The Brotherhood: Blood by Kody Boye

don’t know how to control it!”
    “They’re going to teach me. The castle, they have to have mages, they’ll know what to do, they—”
    His father slapped him across the face.
    A throb of pain bloomed in his cheekbone.
    Odin grimaced, almost unable to believe that his father had actually physically struck him.
    He’s never hit me, he thought, panicking, his heart beating a thousand times and more in his chest and his lungs contracting as if they could not absorb the life-giving air within the tent. He’s never—
    “Don’t you disrespect me boy,” Ectris said, grabbing Odin’s chin and tilting his head up so they could once more look into one another’s eyes. “You hear?”
    “I… you—”
    “I what, son?”
    “You can’t keep me from learning how to use it.”
    “Oh really?” Ectris laughed. “What makes you think that?”
    “The king values soldiers who can use magic. They’re stronger fighters.”
    “They are? Since when? You think that the king wants boys who can set things on fire or blow things up? Do you honestly believe that he wants his men killing each other because they can’t control their own powers?”
    “ The mages will teach me!” he cried. “Why can’t you just open your eyes and see—”
    Ectris reared his hand back and struck him a second time. “You will not fight me on this!” he roared. “I’ll turn us both around and take you back to Felnon if you’re going to disrespect me.”
    “You wouldn’t,” Odin said, chest filling with weight. “You… you want me to—”
    “Just because I said I would help you doesn’t mean I won’t turn you around. A boy never talks back to his father, especially about something as selfish as using magic.”
    Near tears and unable to control the shakes that consumed his body, Odin wrapped his arms around himself and tore his eyes away from his father’s stare.
    The man turned, preparing to make his way out the tent. He stopped before he could do so. “Get in bed,” Ectris Karussa said. “Don’t argue with me.”
    “Sir—”
    “One more word and I’ll take you home.”
    The man left the tent without taking another look back.
     
    Odin lay awake after his father went to bed thinking about what his he’d been told. Struck twice and threatened with his entire future, there seemed to be little not to panic about, considering the fact that he now lay beneath a tent that seemed damaged but not by physical means. Beside him, his father slept soundly, his chest rising and falling almost as if there was not a thing in the world to bother him, but Odin knew better. No. He knew, without a shadow of doubt, that his father was attempting to prevent him from controlling the one thing he knew set him apart from all the others.
    I can’t let him do this to me, he thought, chords of unease playing in his chest and forcing tears of rage down his face. What if he tries to get some special treatment for me? What if he tells them he doesn’t want me to use my magic?
    Could, he wondered, a parent request that their child not be taught something, especially if that something fell within the line of magical arts? He imagined not, considering that men who served under the king were specifically trained to exploit each and every opportunity possible, but were he to really think about it, he couldn’t help but wonder if his father would put in a request to the highest source—the king, possibly, or even a high mage—to forbid them from teaching his son magic.
    Why does he hate something that’s going to help me?
    Men with magic were always the ones told of in legend—the ones who, somehow, someway, always managed to survive the most gruesome of situations and the most horrendous of wars. What of Arc, who had traveled the Crystal Deserts killing the last of the hideous giants, or even Baelra whom, in her day and age, had saved a separatist group of outcast women that had bore the Gift also? Both figures were regarded in history—were, of