Valorous King is ten years old when his family ship him to boarding school, just around the corner.
Valorous King appears in King’s Service and A King’s Man.
Rated T, 5k. Some young Valorous King coming to board at Idloes Academy. Thinking I’ll do some vignettes and bits of pieces in a loose series for this, just around Valorous and other kids, his teachers, and Myrddin Wyllt!
Content warnings for violence, grief, mental health issues, and difficulties with a child who’s traumatised and mentally ill.
Valorous didn’t say a word as Doctor Maybeetle led him up the stairs. He’d been attending Idloes Academy for six months, altogether — four months last term, when he’d come down from Alba to live with his Aunt Noble and his cousins, the summer holiday in between, and two months past.
They were coming into the beginning of November now, and Uncle Heinous had come to visit, and the time he wasn’t boring Valorous to pieces, he was apparently scheming to ruin his life, because he’d arranged for Valorous to board at Idloes. It was a Saturday morning, and mercifully, almost everyone was downstairs — he could hear the sound of no one upstairs in the dorms.
“You’ll be quite happy here with us, I’m sure,” said Doctor Maybeetle cheerfully. He was an old man with amber-brown eyes and thick curls of silver hair, his beard grizzled and silver, and he wore an argyle jumper. “I’m told you’ve been studying in with the year sevens, although you’re a little young for it!”
“I used to go to Sons of Cumhaill,” said Valorous as he trudged up the stairs after him, staring down at the ankles of Doctor Maybeetle’s cream-coloured trousers. He was wearing trouser clips.
“Oh,” said Doctor Maybeetle falteringly.
Idloes was a very good school, everyone around here said. It was the best school in Lashton, and one of the best magical schools in the whole of the country, but the Sons of Cumhaill was primarily taught by veterans of the Alban magical army, and apart from being taught weapons drills and offensive magic since he was old enough to walk, the old soldiers had gone hard on his other studies: maths, geography, history, literature.
Some of it was new.
He’d never studied Latin at Sons of Cumhaill, and the books they looked at in literature were different, and at least in P.E. everything was still a challenge. Even though most of the kids weren’t as strong or fast as he was, a fair few of them were, especially the vampires and fae, and Mr Hobbes and Mr Garrity took special note of the kids that were unnaturally strong and rode them harder than the rest.
It wasn’t the same, no, but Mr Hobbes was an ex-military man himself, and although he wasn’t Scottish, he had called Valorous a weaselly little cunt when Valorous wasn’t trying hard enough at climbing a rope.
“We’ll talk about your class performance later in the week,” said Maybeetle, in an uncomfortably gentle tone that Valorous didn’t know what to make of. “I’ve, ah, been waiting to talk to you properly.”
Valorous exhaled slowly, and didn’t say anything as Maybeetle led him into the dormitories. There were three floors to the dorms, and Valorous assumed that all of them were like this, high-ceilinged rooms with rows either side of little almost rooms: the walls were eight-feet tall for every little cell, each with a bed, a desk, a thin, tall wardrobe, and a chest of drawers.
All of them had their own bedsheets and blankets, some of them with posters and photos hung on the walls, and a lot of them had collectibles or ornaments sitting on top of their wall tops.
The boarders were mainly from outside of Lashton, either from these isles or from farther afield, and some of the cells had enchantments carved into their walls, the fields of them heavy on the air as he walked between them and up to an empty one on the end.
“Do you want help putting your bedsheets on?” asked Maybeetle as Valorous stepped inside and put his case up on the top of the chest of drawers.
Valorous itched at the thought of letting Maybeetle, whose shirt collar was bent wrong and whose trousers didn’t look like they’d ever been ironed, put his bedsheets on for him, and he shook his head.
“No, thanks,” he muttered.
“You know this isn’t a punishment, don’t you?” asked the old man, leaning his shoulder against the cubicle wall as Valorous pulled the cotton sheets out of his suitcase. These he’d just taken out of the guest bedroom supplies at Aunt Noble’s house, and they were plain green, not brightly patterned like a lot of the other sheets he’d seen in the room.
The people in the other cubicles were all his age or a little older, and most of them had colourful bedsheets with patterns printed on them, or bands, or cats, and he itched to have some of his own, sheets with knights on, or dragons, or something — frogs, even.
He liked frogs.
“Valorous?” asked Maybeetle.
“I know it’s not a punishment,” said Valorous, and flipped the duvet over with the sheet inside, straightening it out on the bed. Maybeetle was staring down at the flat surface of his tightly tucked in bed, his lips pursed together and his eyes focused behind the lenses of his square little glasses.
As he shook his pillow into a case, Maybeetle asked, “The Sons of Cuimhall is very, ah, military, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” said Valorous.
“Fighting back the urge to call me sir?”
“Not really.”
“You broke that habit already?”
“Yeah.”
“Your father was ex-military, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” said Valorous. “He discharged when he and my mother broke up.”
“How old were you when they divorced?”
“They never got married,” said Valorous. “They were planning their wedding when I was two, then my mother found out who my father was.”
“Oh,” said Maybeetle awkwardly. “And your father, uh, he discharged to… to join the family business?”
“Mm.”
He pulled the pillowcase taut, and set it down on the bed. He murmured a word, charged it with magic, and he watched the wrinkles disappear from the sheets, the pillowcase.
“You could bounce a coin off that,” said Maybeetle weakly. “Was your father very strict about that sort of thing?”
“Yeah.”
Maybeetle inhaled, and then said, “You must miss him.”
Valorous started to unpack his clothes, putting his shoes in the cubby underneath the wardrobe.
“Valorous?”
“Yes, Doctor Maybeetle,” muttered Valorous. “He was my dad, he’s dead, I miss him.”
“Your Uncle Heinous thought it might be a good idea for us to talk about him,” said Maybeetle in a gentle voice, and Valorous picked out his socks and underwear, dropping them into the top drawer of the chest. “My doctorate is in psychology, and I’m a trained counsellor. Do you know what that means?”
“It means my Uncle Heinous thinks I’m crazy because I saw my dad get shot in the head, and then shot a guy in the head myself,” said Valorous. “So they want me to talk to you about it.”
“No one thinks you’re crazy, Valorous,” said Maybeetle. “They’re worried you’re shut down about it, that’s all — that you’re sad, and holding it inside, that you’re scared, and won’t tell anybody.”
“I’m not scared.”
“No?”
“What do I have to be scared of?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps someone hurting you, the same way they hurt your father?”
“I think I already showed I know what to do if someone tries,” said Valorous.
This was how he knew he was crazy: when he said it and looked up at Maybeetle, Maybeetle took in a reedy little breath, and his eyes were a little bit wider.
“It says in your file you have some permanent damage to your right ear.”
“Yeah,” said Valorous. His cubicle was on the left side of the room, and he wondered if Maybeetle had noticed he was awkwardly turning to keep his left side facing Maybeetle instead of his right — he wasn’t completely deaf in his right ear, but sound on that side was muffled compared to his left, his hearing not as keen as it used to be. “The gunshot perforated my eardrum.”
“Your arm is healed, though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was just a sprain,” said Valorous. “I wasn’t holding the gun properly — it was heavier than any handgun my father used, and I wasn’t prepared for the recoil. I didn’t break any fingers, though.”
Maybeetle watched him as Valorous put the last of his shirts away, zipping up the suitcase and flattening it slightly, dropping it into the bottom of the wardrobe. He had two boxes downstairs, one with his books and some photo albums, and the other, they said he couldn’t have until the headmaster had had a look at it.
“You didn’t bring any toys?” asked Maybeetle.
“They’re in the same box as my axe and my short sword,” said Valorous.
“Why don’t you sit down?” asked Maybeetle, gesturing, and Valorous sat back on the bed, watching the old man as he turned the chair at his desk around, sitting back to look at him properly.
“I know it’s not normal,” said Valorous.
“What’s not normal?” asked Maybeetle innocently, and Valorous sighed.
“You don’t have to do that. Treat me like a little kid, like I don’t… know.”
Maybeetle sighed, leaning back. “You’re not quite giving me due credit,” the old man murmured. “I’ve spoken with all sorts of children, you know — your father was perhaps a little unusual for magical humans in the choices he made, but you’re not the only child I’ve worked with who grew up using weapons.”
“How many kids my age do you know who’ve shot a man in the head?” asked Valorous.
“You have everyone else beaten for that,” admitted Maybeetle. “What was your father like?”
“You haven’t read the papers?”
“You think the papers knew him better than his own son?”
Valorous unlaced his shoes, putting them aside, and he sat cross-legged on the bed, staring down at the floor. He was sad, obviously. He missed his dad, obviously. He felt angry and upset and alone and tired.
Obviously.
“He was strict,” said Valorous. “He was funny. He liked to tell jokes, and tell stories, and he liked to teach me stuff himself. We used to camp a lot.”
“Did you like that he was strict?” asked Maybeetle, and Valorous thought of all the noise in Aunt Noble’s house, how everything got messy almost immediately because they expected the cleaners to come do it for them. They had more than enough rooms in the house to ensure he didn’t have to share with anybody, but he’d seen into some of his cousins’ rooms, saw how messy everything was, how their beds weren’t made, how they had stuff everywhere.
“I guess,” said Valorous. “I liked that he had rules for everything, that everything had a place.”
“How did it work?” asked Maybeetle quietly. “You at Sons of Cumhaill, him working?”
“I’d board on weeknights,” said Valorous. “He’d pick me up Saturday mornings, and I’d go back either Sunday night or early Monday. And I’d travel with him on half-terms, when he was working.”
“And you knew what he did for a living?”
“Do I know that I’m a member of one of the most prominent crime families in the country?”
“That’s not the same as knowing what your father did,” said Maybeetle quietly, and Valorous leaned back, letting his shoulders touch the back wall of the cubicle.
“My father was an enforcer,” said Valorous. “For the most part, that didn’t mean killing people — he’d put pressure on people to pay back their debts or meet their obligations. That could involve roughing someone up, harming them or their friends or relatives, or doing damage to their businesses, their property. But he killed people, yeah.”
“How did you feel about that?”
“I don’t know,” said Valorous. “It was his job. He didn’t like it anymore than most people like their jobs.”
“Did you ever feel guilty?”
“Because my father killed people?” asked Valorous. “Because he broke up other people’s families, made people grieve, because my school fees and the food I ate and the clothes I wore was all paid for based on other people’s suffering?”
Maybeetle’s lips parted, his expression unsure.
“Apart from the fact that I’m still a King,” said Valorous, “and that Aunt Noble’s money is just as dirty as my father’s was… How’s that any different to when my dad was in the army?”
Maybeetle’s jaw dropped, and Valorous gave him a smile.
“You know what I really liked about my dad?” he asked quietly. “He told me people would ask me questions like this, and we’d talk about how to reply, because most people would be asking so they could split us up and put me in foster care. I’m not saying killing people isn’t wrong. It is, sure it is. But sometimes, killing people’s necessary.”
“When do you think it’s necessary?”
“For self-defence,” said Valorous. “For revenge.”
“What sort of — ”
“My dad didn’t like psychologists,” said Valorous, “because he thought that some psychologists care more about calibrating the moral compasses of patients to be more in line with their own than they do about mental healthcare.”
“Your father had a lot of opinions,” said Maybeetle, leaning back in his seat, but he didn’t seem displeased, his lips shifting up into a slight smile. “Was there anything you two disagreed on?”
“Sure, I guess. What was worth getting himself killed over.”
“You blame him for what happened?”
“He got killed because of his job. He didn’t have to do it, but he did, and it got him killed.”
“And his killer?”
“If he hadn’t killed my father, I wouldn’t have killed him.”
“You’re not worried about retribution against you?”
“Nope,” said Valorous. “I’m ten, Doctor Maybeetle. I was nine when I pulled the trigger. There are lines even in this business.”
“Did that factor into your decision?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you think about the fact that you wouldn’t face consequences for it?” asked Maybeetle. “I suppose I’m asking what exactly was going through your mind when you realised what had happened, when you picked up the gun, when you aimed it, when you pulled the trigger?”
Valorous was quiet for a second, thinking it through. He really didn’t know, not right off the top of his head, and he thought about it for a second, pressing his lips together. He remembered all the blood in the kitchen, remembered how it had spread out across the tile in a thick puddle, shining in black-red blotches and spots all across the cupboards, drenching through the map of the campground they were going to next week on the fridge, even on the ceiling and falling down from the light fixtures.
Trotter had been crouching with the blood soaking all around his boots, and he’d been rifling through his dad’s pockets looking for family heirlooms — anything he could use as proof of a kill, anything he could sell, anything he could produce to brag about, use as a trophy.
Valorous didn’t remember thinking anything, except that his dad wasn’t twitching, that he wasn’t breathing, that the hole through his head meant that resuscitation wasn’t going to be an option even if the ambulance materialised instantaneously, as soon as he called them.
He remembered knowing, for certain, that his father was dead, and picking up the gun.
“I don’t think I thought anything,” said Valorous. “I was angry. I wanted him dead. I killed him.”
“Do you think you could do it again?”
“What, if someone kills my father again?”
“If someone makes you angry again.”
“Not really,” said Valorous. “I was taught to control myself.”
“More than the other kids your age.”
“Yeah.”
“That must be hard,” said Maybeetle quietly.
“I guess.”
“Do you find it frustrating?”
“I suppose,” said Valorous. “It’s annoying, sometimes.”
“Do you find it easy to connect to the other children in your classes?”
“I’m younger than they are.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I’m not interested in a lot of the things they are,” said Valorous. “We have different lives.”
“What about your friends?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who would you say your best friend is at school?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“What about at your old school?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have a best friend at Sons of Cumhaill?”
“Rhys Jones.”
“You miss him?”
“I guess.”
“You write to him?”
Valorous shook his head.
“Do you wish you were better at making friends?”
“No.”
“You don’t feel lonely?”
“Not particularly.”
“Who do you play with?”
“Felina Pike,” said Valorous. “Bert Riker. Angus Fairchild.”
“You play with them?”
“Hand to hand drills, Wednesday afternoons. Weapons drills, Fridays.”
Maybeetle laughed — he’d had a horrified look on his face, his eyes widening further and further as Valorous had named more names, but now he relaxed slightly, but not completely. “That’s not really what I meant. What games did you play with your father?”
“Chess,” said Valorous. “Poker, Canasta, Newmarket… Dominos.”
“There’s a chess club here at school.”
“I know,” said Valorous. “Or maybe I’ll make more friends, now I’m boarding here.”
“Not if you don’t want to make friends,” said Maybeetle.
“Oh no,” said Valorous. “You’ve seen through my cunning plan.”
“We’re going to have a session together once a week,” said Maybeetle. “I know it’s not fun, that it seems boring, or a chore — and I know it’s difficult, with your father gone, and to be away from your old school. Don’t you want to perhaps — write to Rhys Jones? See if he replies?”
Rhys Jones was the name the students at the Sons of Cumhaill called the animated training dummy, who wasn’t any sort of sentient automaton, but was carefully enchanted and had a lot of complexity to his design.
“I don’t think he’d write me back, Doctor Maybeetle,” said Valorous quietly.
* * *
Frank was just finishing up the last of his day’s paperwork as there was a knock on the door, and he looked up to meet the gaze of Heinous King. Heinous was Frank’s age, pale-faced, plump, and bald, and he had his hands in the pockets of his wool jacket, his lips pressed loosely together.
“How’s he settled in?” he asked, and Frank ran a hand through his hair, leaning back in his chair.
“He’s quiet,” said Maybeetle. “And… intense. Has he always been like that?”
“He’s not even like that now, not when he’s at school or with the other kids,” said Heinous. “He was just upset about moving to board, but he’ll do better now he’s here. Noble doesn’t have any idea what to do with a boy like him, gets anxious about trying, and the rest of the kids are terrified of him even without the nightmares.”
Heinous was only in Lashton for two weeks on leave from his work, and apparently whenever the kids went out to play or fuck about in town or go to the cinema or whatever it was they did, Valorous would be at home. If he sat inside and read quietly, that would be one thing — what he did instead was train for hours in the gym downstairs or swim laps in the pool until he made himself sick with exhaustion, or some nights, stare into space after his homework was finished without moving a muscle.
It had been Heinous who’d picked the kid up after his father had been murdered, and Heinous who’d brought him down to Lashton and settled him in with Noble King and the rest of the kids — Frank had never heard the whole story, but he knew that Noble had been reluctant to take him at first, not because she didn’t trust the kid, not because she didn’t like him, but because she thought he wouldn’t get on with his cousins, and that was…
Well.
Valorous King must have a few hundred cousins, altogether — surely, he actually liked some of them, but what mattered in Noble’s house was that he didn’t fight with any of his cousins there, and they didn’t hate him, didn’t pick on him, didn’t try.
But they didn’t talk to him, either. Didn’t know how to.
It was funny, looking at Heinous, wrapped in wool with his thinning hair and his delicately manicured, gentle hands, and knowing he’d dropped right out of army training to work in the records office instead, and know that he and Vainglorious — a hard, roguish man with glittering eyes and permanently blood-stained hands — had been the closest of their siblings, being the two oldest boys.
Noble wasn’t anything like either of them: she was charismatic, strong, a leader, the same way Vainglorious was, but she wasn’t rigid in the way that he had been, and Frank supposed that translated to her not being strict with the kids.
“He blames you,” said Frank. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“No,” Heinous murmured. “I’d rather he blame me than Noble or Jack. He’ll still go back there for the holidays, I expect, but I’ve seen nightmares like he has before, and they’ll only get worse as he gets older, Frank. I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that.”
“He’s very powerful, isn’t he?” asked Frank, gesturing vaguely to the computer screen, where he had Valorous’ record up — Sons of Cumhaill had sent over his student record, and apart from the perfect grades or the stars and awards for different sports achievements, his student medical record stated that he channelled three times the average amount of magic for a boy his age, that it was only going to get higher.
“It’s why Vainglorious left the army,” said Heinous quietly. “He received special dispensation from the king regent, you know, to leave the forces, to make sure he could work with him as closely as he did, and apart from that, all his school fees were paid by the crown. They still are now.”
“I didn’t realise that,” murmured Frank, but it wasn’t a huge surprise — the king regent was known to be generous with bursaries and the like for particularly gifted children. Frank knew that of the five children he’d ever recommended to be sent to the Castle, two of them had had their travel and boarding fees paid for by the regent. “He’s… He needs a lot of help, Heinous.”
“I’d rather he get it now than later,” murmured Heinous quietly. “I should have recommended he board here in the first place, but we all talked it through, what would be best for him, and we really did think that Noble’s would be best — all those children the same age, the gym, the library… I do think Lashton’s right for him. He just needs more support than they’re equipped to give him, what with her and Jack working full time. You think he’s too much for you?”
It was an honest question, genuinely asked, and Frank knew that it wasn’t an insult, wasn’t a statement of lacking faith in his abilities. His heart panged looking at the focused expression on Heinous’ face.
“I think we can help him,” said Frank honestly. “But the boy is ten, and you said he’s already having some nightmares where he loses control of himself, his magic — the fact that he exercises so compulsively is probably a reflection of all that energy he can’t quite burn off. If he was any other child, Heinous, as soon as you’d mentioned it, I would have been recommending he go to the Castle.”
Heinous pressed his lips together, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked pained.
The Castle was undeniably a good school — it was intended for children who commanded more power than they could conceivably control, whether that was for children with control issues or mental illness that made them struggle with impulse control, or whether it was for children like Valorous King — children who were so magically powerful that no matter how good their impulse control was, they’d overflow with it anyway.
It was rare, yes, but Frank had seen more than his fair share — that was just a fact of life, when you went into child psychology amongst magical peoples. Most kids with trauma or mental illness had enough to be getting on with controlling their bodies during puberty, trying to get their head around maths class or their sexuality or their relationships with their parents or the working world awaiting them: adding magical power to the mix was, often painfully literally, a spark to a powder keg.
“It’s not that I don’t want him to go to spite him, Frank,” said Heinous. “If you really think it’ll be best, then, please, but — ”
“But you don’t want to send him abroad, I know,” said Frank. “You don’t want him to be even further away from his family, his father’s grave, don’t want him to be even more isolated, I know. And honestly, I think you’re probably right — in the next few years, if the nightmares get worse, once he starts going through puberty, it might be different, but for now…”
Heinous nodded his head, and rubbed at his eyes. “I wish I could fix it,” he muttered.
“I wish I could fix the lives of all the children that traipse through my office,” said Frank. “Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it works.”
“Doctor Maybeetle,” said Heinous, and Frank looked at him.
“Mr King?”
“You look as if you could do with a pint.”
“You may be right. You want to drop in on him before we go?”
Heinous shook his head. “He doesn’t want to see me right now. I’ll let him settle in, and I’ll see him before I go home.”
Frank nodded his head, grabbing his coat.
“Does he scare you?” asked Heinous, and Frank hesitated in his answer as he pulled it on.
“Does he scare you?” he asked.
“No,” said Heinous. “Not in the least. He’s a good boy, and Vain raised him to be calm, controlled, focused. He’s a smart kid, and he just… all he wants to do is help people. Do the right thing. I can see that, when I look at him — I guess I’m worried other people don’t see it.”
“I see it,” said Frank.
“But he still scares you.”
“A little,” Frank admitted.
The look on Heinous’ face was sad and pinched and small, and Frank wondered exactly how much of his time he’d spent recently worrying about his nephew, even barely seeing him given how he was almost always buried in his work, how much he blamed himself for this.
“Thank you,” said Heinous. “For admitting it.”
“Your brother would be grateful for what you’re doing for him,” said Frank. “You realise that, don’t you?”
Heinous laughed, the sound nervous and a little too loud, and Frank slapped him on the shoulder when he saw the grief writ on his features, squeezed hard.
“Come on, old boy,” said Frank. “Let’s get drunk.”
* * *
Valorous was sitting cross-legged on the floor, painting symbols in white paint on the doorway wall of his cubicle as a shadow came into his light, and he glanced up at the boy standing there.
“Hi, Angus,” said Valorous. “I didn’t realise you were a boarder.”
“My family are on Fetlar,” said Angus. “Got expelled from the local school, kept getting in fights at the place in Edinburgh. Got sent down here.”
Valorous liked Angus Fairchild.
He was the same age as Valorous — ten — but he was already nearly five feet tall, big and strong and hard-headed, and he never went easy on Valorous in PE even though Valorous was one of the smallest in the class, which Valorous reciprocated by regularly throwing him on the floor during fighting drills. He wasn’t that bright in terms of schoolwork, but that didn’t matter much — he was easy to provoke, but apart from his short temper, he had something that resembled common sense, and he was easy to talk to.
“Your family kick you out?” he asked knowingly, and Valorous smiled.
“I’m gonna be allowed to go back weekends, if I want,” said Valorous, dipping his brush in the white paint and returning to painting the symbols he’d sketched out. “Hope it doesn’t make you feel bad, but I think they’re sending me here for my benefit, rather than my cousins’.”
“Why would that make me feel bad?”
“Because you got sent here ’cause you’re a liability.”
“You’re a liability too,” retorted Angus immediately, in a tone that very firmly conveyed he didn’t know exactly what liability meant. He didn’t sound too angry, though, as he said, “I heard Impeccable telling his friends you have nightmares, that you scream at night sometimes. He said your aunt said you weren’t allowed to put sound dampening charms in the walls, ’cause they didn’t want you keeping it secret.”
“No such rule applies here,” said Valorous, smiling even though he felt uncomfortable, and gesturing to the enchantment he was painting on.
“Pretty sure you’re not meant to ward your cubicle without permission from Doctor Maybeetle or Mrs Percival.”
“Gonna tell on me?”
“Not if you ward me a light-block on mine, so that Percival can’t tell I’ve got my light on after lights-out.”
“Deal,” said Valorous. “You can’t do that yourself?”
“You haven’t seen my handwriting, mate,” said Angus, “but I have shit hands. Can’t even write my name and have it legible — whenever I try to do enchantment I just end up shocking myself.”
“I can do anything else you need,” said Valorous. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“Cheers,” said Angus, and looked past him into his cubicle. “S’that an axe?”
“Yep,” said Valorous. “My dad had it made for me though — someone who isn’t a King tries to pick it up, and suddenly it weighs a hundred pounds and has a blunted blade, same as the swords. Should’ve told them that before they tried bringing it up the stairs, I guess — I have to log them into the armoury once Percival comes in.”
Angus started laughing. “Aye, ‘course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you bring an axe?”
“This is done,” said Valorous, gesturing with his hand and muttering a word to dry the paint before he charged the enchantment, watched every symbol glow brighter for a moment before they disappeared against the colour of the wall. “Your turn.”
“Thanks,” said Angus again. “Sorry. That you’re… You know. Here.”
“It’s okay,” said Valorous, feeling himself smile slightly, and he fell into step with the other boy as they walked down toward Angus’ cubicle. “At least I’m in good company.”
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