The barrier will fall months before the danger finds us.
The lies made me smile, the wide grin catching the eye of a few members of the tittering horde who were wandering meaninglessly through the courtyard.
“Sain,” a Sk?ítek I had met several hundred years before called to me from across the large, stone square. He was one who had always stood and fought by Ilyan’s side. If I remembered correctly, his mate had perished in one of the innumerable battles Ilyan had led them into many hundreds of years ago.
Now his eyes were dark with questions and doubt.
It was beautiful to see.
Several others perked up at the boom in his voice, their own questions buzzing through their heads as they, too, made their way over, and I waited for them. Part of me knew I needed to get the bathroom in order to check that I held no incriminating evidence on my body of where I had been, while another part was grateful I had been stopped—at least they could provide some sort of an alibi if Ilyan found me before I found Joclyn.
“Yes?” I questioned as they grew closer, the soothing nature of my voice completely contradictory to the thunder of anxiety that had taken over my insides. The tall man’s eyes darted toward a few of the people who surrounded him in waning confidence.
“We are sorry to bother you…” he began before stalling out.
“It’s no bother,” I assured him, stretching my hand out to rest on his shoulder, noticing a small patch of dirt near my thumb. Perfect. “I was seeing to some of the children in the ward.” The group seemed awed by the lie, their worry softening as the doubt began to fade. “What can I help you with?”
“We were wondering if you could tell us what happened to the queen this morning … if she saw a sight, if we are safe here.”
Of course they weren’t safe here. No one was.
I tried not to bristle at his question, but I was sure it showed.
Wiping my hand off on the leg of my faded dress pants, I turned my face down into a frown. “She did see into the future, but there is no way to know if that sight is true.”
“What do you mean?” the man asked, his face wide in horror. “I thought the sight of a Drak is infallible.”
I sighed heavily, the exaggerated sound seeping from me as I ran my hand over my forehead. “It is when the magic is pure. Hers is not pure. It is uncontrollable at the moment. Her sights are dwelling in the depth of the Zlomeny.”
They began whispering, the word known to a few of them. Even if they didn’t understand its true meaning, they still understood the impact. Even the ones who didn’t understand could grasp the fear around them, their eyes wide as they looked to their peers for answers.
“So everything she sees—”
“Broken, yes,” I clarified. The looks of shock and fear deepened with each lie I spoon-fed them.
“But yours…?”
“I am of the first, and I can fight the Zlomeny better than any of my kind, but it is still hard. Because of her foolish choices, everything is muddled.” I wasn’t even going to give the older woman a chance to say anything more. I didn’t want anything other than what I gave them put in their heads. “I hold the Drak magic deep within me, and I will do everything in my power to restore true sight, stop Joclyn from this tirade, and save us all.”
Calm, relief, and awe washed over all of them. The fear slowly dissipated at the knowledge, their own minds putting the pieces together that I wanted them to. After all, who would want someone with a broken sight leading them when pure magic stood right there?
“So we are safe?” a young Chosen asked, the look on her face making it clear she didn’t fully understand what was happening.
“For the time,” I answered, my hand heavy as I placed it on her arm. “Do not worry; I am watching.”
I smiled, waving away any further questions as I walked from my captive audience, my eyes scanning the courtyard for my daughter, despite knowing she wouldn’t be here—I hadn’t heard her yell at me, in any case. Hopefully, I still had time to find her.
In a few steps, I moved into the vast marble and stone hallway that led toward the catacombs, leaving the still tittering crowd behind me. This space was familiar, one I had helped build, one I had been worshiped within, and one I had run through a few months before with Wyn. I walked down it now with an ever deeper sense of urgency than I’d had then, my pace quick.
In the beginning, it had held long kitchens with ovens similar to those at Rioseco. However, somewhere around the early twentieth century, bathrooms had been added with running water, flushing toilets, and all. Thankfully, the ceramic palace was as empty as the hall outside, the wide room already filling with the echoes of the ambient noises my very presence was causing.