Hamid has so many things to be blatantly arrogant about, that he deserves to be blatantly arrogant about, that he shouldn’t have to hide.
He squared his shoulders and set his jaw in Prague, with one word: sorcerer.
He’s confused, for a fraction of a second, after it falls out of his mouth. He’d been toying with the idea, sure, after hearing it was the most likely option, but here? Is this really the time? Before he truly knows?
And three syllables cross his lips with the same confidence as his name always does, and maybe for a blink-and-you-miss-it moment there’s more fire behind his eyes, and he knows. He might not have as much information as he would have liked to make this judgement, but he knows. In the same way power leaps to his fingertips, in the same way he can trust his tongue to shape spells, he knows Sorcerer is true.
And he claims it. Without even meaning or expecting to, he claims it.
And then he returns home, in mourning black. With two pieces of news, neither of which he is looking forward to sharing.
It’s not hard to tell Saira. No, not when he has an intro, a prop, not when he knows Saira will accept and support him.
No, it’s what his parents, his father, might do, that’s what he’s worried about. How he would, might, react, to the power simmering in his veins that he’s just starting to claim. He knows it’s true and he knows it’s his, but what will he say?
I don’t want to be brave. I just want to be myself.
(Don’t go looking for this one – it’s not from Hamid. But I’m fond of it.)
And that worry, that nausea whenever he thinks about his father, the freezing as he can hear his heart beating in his ears, until it’s all he can do to ignore the rapid tattoo of his pulse through his chest and body and keep himself moving.
It’s his. That one word, he’s found it, that means what he’s known in his blood to be true.
I don’t think it’s a secret that can be kept, but perhaps it is one that can be delayed.
Maybe not. Not to the world. Not yet. But with his friends? With the fractured family he’s built for himself?
That will have to be enough.
Now, I just want to help where I can, and, turns out, maybe I can. It’s a lot of pressure, though.
And he knows he can take it. He knows he has people by his side who will support him when he falls – who he can save, using this power he’s claimed, and when it’s not enough who will save him.
His power, his blood, isn’t all he is. He’s always wanted to be more than a family name, to be more than his ancestors. But it doesn’t mean he has to leave their power – his power – behind, now he’s claimed it and knows he trusts it.
Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan. Sorcerer.
It isn’t all he is. He’s much more than blood and power and claws and dragonfire. But to know that he’s not an anomaly, and to have his friends, his family, accept who, what, he is?
He’s happy to use the power roiling in his blood to help.
