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The overwhelming bleak whiteness of our surroundings suddenly burst into vivid colour, the bellowing of the wind quenched in an instant.
I blinked to orient myself – or tried to, but I couldn’t move. Or more accurately, there wasn’t any of metomove. I didn’t feel solid at all, like my mind was present without my body, and it took me a moment to recognise the formless sensation as similar to what I’d felt when I’d Seen Ren lying on the floor ofla Cortina’sthrone room being tortured by Comandante Moreno.
So this was a vision, and one I apparently wouldn’t be present for when…ifit ever happened. Only the more skilled seers could See events outside of their own future, but the excitement of that realisation quickly faded when the colours focused into distinct shapes and I recognised the shrewd, bald face of Councillor Navar. He was wearing a dressing gown I recognised as one of Ren’s; gold silk with red roses stitched along its edging, and the familiarity of both that and his surroundings made my non-existent insides swirl with foreboding.
Navar bared his teeth in my direction.
“You can’t get anything out of a dead man,” he crowed and turned to the northerner who stood by his side, an old man with salt and pepper hair and a heavily wrinkled face.
By the time I realised what he held in his hand, the councillor had sunk the knife into the stranger’s chest, roughly jerking it back out and making the embroidered roses on his sleeve swell with colour as the blood soaked through the fabric. The other man gave a wet, desperate gasp, staggering backwards and instinctively clutching at the wound. I knew the impulse well: each time I’d been hit with the recurring vision of Ren similarly stabbing me I’d tried to hold myself together as if my fingers could stem the flow of blood, but it had never saved me and certainly wasn’t doing any better for whoever Navar’s victim was.
Although…sparks sputtered beneath his fingers, the pale orange of a rising moon. I waited expectantly for the healing magic to take effect, but the sparks were weak and irregular. They fizzled and then abruptly died, as if they’d had water poured on them.
There was a commotion behind me, a flurry of noise and movement, but it was muted like I was hearing it from underwater and I couldn’t turn my head to look. My Sight evidently only wanted to show me the northerner’s death because it narrowed in on him, amplifying the man’s heaving, uneven breaths, the way he collapsed heavily to the floor, how he stilled a moment later with dull, staring eyes.
Cold and monotonous white rushed in once more, bringing me back to my body, although it wasn’t where I’d left it. I was lying down, aching and wincing, with my left arm twisted beneath me. I also wasn’t entirely sure which way was up until I felt Ren wrench me to my feet, fussing and cursing and brushing loose snow from my shoulders.
“Are you alright?”
I saw his lips move and heard traces of the yell reach my ears, but it was as if he’d shouted it from the top of the adjacent mountain. The wind was somehow evenloudernow, dreary bleakness staring back at me from all directions and leaving my prince the only spot of colour – and warmth – in what felt like the entire world.
I nodded, checking him over. There was snow everywhere, including tucked under his chin and in the buttonholes of his fur coat, but otherwise he seemed uninjured. “What happened?”
“Fucking Blessed!” Ren shouted back. “You went into a vision and apparently your mind dragged Dima along with you, for you both collapsed and fell down the damn slope. It was an expeditious way of descending the mountain, I’ll give you that, but I’m also prepared to quite literallymurderyou for scaring me so badly, Mathias!”
Instead of making good on his threat, he yanked me into a tight hug. I wrapped an arm around him, blinking snow from my eyelashes, and stared over his shoulder into the piercing white. I couldn’t see a thing.
“Where’s Dima?”
“How the fuck should I know? If my fucking heart throws himself off a mountain, I’m going after him, not hanging around to take a head count!”
“Ren,” I yelled into his ear. “He’s high onmolchaniye!”The plant-based drug was known for its depressant effects, the leaves often chewed to relax or sedate their user, and the Hearken had already been deep in its embrace when I sank into my vision. If he’d fallen, he might not have the energy or inclination to get back up, and with the weather making it impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction…
The prince nodded briskly, knowing that it wasn’t just the man’s life at risk but our chance of unseating Welzes. He threaded his gloved hand into mine so we couldn’t lose each other, and we staggered deeper into the snowstorm.
Foot by foot we searched in vain, calling Dima’s name until our voices were hoarse and our legs ached from fighting the wind. The snow was falling quickly enough to hide our own passing, let alone any footprints he might have made.
Panic surged through me, knowing time was precious in these temperatures, and that if the man wasn’t moving whether because of an injury or the narcotics in his body, the cold would quickly find him.
A pained wail split the air for a brief moment, snatched away by the wind, but it was enough. Ren and I darted in the direction it had come from, soon rewarded by a splash of colour against the bitter white, and hauled a kneeling Dima upright. His face was screwed up and gloved hands were pressed to his ears where white light sparked through the wool.
“Lo siento,” Ren shouted at him, looking vaguely guilty, and I realised he’d been using his thoughts to provoke the man into making noise. But it didn’t seem like it was our bedroom activities this time: the look of anguish on the Hearken’s face was far beyond embarrassment or disgust, and his expression seemed haunted before it slackened once more. I wondered what Ren had showed him, swallowing when my mind jumped to what he’d suffered at Moreno and Iván Aratorre’s hands as a child.
Dima slumped against us, his body limp even as he blinked in confusion, and we hitched his arms back over our shoulders before continuing the descent down the mountain, our boots sinking into loose and slippery snow. I only hoped my Sight would stay firmly dormant until our feet were on stable ground once more.
*
Chapter Thirty
“It sounds like Yanev,” I said when Mathias had finished describing what he’d Seen up on the mountain. The description of the elderly northerner with burnished orange magic fit everything I knew about the healer, including my father’s complaints that his Touch had been weakening in his old age. The late king had been the only person Yanev had ever treated, allowing him to maintain his strength long past the lifespan of most Blessed healers, one of the many favours he’d received in exchange for defecting to Quareh all those decades ago.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Mat confessed, his teeth worrying at his bottom lip. “And feared. So Navar’s going to kill him?”
“It would make sense. Dead, his story about my parents can’t be contradicted. Alive, someone might do what we’re planning and force the truth from him. Although they’re probably more concerned about torture than an extinct kind of magic.”
We both glanced behind us to where Dima was slumped unconscious over the third horse in our little party, its reins tied to a lead rope attached to my saddle. The base of the mountain had thankfully been sheltered from the storm, the improved visibility giving us no trouble in finding the horses – alive and only a little grumpy – yet that stroke of improved fortune had been countered by Dima’s deterioration into themolchaniye,and we’d been dragging his passed-out form the final couple of hundred feet. If the man didn’t give enough of a fuck to have held off taking incapacitating drugs until we’d gotten him down the mountain, I didn’t give enough of one to be careful when manhandling him into position. Fortunately for the Hearken, my lover was a much more compassionate soul. Mathias had not only done his best to keep the man comfortable, but had frequently called us to a halt to check he was still breathing.
“The question is when,” Mat said quietly as we turned our horses onto the bridge that ran directly from the northern hills up to the gates of Panarina’s castle. It was elevated on huge stone pillars above the city, grand and imposing and about as subtle an entrance as announcing ourselves with a fanfare of trumpets, but Dima might rouse any moment. With how overwhelmed he’d been with only two additional minds in his own, I didn’t dare think about how quickly he’d be driven to insanity if we carted him through the populated streets of Stavroyarsk. All we could hope was that the late hour, the swirling snow, and the height of the bridge would keep our return from too many prying eyes.
