“For in this child is power, power beyond belief. She is the most powerful. She will be the Siln?, the one who protects us all.”
Images twisted as I watched, subtle changes infecting the sights. I had noticed them, but none so apparent as when I saw Joclyn and I leaning up against a wall in the ruins of Rioseco, a battle unfolding around us. Flames surrounded us as we stood in each other’s arms, blood seeping from a wound in her stomach and the long, golden ribbon trailing from the braids in our hair.
The délka vedení královsk.
“This is truth,” the child’s voice came right on cue, the tone deep and terrifying as the reality of what I was watching hit me hard in the gut.
I had lived this. But what was more, when I had seen this the first time, it had been different. It had been a different wall, a different battle. There had been no golden ribbons, no seeping wound.
Sain had chastised us, ripped his daughter apart, because she had broken the sight. However, what I was looking at now was exactly what had happened.
“This is truth,” the child said again, her voice boring into me as I stared, my mind numb as the truth was made clear to me.
My heart beat in a painful heaviness as the sight continued to unfold, the images broken as the prophecy cut through my focus. The words that had been Sain’s now blended with that of the child who had haunted the white space, the chimes of her voice a haunting melody.
“You will love her,” they said together, “but you cannot have her. You will protect her, but you will fail.”
I cringed as the voice of Sain and the woman blended in and out with those of the Drak, rising and falling as the anxiety built. My muscles uncoiled in fear of what I was about to see: the image of Joclyn’s death, the heartbreak that had haunted me for hundreds of years.
“This is truth,” the child spoke over the prophecy of the Drak, her voice loud in my ears. “This is the end.”
I thought I had been scared before, thought I had been ready for what was coming, but not anymore.
With those few words, a dread I had never experienced gripped me, the deep monotone of Sain’s voice increasing the fear.
“The one bred to die.”
It wasn’t me who was screaming. It wasn’t me who was mourning. It wasn’t her body in my arms. It wasn’t.
Not anymore.
Joclyn screamed in panic and pain as Ryland lifted her over his shoulder, his face streaming with tears as he walked away from something I could not see. Ovailia’s laugh reverberated in my head as the cave formed around the scene, the broken rocks shifting as everything fell, as everything broke apart.
Underneath it all, I lay, spread out over the rocks, blood seeping from my body like a river, a crimson stain spreading over the grey stone I lay on.
The grey stone I had died on.
“What?” I heard my voice breaking in the sight, the echo of past having a whole different meaning, given what I was now looking at, given the horrors of a future I now faced.
I could feel the voices of the Drak run over me, could feel the sight come to an end, but I couldn’t look away from the image of my death.
I couldn’t look away from the blood.
Pain I didn’t fully understand drenched me in a force that sent a crippling ache over my chest. The ache grew as the vision faded away, leaving me gasping in the void, my hands clenching my hair.
“This is sight.” The haunting sounds of the child’s voice moved around the white void I had returned to.
“No!” I screamed, the volume of my voice reverberating with pressurized power. “No!”
“You have been born for something different than you assumed.”
“What do you mean? What is this?” I yelled into the nothingness, spinning in place as I tried to find the owner. My magic stretched away from me in an attempt to find Joclyn. Nothing was there. Even though I had the distinct impression Joclyn was close, I still could not see her. I could not see anyone who could be speaking to me.
As before, it was empty.
“Everything you have been told is a lie. I have shown you truth.”
My chest tightened painfully as she spoke, the dread and fear running through me, keeping a tight grip on my heart.
“Your life, your death, how you die, how you live, why you have the magic you do—”
“I won’t accept this!”
“It was all a lie.” The voice was a hiss now, and I could barely focus through the dread, through the anxiety that had taken control.
“No!” I yelled, my anger truly out of control now. “I won’t let it be.”
“Why do you say that?” the voice came again.
I spun toward it, coming face-to-face with a child this time. A little girl with bright blue eyes and dark curls down to her waist stood before me as if she had always been there, her head cocked to the side, as if I was the most interesting thing she had ever seen.
“You will die,” she said, her voice light and calm, more reminiscent of how someone discussed food than the death of a loved one.