“Are you okay?” Logan asked softly.
I took a deep breath, forcing it past the constriction of my chest. We were stopped, pulled over on a side road. I raised a trembling hand to Logan’s, managed a nod.
He lowered his hands, but kept mine in his. “We can go back.”
“No,” I said. We were running out of time. They were getting closer, the prophecies were hurting me. Warning me. “I have to do this, Logan. It has to be now.”
He didn’t speak, only watched me for a moment longer before turning back to the wheel. And he kept hold of my hand.
Chapter Six
Confessions
By the time we reached the archives, I’d recovered from the vision. I suspected the entire episode had rattled Logan more than he let on. He paced the back wall, letting me work in silence for about an hour before he subtly began checking on me. The third time he crossed in front of the table, I looked up at him; fingers laced behind his back, eyes darting from wall to ceiling. Maybe he was just bored.
“Logan?”
His gaze flicked to mine, and I bit my lip. He couldn’t help, I needed something to spark an idea or a vision. No one could help with that, it was all me.
He must have seen the conflict in my expression.
“Don’t worry, Brianna,” he said. I offered him a sarcastic smile and he leaned against the chair across from me. “It will probably all work out.”
Probably. That was the best I could do, when so much … when everything was on the line. I leaned forward. “And what if it doesn’t?”
He sighed. “Well, then I suppose we should enjoy it while it lasts.”
I stared at him for a long, motionless while, when suddenly the corner of his mouth turned up.
It was plain he was trying to make me feel better, and if I was honest, I supposed it did. A little.
“Can I ask you something?” he said, voice lowering as he once again became serious. He indicated the page in front of me. “Why did you learn this?”
The question had me taken aback, until I caught the drift of his thought. If I had to know the language, then the answer would be within the pages of the oldest texts.
“It’s not that,” I answered, hesitating a moment to consider the idea, “I don’t think.” I relaxed into my chair, recalling long-ago conversations with my mother. “There are the visions,” I explained, “like this morning and yesterday. They’re just flashes really, glimpses of what’s to come.”
He moved forward, elbows resting on his knees so that his hands disappeared beneath the table.
“And then there are the prophecies,” I continued. “They’re more like a knowledge, an idea that’s suddenly in your head that you know to be true.” I struggled to come up with a comparison. “Like the alphabet song.”
He stared at me.
“You know how they teach you that melody so you always remember your letters. The song is with you, even now, but you don’t remember learning it. It’s just there. And it’s true.”
“So, the prophecies come to you in a rhyme?”
I laughed. “No. I’m trying to explain how they feel.” I drew a loose strand of hair behind my ear, knowing I was giving the “feeling” of the prophecy way less gravity than it deserved. “The predictions come to me in words. No, it’s not a nursery rhyme. It’s a heavy, all-knowing verse in the ancient language.” I realized I’d come back around to my point. “That’s why my mother taught me, because she knew.”
Logan sat up. “Why would the words come to you in the ancient language?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.” I’d often wondered myself. They felt so real, I was almost certain I would understand their meaning regardless, but she had wanted me to comprehend every facet of the language. Some days, I wondered if they weren’t my words at all, but some other, now gone someone that was pushing the prophecies to us with a long-dead magic. How else could they belong to both our kind and the Seven Lines? But that wasn’t important now, and I shook it off, coming back to our conversation. “Could be worse,” I said, smiling at his questioning expression. “They could be haikus.”
His lips twitched. “That would be worse.”
It could always get worse, I thought. A chill ran over me and I sat up, once again returning to the pages in front of me.
“Brianna,” he said softly, waiting for me to look up from the book, “you will put things to right.”
It was hours later when he finally stopped me again. My body ached and my forearms were creased from pressing against the edge of the solid mahogany table. I scrunched my eyes shut tight before blinking them back open to focus on the canvas backpack he was holding.