what lies before you down each possible choice here. If I told you less,