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“He helps me sometimes,” Lila said, refusing to sit.
Tristan had no such reservations. He plopped down on the couch beside the oracle and crossed one ankle over his knee. “She trusts me, or she never would have told me half the things she has. She just has problems admitting it.”
Perhaps that was true. Perhaps no matter what the oracle had told her the day before, she did trust Tristan. Or at least, Lila trusted him far more than she trusted the oracle. The woman’s mother had made a prediction that had already proved to be untrue. Since she’d been cut, the chance of Lila becoming pregnant was practically negligible. She would never become a whitecoat or a silvercoat either, especially with her father conspiring to make her contract more permanent, so long as she finished the job with the oracles.
If she finished the job.
“Hmmm… The girl is thinking so loudly I can see it cross her face. What do you suppose she’s thinking about?”
“Something dangerous, I presume,” Tristan answered. “It usually is.”
“I trust him enough,” Lila muttered, just to shut the pair up. “He knows what I know, anyway, so it’s pointless to send him out.”
Tristan grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I knew it.”
Lila barely stilled her jaw. She’d always found it difficult not to smile whenever Tristan smiled at her. He had one of those grins that men sometimes had, the ones you could
n’t help but return.
She turned her gaze on the oracle. “By the way, on behalf of every militia member in the country, we are thrilled to chase our tails for the pleasure of the oracles.”
The oracle gestured for Lila to sit.
Lila crossed her arms over chest, still refusing.
“What do you know so that I can fill in the gaps?” the oracle said soothingly.
Lila was not soothed. “I know that future oracles are being kidnapped and placed in new homes to dodge their duty.”
“Well, I’m not sure what I can add, then.”
“The why, perhaps? Why are you doing this to your daughters?”
“Why does a prime give up her duty to become a blackcoat? Because you don’t want to become prime?”
“Obviously.”
“Then why can’t our daughters do the same?”
“This isn’t a case of firstborn dibs. If even half of what you said yesterday was true, then you’re chosen by the gods.”
“You were chosen by birth as well.”
“I don’t mean birth. I mean because of your disease.”
The oracle winced at the term. “So not only would you have our daughters marked by seizures that drugs can barely control and visions of pain and death they should never be privy to, you’d take away their future as well?”
“It’s not mine to take away. It’s the gods’.”
“So now you’ve become a believer?” the oracle said, cocking her head to the side.
“I’m playing devil’s advocate.”
“How nice that you have that luxury. I don’t, and neither do our daughters. I want to change this life that we’ve been born into, and I’m not the only one among us who does. As you pointed out so elegantly yesterday, a great deal of what an oracle does has nothing to do with our gifts. My own sister hasn’t the gift, but she’s excellent at the rest of it. Far better than me, in fact.”
Lila held her tongue, unsure how to proceed.
“Nothing is lost. The missing girls still pass on their visions. We talk and try to figure out what they mean, and at the end of the day, that girl can go back to being a child until she’s old enough to decide for herself. Perhaps she’ll become a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a soldier, or maybe even the oracle she was meant to be. Would you not give other girls the same opportunity you had to choose?”
