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Too late.
His blue eyes brighten. “You do know something.”
I say naught, either with my mouth or my expression.
He huffs impatiently. “The Book of Doomsday is integral to magickind’s lore. Since my grandfather’s nemesis created the book, I hoped you might know about it.”
“Merlin meddled too often in King Arthur’s affairs, so he riled many at the Round Table and beyond. I know not of which enemy you speak.”
“Yes, you do. Morgana was your lover.”
“She sated my lust once. Hardly the same thing.”
“Semantics. She’s the reason you’re immortal. She cursed you with that book, didn’t she?”
By hell’s fire, how could Bram know that?
“Shove off.” I stomp to the door, open it, and gesture with a wave. “And be gone.”
“Not until I share the future with you.”
More like magical propaganda. “Keep your visions to yourself, you droning codpiece.”
As always, Bram does as he pleases, gripping my arm and waving his hand in front of me.
A vision appears. And I fall into it, unable to back away…
Chapter Three
Nighttime. A darkened home, once sprawling and lovely, now charred and in ruin. A small crowd walks toward it, clad in gray robes trimmed in deep red.
Intrigued against my will, I peer closer, then rear back when I realize two among them are dragging victims, with ropes about their necks and wrists, behind them. The air of excitement among the berobed is palpable.
“Why are they dressed like friars?”
“Definitely not clergy,” Bram drawls. “They’re Anarki.”
I flinch. Despite my isolation, I know well the terror and destruction they provoked during their reign. But the cabal was put down more than two centuries ago. How is this a vision of the future?
Inside the manor, a lone figure in robes waits in a mostly empty room, surrounded by a circle of flickering candles. He hovers over the still form of a naked man who, if human, would appear roughly thirty.
I should not ask, I know. But… “Who lies there?”
“Mathias d’Arc.”
His name makes me jolt. Mathias is the magical equivalent of Caligula, Vlad Dracula, and Hitler rolled into one. Cruel, clever, hedonistic, rapacious. Brilliantly evil. During his rise to power centuries past, Mathias proved himself a wizard of great power and no conscience. He sought to enslave magickind. Any he could not, he killed.
“Say you he has returned?”
“Watch,” Bram demands.
As the group enters the shadowy room, they form a circle outside the candles and stare down at Mathias, who lies still as death.
At his head, the robed wizard raises his arms. “We, the Deprived, have waited centuries for this night. The Privileged will hear our thunder and feel only terror as we take back all they’ve denied us. Until the Social Order prohibiting those with ‘undesirable’ traits and bloodlines from being equal is dissolved, they will know nothing but war, pain, and death.”
The Anarki send up a collective cheer.
Once the room quiets again, the wizard resumes speaking. “We, Mathias’s faithful, have awaited our savior. Tonight, our patience will be rewarded.”
