the chair across from mine.
“The House of Renaud?” Saint’s mercy, of course he would request the expansive royal lineage. The one I struggled to remember.
“It is the lineage of our king,” he reminded with that unflinching gaze of his. I had seen that look of his many times. And so had my arden-sisters, who all complained about Cartier behind closed doors. He was the most handsome of Magnalia’s arials, the instructor of knowledge, but he was also the strictest. My arden-sister Oriana claimed that a rock dwelled in his chest. And she had drawn a caricature of him, depicting him as a man emerging from stone.
“Brienna.” My name rolled off his tongue as his fingers snapped impatiently.
“Forgive me, Master.” I tried to summon the beginning of the royal line, but all I could think of was my grandfather’s letter, waiting in my pocket. What had taken him so long to write?
“You understand that knowledge is the most demanding of the passions,” Cartier spoke when my silence had extended far too long.
I met his gaze and wondered if he was trying to tactfully imply that I did not have the fortitude for this. Some mornings, I thought the same myself.
My first year at Magnalia, I had studied the passion of art. And since I had no artistic inclinations, the next year I squandered in music. But my singing was beyond redeeming and my fingers made instruments sound like caterwauling felines. My third year I had attempted dramatics until I discovered my stage fright could not be overcome. So my fourth year was given to wit, a very fretful year that I tried not to remember. Then, when I was fourteen, I had come to stand before Cartier and asked him to accept me as his arden, to make me into a mistress of knowledge in the three years I had remaining at Magnalia.
Yet I knew—and I suspected the other arials who instructed me knew this as well—that I was here because of something my grandfather had said those seven years ago. I was not here because I deserved it; I was not here because I was brimming with talent and capacity as were the other five ardens, who I loved as my true sisters. But perhaps that made me want it even more, to prove that passion was not just inherently gifted as some people believed, but that passion could be earned by anyone, commoner or noble, even if they did not have intrinsic skill.
“Maybe I should go back to our first lesson,” Cartier said, breaking my reverie. “What is passion, Brienna?”
The passion catechism. It echoed in my thoughts, one of the first passages I had ever memorized, the one all the ardens knew by heart.
He was not patronizing me by asking this now, eight days from the summer solstice, but all the same, I felt a twinge of embarrassment until I bravely met his gaze and saw there was more to this question.
What do you want, Brienna? His eyes quietly asked as they held mine. Why do you want to passion?
And so I gave him the answer I had been taught to say, because I felt it would be safest.
“Passion is divided into five hearts,” I began. “Passion is art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge. Passion is wholehearted devotion; it is fervor and agony; it is temper and zeal. It knows no bounds and marks a man or woman no matter their class or status, no matter their heritage. The passion becomes the man or woman, as the man or woman becomes the passion. It is a consummation of skill and flesh, a marker of devotion, dedication, and deed.”
I couldn’t tell if Cartier was disappointed with my learned answer. His face was always so carefully guarded—not once had I ever seen him smile; not once had I ever heard him laugh. Sometimes, I imagined he was not much older than me, but then I always reminded myself that my soul was young and Cartier’s was not. He was far more experienced and educated, most likely the product of a childhood cured too soon. Whatever his age, he held a vast amount of knowledge in his mind.
“I was your last choice, Brienna,” he finally said, disregarding my catechism. “You came to me three years ago and asked me to prepare you for your seventeenth summer solstice. Yet instead of having seven years to make you into a mistress of knowledge, I only had three.”
I could hardly bear his reminders. It made me think of Ciri, his other arden of knowledge. Ciri soaked in knowledge with envious depth, but she had also had seven years of instruction. Of course I would feel inadequate when I compared myself to her.
“Forgive me for not being as Ciri,” I said before I could swallow the sarcasm.
“Ciri began her training when she was ten,” he reminded me calmly, preoccupied with a book on the table. He picked it up and passed through several pages that were dog-eared—something he fervently detested—and I watched him gently straighten the bends from the old paper.
“Do you regret my choice, Master?” What I really wanted to ask him was, Why didn’t you refuse me when I asked you to become my master three years ago? If three years was not enough time for me to passion, why didn’t you tell me no? But maybe my gaze expressed this, because he looked at me and then glanced languidly away, back to the books.
“I only have a few regrets, Brienna,” he answered.
“What happens if I am not chosen by a patron at the solstice?” I asked, although I knew what became of young men and women who failed to reach impassionment. They were often broken and inadequate, neither here nor there, belonging to no group, shunned by passion and common folk alike. To dedicate years, time, and mind to passion and not accomplish it … one became marked as inept. No longer an arden, never quite a passion, and suddenly forced to merge back into society to become useful.
And as I waited for his answer, I thought of the simple metaphor Mistress Solene had taught me that first year in art (when she realized I was in no way artistic). Passion moved in phases. One began as an arden, which was like a caterpillar. This was the time to devour and master as much of the passion as one could manage. It could happen as short as two years if one was a prodigy, and as long as ten if one was a slower learner. Magnalia House was a seven year program and fairly rigorous compared to other Valenian passion Houses, which often went to eight or nine years of study. And then came impassionment—marked by a cloak and a title—and the phase of the patron, which was like the cocoon, a place to hold and mature the passion, to support her as she readied for the final phase. Which was the butterfly, when the passion could emerge out in the world on her own.
So I was thinking of butterflies when Cartier replied, “I suppose you will be the first of your kind, little arden.”
I did not like his response, and my body sank deeper into the brocade of the chair, which smelled of old books and loneliness.
“If you believe you will fail, then you most likely will,” he continued, his blue eyes sparking against my brown ones. Dust motes crossed the chasm between us, little swirling eddies in the air. “Do you agree?”
“Of course, Master.”
“Your eyes never lie to me, Brienna. You should learn better composure when you fib.”
“I shall take your advice to heart.”
He tilted his head to the side, but his eyes still rested on mine. “Do you want to tell me what is truly on your mind?”
“The solstice is on my mind,” I answered, a bit too quickly. It was a half-truth, but I could not imagine telling Cartier about my grandfather’s letter, because then he might ask me to read it aloud.
“Well,
