Page 74 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“Could I try to convince you otherwise?”

She shrugged and shuffled closer to me, almost close enough to crawl under my skin yet it wasn’t even damn near close enough. “You could try.” Her eyes met mine for an entirely different reason, softening to the colour of honey. “How is your heart?”

“Numb. How is yours?”

“He says he’s numb.”

The fact that this woman was all mine had me question reality every moment of the day. But she was close to me now, and so when I brushed my hand down her soft cheek, I let myself gloat a little. “The cruellest kindness I’ve been gifted by the gods is you. They love to remind me that I am only a man by hurting you.” I rested my forehead on hers because I could—I was a lucky bastard like that. Despite their cruelty, gods always brought her back in my arms. “My Snow.”

“You’re not just a man, Kil. I don’t know what you are, but when you hold me, it is the safest I’ve felt all my life.”

“I…didn’t keep you safe.”

“You saved me.”

“Only because you survived. If you hadn’t survived him, there would have been nothing for me to save.”

Chapter nineteen

White Pawn takes E4

Snowlin

Kilian’s words from the night before were not letting me think in peace.

I didn’t know if I survived my father.

I didn’t know if I even survived my own mind.

Or if I would survive my own power.

My signs of struggle were painted on Visha’s ceiling. The more I stared up at the burn marks against the grey stone, the more I realised how much worse they had grown over the years. The magic had stopped ageing me two years ago, I’d felt it, but the power itself would never stop maturing, growing, becoming a force that one day I might not be able to contain.

Visha stood above me, her hands touching each side of my temple while red, cinnamon scented magic filled the room. Her brows creased, face twitching from whatever she was seeing. Her breath had quickened too, cold sweat dripping down her face. She gasped and her eyes peeled open. For the first time, she held my gaze longer than a few seconds, long enough to let me see the horror swimming in the pool of green.

“Who is it?” I asked. “Who is the girl?”

She stood and hurried to her cabinet filled with dusty books of all sorts. It took her a while to find what she was looking for, digging through each of them with hurry and panic.

Three books lifted up in the air, circling her, pages violently fluttering open, stopping when she lifted her hand up. Her eyes moved fast back and forth between the three.

I slipped from the stony table and stepped close to her, looking up at the dark pages illustrating something resembling nightmares. In the middle of one of the pages stood a veiled creature holding a scythe. Glaring at Visha, I said, “She was a child, Visha, the hells are these?”

“They have many names through realms and heavens,” she said, trailing a finger under the writing. “Some call them reapers, seraphs of death, angels. Here, in Numen, we call them guardians. She is like you.”

All the books drew shut and dropped to the ground. My Crafter paced back and forth, her bracelets and necklaces dangling and chiming all over.

I rolled my eyes. “Either you stop, or I cut them off, Visha.”

She halted mid-step, freezing with one leg still up, and looked for Oryn who stood at the corner of the room, just watching. “It has to be just an illusion.”

“No, it was a vision, you know it,” the man said, picking up chalk and drawing a few lines on the small, stained black board. “But visions have pathways. Any vision at any point of time is mouldable. A slight change of action, a different course of action, a weather change, a mood change. All those will affect the probability of the future replicating that vision. Take Macaria’s visions. They are simpler than what the child has shown you. Why? Well, because she only sees a few end fragments of a compilation of pathways.” He drew over one particular line over and over. “What you were shown was simply one end to the pathway you had started.”

Visha put her foot down and hurried to the black board. “How do we know it is not the only one?”

He looked at me. “Do you dream of it—of the vision?”

“Yes. Even when I don’t close my eyes. I can sometimes hear the noises when it is quiet.”