"Why do we have to take Anne with us into the dungeon, Father?"
Edward didn’t look up from the map spread across his desk. 
"You already know the answer, Lior."

"I do. I just don’t like it."

"Serlo wants her prepared for the academy. You and your brothers will act as her guide."

He finally raised his eyes to me.

"It is within your best interest," he added, "to be friendly."

Friendly. That was the problem. I’d been friendly once, once, and now the girl trails after me like a lost pet.

 And lately, she’s developed an even more annoying habit.
"I'm older than you by two months, Lior."

The first time she said it, I brushed it off. Now she brings it up every chance she gets, like those sixty extra days make her a scholar.

I can't even say anything back. What would I say? Oh yeah, well, I'm actually a 20-year-old soldier in a child's body?

And her mana attribute. Nobody in her family has even a flicker of magical aptitude, yet during her mana ceremony, when she placed her hand on the orb, it flared a bright orange-red.

 Fire. It was fire. And she was annoyingly adept with it.
Not long after the ceremony, we crossed paths again, and she’d already learned how to launch harmless little fire pellets at me.
 Well, mostly harmless. They stung.

Compared to the fire I dodged in my last life, Anne's sparks were nothing.
I used to have a burn scar that trailed across the entire length of my back, from one shoulder to the next. Burned into my flesh by a misstep against one lone fire mage, one second of carelessness, and half my back was melted. By contrast, Anne's fire hardly warms the air.

Still, I can't deny she’s talented. Barely a month into using mana, and she already handles it with a level of control most kids need a year for. 

I’ve only heard of that kind of early aptitude a handful of times, two of which were Priam and Minos.

"Lior, Minos wanted to talk to you. The caravan will set off soon, don't make them wait." Edward shifted.

Could he read my mind? Did he somehow know I’d been thinking about Minos?

Edward, as a mind reader, I don't even want to entertain the thought.

I nodded and left the room without another word.

A guard led me out to the caravan, to the carriage I’d be riding in. Its door hung open, and inside, Minos was already sprawled across the gold-embroidered cushions as if they’d been made for him alone.

 His hair was more silver than white, closer to Edward’s than Priam’s.
He sat with one leg crossed over the other, elbow propped against the carriage wall, head resting lazily in his hand.

I stepped into the carriage, the door shutting behind me as I took my seat across from Minos.

"Lior, brother, how have you been? It's been a while, hasn't it? I haven't seen you since… what, a couple of months?"

 Minos didn’t bother sitting up as he spoke, his usual aloofness evident as always.

"Father told me you wanted to speak before we left?" I asked.
He finally shifted his gaze toward me and feigned a shiver.

 "Brrr. Did it get colder in here, or was that just you?"

"Just tell me what you want, Minos."

"Want? Can't I just want to talk to my brother?"

Out of all the families I could have been reborn into, why was I placed into one where everyone manages to crawl under my skin?

"I don't trust you, Minos."

He clutched at his heart, staggering back as if I’d struck him. An exaggerated sigh spilled out of him.

"I'm hurt, Lior. Truly."

Theatrics. Always theatrics. He keeps me off balance without even trying. I can never tell what he actually wants.

"No, you're not."

His hand dropped from his chest, his whole posture melting back into that lazy sprawl of his.

"You're right. I'm not."

 He lifted one finger dramatically toward the ceiling.

 "HOWEVER!"

He paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough to be irritating.

"I promise I have no ulterior motives. I simply didn’t want to travel alone… or sit with Priam up front."

"He's a terrible conversationalist." 

He's not wrong. Just sitting in the same room as Priam is suffocating, let alone trying to hold a conversation with him."

"And you're not?" I asked

"Well," he continued, "I don't have to talk to myself, do I?"

"If you did, you'd be upset with this situation as well."

I let my posture loosen, sinking back into the cushions as Minos’s theatrics washed over me.

"See? I could never banter with Priam like this," he said.

"Because he'd have your head removed."

"You wish," Minos replied with a sly grin. "If I told him he was a terrible conversationalist, he’d agree… and then apologize."