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“Who’s this?” asked the Dragon Warlord’s son.
When Rin had been sent with her sister to be tutored with two other boys, she hadn’t expected one of them to be the most beautiful she’d ever seen. She had, however, expected Venka to be a bitch.
“This is just Runin,” Venka scoffed.
And that, as their tutor entered the room, was that.
There were a hundred small coincidences that left Rin as Venka’s sister. The first being that her parents were dead.
Which didn’t exactly sound like a small thing, but as the Srings told her often, they were probably dirt farmers who’d been killed by some Mugenese soldier, a fate so common that she could hardly count it as a significant one. It would have been easy for her to have been born in neighbouring Rooster instead of Dragon, in some poverty-ridden town rather than a large city.
Even with that, it was by the smallest of chances that she’d somehow been selected for them as a war orphan to adopt. Every single one of these chances was recorded, each a debt Rin owed to the universe just as much as she did the Srings.
The one time that she had pointed out that it was also a small chance that Minister Sring hadn’t remarried after his wife had given him one child instead of three before dying, he’d had her locked in her room without water for two days.
Being an awkward distraction wasn’t anything new, so it didn’t surprise her when Kitay and Nezha shied away from talking to her and instead hung with Venka after their classes ended, which was fine by her. She was here to study for the Keju, not make new friends.
“So, how did you end up getting that name in the first place?”
She looked up from her book, annoyed. “What?”
“Runin isn’t a very common name.”
Kitay seemed to have a spectacular talent for stating the obvious. Maybe it was a side effect of not having to think so hard, seeing as how he was clearly more brilliant than the rest of them.
Rin sighed.
“The orphanage gave it to me,” she said, “I know, it sounds stupid. Just call me Rin.”
Kitay didn’t debate her on that, nor did he try to act surprised about her being adopted. The Sring’s muddy peasant daughter had been Sinegard gossip since she had been assigned to them at six; there was no way the son of the Defence Minister didn’t know, even if he had been colourblind.
Instead, he asked, “Want to join us? I know the best place to get something to eat.”
Rin glanced down at her book for a second. Venka wouldn’t be happy.
“You’ll have to pay,” she warned. “I wasn’t given an allowance.”
Kitay, it turned out, didn’t have to pay either. Nor did Venka. Nezha was more than happy to order for all of them, the show-off.
“Don’t start thinking you’re special just because someone bought you food,” Venka snapped once they’d got home. “Nezha was paying attention to me, not you.”
“That’s because you wouldn’t shut up around him.”
Rin dodged the angry slap sent her way. She’d much prefer marrying Kitay, but she supposed there was no accounting for taste.
“Arlong was wonderful.”
“Yes, Venka, I know. You’ve only told me twelve fucking times.”
Her sister just smirked. It was a pretty pathetic victory, all things considered. Rin wouldn’t have even classed it as one, considering Venka had done nothing to win it. All it had been was Nezha awkwardly apologising to her after he’d invited the other two of their tutorial group to his home for the holidays, an utterly expected turn of events. Who could have expected the Yins to accept an upstart peasant into their household as a guest, one even her own father barely considered more than a servant?
“Just didn’t want you to forget that detail,” Venka drawled, looking at her nails.
“Kitay’s place was better anyway. Dogs are much cuter than boats.”
Rin wasn’t still above being petty, even after close to a decade of getting used to her sister’s insults.
“Just because you’d managed to throw up on a five-minute boat ride-”
“That was once, and we were ten-”
“Doesn’t mean all of us love getting shat on by dogs instead.” Venka sniffed, looking Rin up and down. “Lady Saikhara’s dog is much better trained than Kitay’s. She knows not to let it run around like it owns the place.”
The battle lines that Kitay had drawn by declining Nezha’s invitation and giving his own to Rin had left Venka bereft of what little tact she possessed, it seemed.
“Flattering Nezha’s mother when she’s not around isn’t going to make it any more likely you’ll have him.”
“Right, because learning the names of each of Kitay’s dogs is going to make you more likely to have him.”
“Fat chance of that.” Kitay may have been the person she loved most in the world, but his parents still saw her as closer to a new pet than an acceptable wife. “Lord Sring has told me my betrothal is already coming along nicely.”
That shut Venka up swiftly.
Rin often wondered why Venka was so quiet when it came to that. Maybe she felt guilty about what would happen to Rin if she didn’t pass the Keju. Maybe the thought of being married to a man thrice her age struck too close to home. Maybe it was a different kind of guilt, the guilt of knowing that Rin had struggled harder for every chance of escape than Venka had, had spent months begging Lord Sring for the opportunities to learn that she and the boys took for granted, that the best man who settled for Rin would be Venka’s worst nightmare.
It didn’t matter. It was the only weapon Rin had against Venka, the one shame almost as deep as her skin was to the family.
One more year, and that advantage would either be lost, either because she was free or because she’d killed herself.
One more year.
“Being a little bitch about Kitay scoring higher than you isn’t going to increase your own score.”
For a moment, Nezha looked like he was going to punch her, but the vitriol deflated from his body before it could burst from his mouth.
“It isn’t about that,” he said quietly.
“Sure it’s not,” Rin said, “that’s why I had to hug him while he was crying because you and Venka wouldn’t talk to him after we got our letters back.”
He at least had the decency to look ashamed.
“Why don’t you ask Venka to do that?” He asked, a coward. “You two live together.”
“Because she stopped talking to me after I scored higher than her.”
Well, she’d yelled and thrown a few vases at her before that, but Rin opted to leave that out.
Nezha frowned, and for a second, all she felt was a spark of hot rage that this boy, who had ruined the happiest moment of her life, was now going to try to lecture her.
“Venka told me how pathetic you are about your family,” Rin snapped.
She burned with delight as his face spasmed with hurt shock. Venka could get so talkative about things she shouldn’t when she was drunk. Maybe, Rin thought, knowing that hurt would ward him off from betraying anyone else like he had Kitay.
“But I want you to know,” she continued, “that I don’t stick to people who treat me like shit. I have basic self-respect. And if you want to throw Kitay away because he hurt your image with people who deserve nothing, then you and your family deserve each other.”
Rin waited for the punch. It never came. He just looked at her thoughtfully.
“You sisters,” Nezha mused, “deserve each other.”
“What’s your name?” Niang asked her.
When Rin had first arrived in Sinegard Academy, she’d expected the girl she had grown up with to never speak to her again. She hadn’t for months beforehand, and given how she had spotted Nezha refusing to sit near Venka, that seemed unlikely to change.
To Rin’s mild surprise, she replied.
“That’s just Runin,” Venka said, before going to bed.
And that, as Niang awkwardly moved the conversation along, was that.