Page 29 of The Seeker

Leif didn’t return to our room that night, and sleep continued to evade me. Instead, I decided it was time to work on my magic.

Taming the whispers was harder than expected. Although the potion that I’d come to consider a power-dimming potion helped, every time I tried to remove the walls around the magical thread, there were too many whispers to distinguish even one. I would immediately become overwhelmed, unable to think or breathe until I replaced the wall.

I wasn’t even sure why I was trying again when the past three attempts had failed, but I knew, without a doubt, that the power to read minds was the type of power that would turn the tides of a war, especially if Ena was right and another was to follow this one.

Even if I was unsure what it was they were even fighting for anymore.

Climbing up off the floor, I checked my appearance in the looking glass before walking to find Friar.

It’d become such a habit to visit Friar’s room that I wasn’t paying attention during the walk, my mind instead choosing to theorize how else I could tame the mind-reading magic, and it wasn’t until my hand was resting on the door that I heard voices coming from within. Multiple.

Friar wasn’t alone.

I pressed myself against the wall. The other voice was feminine, deeper, familiar.

“I’m here as a courtesy, Friar. There is nothing that can be done. My end is coming.”

I couldn’t place the voice at first, but then I was jolted back to another time—a small cottage with a large garden I’d craved to work in.

Signa.

The Westwoods Coven’s Matron.

“The future isn’t set in stone,” Friar tried to argue, and I could picture how she would frown. “You can change⁠—”

“Come on in, Runa.”

It took me a moment to hear the command directed at me, and when I did, my face heated as I pushed open the door and entered Friar’s room.

“Sorry,” I apologized sheepishly, not sure what else to say when caught eavesdropping.

“It’s no problem. After all, this concerns you too,” Signa replied with a frown.

It’d been a while since I’d seen the Matron, and in the season that passed, the coven matriarch appeared to have aged decades. Given she was old in the first place, I now worried that she wouldn’t be able to walk when she finally stood, especially with the way she leaned her weight on the walking stick clasped in her bony hands as she sat on Friar’s cot.

It was Friar who explained with a sigh. “Signa has seen her end coming. The Westwoods Coven will need a new matriarch.”

My gaze bounced between the two women, and the way Friar swallowed heavily after she finished speaking. There were other feelings filtering through, ones I couldn’t quite place. Feelings that didn’t have anything to do with the matriarch’s future. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Friar’s shoulders slumped and her fingers fidgeted with the end of her black braid. “She wants you to be the matriarch.”

The air was sucked from the room, and I struggled to breathe. “Me? But I’m stuck here with⁠—”

“Not for long,” Signa snapped, her cloudy gaze still fixed on the wall. “Change is finally coming to Heimland, and when it does, I want you to take my place, Runa.”

It was my turn to frown. Signa said similar words when we’d visited her during the dead season. When both Adis and Hansen fell a few days later, I assumed that was the change she’d been speaking of. But after my conversation with Ena, now I wondered if I’d had it wrong all along.

Still, I shook my head. “I’m not prepared for the responsibility of that size,” I said, even though my mind was already imagining how I would care for her garden and the new herbs I would plant—the potions I would concoct and sell to the citizens of Ralheim. The magic I would learn.

What my mind couldn’t grasp was becoming a leader others could look up to. At least, not how she wanted.

“You will be. War is coming, Runa, and you will be at the center of it. All I ask, is when you find out what’s coming, come to me.” Her voice was low enough that I wondered how I’d even heard it through the thick wooden door in the first place.

I shook my head, still confused by her words. “The war has been raging for several seasons now, Signa. It’s already here.”

Signa rolled her eyes. “Not that war, the other one. The one we spoke of in my home not long ago.”

My shoulders tensed, Signa was either referencing the war between the Seid and the non-Seid or the one between the covens, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking. Instead, I tossed my shoulders back and replied, “I can’t make any promises.” I had no idea when I would be able to escape Leif, though I knew I’d made progress mere hours before.