Magic Binds
Page 16

My father grunted and hurled Curran’s body back into the battle below. Past the field, the sunset was blood-red. Atlanta was burning, caught in the hot maw of an inferno. Black oily smoke boiled from the ruins of the city, melding into a funeral shroud above.
The vision ended, the other reality with the battle and Curran’s corpse tearing like a thin paper screen, and I landed in my own body back in the cave. My legs were wet. I was standing in the middle of the pool, holding Sarrat in my hand. Coils of pale vapor rose from the blade, reacting to the echoes of my grief.
My face was burning. My mouth tasted bitter.
I returned my saber to its sheath on my back, dipped my hands into the cold water, and let it cool my skin.
Nobody said a word.
I finally made my lips move. “Is it always a spear?” Spears could be broken.
“Sometimes it’s a sword,” Sienna said. “Sometimes an arrow. Roland is always the origin of it and Curran always dies.”
Damn it.
“What if I don’t marry him?”
“It’s worse,” Sienna said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve looked into your future over fifty times in the last month. I think that sometimes you waver, because you aren’t sure if you should marry him. The vision changes then. Do you want to see or do you want me to tell you?”
I braced myself. “Show me.”
She stepped back into the waterfall. The battle splayed out before me again, the blood and smoke, swirling around me. I spun around. Behind me Atlanta burned.
A cry made me turn.
My father stood in the same spot atop the tower. In front of him, on the wall, a creature knelt, swathed in rags. It held a baby up with clawed hands.
I had to get to the tower.
I ran like I’d never run before in my whole life. The air turned to fire in my lungs. Bodies bounced off me. My magic flared behind me, glowing.
My father held out his hand, his face twisted with grief. The older warrior who had knelt before me in the courtyard this morning handed him the blood spear.
No!
I was almost to the tower.
My father gritted his teeth, his face supernaturally clear before me. Tears welled in his eyes. He plunged the spear down. A baby screamed, his cry severing my soul. My father pulled the weapon up, raising it like a flag.
My baby boy jerked, impaled on the spear. His pain cut me like a knife and kept cutting and cutting, carving pieces off my soul. He was crying for me, reaching with his little arms, and I could do nothing.
His little heart beat one last time and stopped.
Heat exploded in me. My heart burst.
Water. Cold soothing water. I dived this time, trying to dilute some of the heat emanating from my skin. I stayed under until all of the air in my lungs was gone. When I surfaced, the cave was silent.
I waded to the rocky shoulder and dragged myself out onto one of the large dark boulders. Sienna stepped out of the waterfall, her hair plastered to her head, her face pale; she made her way to the other side of the cave and collapsed on her back.
“Are you okay?” Roman asked.
“She watched her child die,” Evdokia said. “Let her rest.”
Rest was a luxury I couldn’t afford. “Is there are any version of this that doesn’t end with Atlanta burning and my son or Curran dying?”
“No,” Sienna said. “I’m so sorry.”
“How long have you been seeing this?”
“Over the past month.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sienna sighed. “I hoped I was wrong.”
“Could you be wrong?” Roman asked. “These are only possibilities, not certainties.”
“Predicting the future is like looking into the narrow end of a funnel,” Sienna said. “The further in the future the events are, the more possibilities you see. The closer we get to the event itself, the clearer and more specific the most likely future becomes. These visions are too detailed. They are almost a certainty. As of now, one or the other will come to pass. The son or the father gives his life, Atlanta burns, and the rest of us suffer. I can’t see any other possibilities. Believe me, I tried.”
She turned her head and looked at me. “I tried, Kate. If Atlanta burns in that battle, I die.”
“We all die,” Evdokia said. “Everyone in this cave, except Kate.”
“I can’t see you in this battle,” Sienna said. “It’s hidden from me.”
If she was seeing it in that much detail, these visions had to come from the very near future. “How long do we have?”
“A year at the longest if you don’t marry Curran,” Sienna said.
That meant sentencing our son to death. “And if I do?”
“Two weeks.”
Two weeks? What do I do? How do I fix this?
“You’re the wild card,” Evdokia said. “She can’t see you.”
“It means one of two things,” Sienna said. “Either you are irrelevant to what happens or you are the pin on which this future hinges. If it’s the latter, then you have the power to alter it.”
If only I knew how.
“This is just typical.” Roman raised his eyes upward. “The one time I try to do something good, like join two people who are long overdue in holy matrimony. The one time! And it all goes to hell, doomsday prophecies and death. I’ve served you for ten years. Would it kill you to have my back one damn time?”
“Yes, of course, make it all about you.” Evdokia sighed.
“Wait, you’re marrying them?” Sienna asked.
Maria chortled. “He’ll anoint them in blood. Should’ve asked Vasiliy.”
Evdokia turned to her. “There is nothing wrong with my son marrying them. It will be the best wedding and he will be the best priest.”
Maria opened her mouth.
“You better be careful what you say next,” Evdokia said.
I raised my voice. “This isn’t helping.”
“You have to defeat him,” Sienna said.
Nice how she avoided the word “kill.”
An odd anxiety claimed me. I didn’t want to kill my father.
It made no sense. He was a monster and a tyrant. If it was a choice between my life and his, he would take mine. I’d wanted to hurt him this morning. But he was my father. What the hell was wrong with me?
Thinking about it was too complicated so I shoved it aside. There would be time to puzzle over this later.