“Joclyn healed me, Tatínek.”
To me the words were a calm, comforting cloud of acceptance, however my father heard anything but. His focus snapped to me, the pride in his green eyes vanishing.
“You healed him? After I commanded you not to?” Sain asked, the disgust in his voice catching me off guard, and I flinched, wishing I could hide myself into the shadows for one breadth of a second before the girl I had become came shining through, leaving the girl my father had abandoned behind.
“Commanded me?” I asked, unable to keep the scoff out of my voice. “You wanted me to let him die.”
“It was what your sight guided you to do.”
“The sight was wrong.”
Sain’s eyes widened at my words, his anger strong before it slid from his face, leaving him blank. I knew I should have felt bad for saying that, to deny something that I knew he revered, but I couldn’t stop the words. I couldn’t lie to him just to try to win his affection. It was not who I was. Not anymore.
“The sight was wrong? How can you say such things? No Drak would say such things.”
“Then maybe I am not a Drak, Sain,” I said, snapping his name out in disgust. “Letting someone I love die is wrong.”
My words were hard; I knew it. I knew it, and I didn’t care. This wasn’t like the fight with Ilyan—when I had said things that I didn’t mean—because I meant these. I needed him to understand me.
I stepped closer, my eyes pinned on Sain, knowing that if I looked anywhere else, my resolve would weaken.
“Do not deny the gift the earth… the mud has given you…” Sain said, his voice finally moving above that calm tone to rumble through the air around us.
“What gift?” I interrupted him, the screech in my voice hitting a level I hadn’t heard since before Santé Fe. “You make it feel like a curse. A curse I want nothing to do with. I do not want to die. I do not want him to die. Not every sight can be true, Sain.”
“You speak of things you do not understand,” Sain hissed, the sound as quick and painful as if someone had slapped me.
“I can’t understand what I don’t know,” I snapped back, hating how my defenses had gone up just by looking at him. “I can feel the power of the sights in my bones, but even with that, how can I walk into battle knowing that I am going to die? How can I let Dramin die if my magic begs me to heal him?”
I extended my hands toward him in hope of an answer—almost pleading with him to tell me—but he stood still, the hard glaze in his eyes boring a line of pain right to my heart.
I dropped my hands as I forced myself to look away from him, my eyes darting around the room as I tried to process the denial I had just experienced. Wyn stood by the door, her lips a hard line as she watched, the confusion on her face as clear as I was sure it was on mine. Thom’s joy had been temporarily trumped by his standby scowl as he tried to make sense of the anger that had taken over such a joyous moment.
Ilyan stood a few feet away from me, his arms folded across his chest as he towered over all of us, watching me. He didn’t flinch when I looked at him, making it clear he was not going to step into this verbal assault I had gotten myself into. His eyes met mine and his lip twitched into a small smile, the love that shone through his eyes seeming to recharge the control over my madness that my father’s disappointment had weakened.
“Tell me why, Sain.”
“You healed him because of your own fear, Siln?, because of your regret at what you did to him. You acted on a selfish, mortal desire, nothing more.”
A selfish, mortal desire. No. It was so much more than that. I attempted to keep the anger I had so recently controlled in check, but I already knew it was a lost cause. It boiled inside of me, looking for a way out.
“I saved my brother’s life. I did what was right,” I said in a growl. I did not need to explain myself, not to him.
“No. You have changed the forces of the sights with a childish choice. You have destroyed us.”
I had wanted an answer, but instead I only got more questions, and judging by the way everyone’s eyes narrowed toward Sain, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one.
“What are you saying?” Wyn’s voice shook from where she stood by the door, her query putting voice to what everyone else was thinking.
“You change the sights, you change the world. Is it that hard to understand?” Sain spoke to everyone around us before glaring back at me as if I was the one who had asked the question, the one who had changed the world.
“Why haven’t I been told of this before?” Ilyan asked, his voice rumbling in anger.
“Not all the knowledge that the Drak possess is meant for you, Ilyan.”
“So I am noticing.” Ilyan’s anger washed through me as he scowled at Dramin before his eyes glanced back to Sain. “I am king of this people, Sain. I should know…”