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Renarin rolled his eyes as Adolin rushed into the meeting room in Elhokar's makeshift 'palace.'
"You're late, young man," said Dalinar, sternly.
"Sorry, Father! I lost track of time—it won't happen again."
Dalinar sighed and turned his attention back to Elhokar and Sadeas's conversation. As Adolin flopped down, Renarin leaned in to whisper.
"Were you out with Elena?"
"No, we ended that long ago. There's this girl Amira, she's new to Hatham's warcamp…"
"I saw you with Elena literally three days back."
Adolin frowned, trying to recall. "Did you?"
"You're unbelievable." Renarin was shaking his head, but he was grinning.
He always made it clear it was good to see Adolin Kholin being bad at something. And while Adolin was excellent at getting girls to like him, he was terrible at keeping the courtships going. Renarin said he enjoyed the free spectacle, but he also often wondered aloud:
"What goes wrong in every relationship of yours?"
Adolin wouldn't answer that.
But what went wrong was a secret test.
Oh, it wasn't a conscious or thought-out test. It was basically just asking a girl's opinion about a certain matter. And half the time he didn't even realize he was doing it.
It was always different versions of the same question:
"What do you think about lighteyed warriors' sons who don't want to become a warrior?"
All his girls were Alethi; all of them had spent the past half-decade in the warcamp; all of them knew of Adolin's prowess as a warrior.
So all of them would, naturally, laugh and make a joke about it. A joke relating to the misfortune of the warrior father in question (some even went as far as to say 'warrior brother'), the incompetence of the son, jokes about ardents and Azish and the like.
That put Adolin off immediately, no matter how pretty or interesting the girl might be.
Only one woman he'd courted so far had shrugged and said, "Well, it's up to them, isn't it?"
It was May, Highprice Aladar's daughter.
"I'm sick of Alethi norms anyway. They would force all their sons in the camp to fight, whether they want to or not—though I guess they do want to." Her pale-gold eyes blazed. "And they don't allow me to fight."
"They're insecure you'll outshoot them," said Adolin, smiling.
May's grin was more a baring of teeth as they went off for a friendly bout of archery.
At some point, Adolin realized this girl was dangerous. She was the kind of girl you could actually fall in love with, because she was smart and competent and had a mind of her own, and she didn't think not wanting to be a warrior was a bad thing and was actually becoming friends with Renarin, too. But Adolin wasn't yet twenty and the idea of falling in love scared him.
Maybe that was why, like an idiot, he chose to pretend he'd never intended what they had as a courtship—only a friendship—which May did not take at all kindly to.
Maybe that was why he went back to courting girls who, deep down, Adolin knew would fail the test.
And once they'd made their opinion on people like Renarin clear, Adolin could not continue with the courtship. But he didn't have the maturity or capability to say politely, "I don't think we should see each other anymore"—so the thing he ended up doing every time was chasing after some other girl.
Which, of course, put him at the receiving end of Renarin's ribbing again.
But Adolin didn't mind.
Not really.