by Jada Fisher
“Oh no, we understand. Sokhanya is a very special girl. We have so many exciting plans for her joining our family.”
“Fantastic. Our in-home interviews and visits went well, but we still have quite a bit of paperwork to go through. So, if you don’t mind…”
The vision faded, but then I was propelled forward into another. Sokhanya was a bit older, laying on a small cot and sweating terribly, tossing back and forth, before she sat up and screamed.
What came out of her mouth was gibberish, unending, and made my entire body want to retreat into itself. But someone suddenly strode forward and slapped her before shoving a notebook into her hands.
“You’ve been taught better. Write what you saw, you dumb, little twit.”
That voice made me jolt further as I recognized none other than the same prince I had met in Mal’s dimension. His hair was cut shorter and he wasn’t in full, old fashioned armor, but there was no mistaking that kind of malevolence. It had a way of filling a room, thick and cloying and making my mouth taste like ash. I wanted to reach out and punch him or plant my foot right against the small of his back, but I knew that I would have no effect on the vision.
None at all.
So I just watched as he gripped her collar and throttled her, shaking her roughly through the tears. He couldn’t be more than fifteen, or at least that was how it looked to me, but it seemed that his type of violence hadn’t come with age.
“Of all the seers we had to find in the world, why did it have to be a broken one? The first of your kind in generations, and you’re practically useless. How does that feel?”
The girl lurched forward from the bed, her head snapping to collide with the prince’s. They both recoiled, but before he could strike her again, she held up the notebook for him to see.
There I saw, in jagged, oversized letters, was a single message.
NOT. ALONE.
The vision faded again, and now I was in a cell. There were no windows. There was no light. Only the faint sound of dripping water as I stood there, listening intently.
My eyes adjusted slowly, and eventually I became aware that I wasn’t alone. There was a lone, tiny figure sitting on the cot, breathing so slowly, so softly, that it was almost impossible to tell that they were even alive.
The figure looked up and I found myself staring into the pitch-black eyes of none other than Sokhanya.
She looked right at me, not through me, her eyes seeming to burrow through my very soul. Slowly, her legs unfolded, and she sat upright.
“Can you see me?” I asked uncertainly.
She didn’t speak, her mouth didn’t move, and yet I still heard her voice as clear as day within my head.
Except it wasn’t really a voice. There wasn’t a tone or a pitch. It was just words, but it was entirely hers without a doubt.
Kill yourself to find me but wastes time trying to speak to a deaf girl? Silly.
“Oh, I, uh… Wait, can you understand me?”
Still talking. How boring.
I frowned, feeling a bit insulted. Furrowing my brow, I tried to project my thoughts toward her, making my words echo in her head like hers were in mine.
“Can you hear this?”
Ah! She can learn. Good. You are seer, yes? One who was meant to burn? Caused much trouble for dragons.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
Good. Why you here?
She had a stilted way of talking. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand English, but rather as if she was ascribing to a set of grammar rules that were completely different. I vaguely remembered being told once that sign language was a whole lot different from speaking English, so maybe that was going on? Or did the dragons teach her only the barest bones of what they needed in order for her to communicate?
I didn’t know, and it didn’t exactly seem like the right time to ask.
“I want to rescue you.”
The girl looked surprised at that, her dark eyes going wide and her already pale face growing paler.
Why? If not for me, you would not burned.
“I know you were forced to tell them about me. I don’t blame you.”
Generous. No sense.
I withheld an irritated groan. It certainly wouldn’t help anyone. “It doesn’t have to make sense. Just know that I want to save you. No seer should be a slave. No one at all should be a slave.”
Dangerous.
“Believe me. I am well aware.”
She gave me a skeptical look.
How I help?
“I’m not sure, actually. I was hoping you could tell me—”
I stopped short, my conversation slipping as the ground below me suddenly turned to mush. Jolting forward, I tried to plant my feet on solid ground only to end up sinking to my knees.
What this? Feels bad!
“I don’t know!” I answered, reaching desperately toward her. While I hadn’t exactly been in control since I’d dove back into the lifestream, I hadn’t been out of control either. But whatever was sucking me down, pulling at my legs insistently, was absolutely overriding my will.
Which was out and out terrifying.
“I will come for you, okay! Be ready. I promise you, we’re going to free you from this.”
But where you go? What happen? Do not understand!
“I don’t either. But I promise, okay? Watch out for me!”
She extended her hand toward me tentatively, seemingly wanting to stop my slipping into the muck, but it was too late. Whatever it was pulled me under, and I was slipping through nothing but black.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when I landed into the extended palm of the rotted dragon, his massive claws pressing into my back.
“Of course it’s you,” I hissed, returning to my regular way of speaking. I hadn’t even realized how much my head hurt from communicating with the other seer.
“Such derision. Didn’t you miss me, young friend?”
“We’re not friends.”
“Really, one would think you wouldn’t be so picky considering your shortage of them lately.”
“Why don’t you go screw yourself?!”
“Huh, such language from my sweet little Davie. Are things perhaps getting to be a bit much for you?”
“I don’t know why you keep pulling me here. I’m not going to free you. I’m not going to do whatever it is that you want me to do.”
“Oh, but my dear, how do you know you’re not doing them already?”
I bristled at that, but the claws behind me bit in a bit deeper. I could feel warm blood start to trickle out, and I couldn’t repress my wince.
“You could always just give in. Would that be so bad? I’m sure you’re beginning to put together that you are the leader of your kind. A tenuous position, especially considering how often your kind has been used. Abused. Discarded and mistreated.
“Why not ensure the survival of your people? Under my rule, I would have all of you flourish. Protected and cherished as you should be. I would punish any that dared to raise their hand against you. Tell me, is that so bad a fate?”
I rocked forward in his grip, baring my teeth at him. “I understand you’re really, really old, but get this through your thick, dragon skull. I. Will. Never. Join. You.”
“Pity then. I do so like your charm.”
His jaw opened right in front of my face, rancid breath washing over me. I instantly felt wet and warm in all the worst ways. My stomach roiled, but that quickly paled once the fear set in.
His yellow, cracked teeth loomed in my vision, saliva thick and viscous. His maw opened wider, coming closer until I was almost against his rough, barbed tongue.
“Davie!”
It felt like a sword was shoved through my chest. Or maybe that a hammer hit my sternum. My breath left my body, and I was thrown from his palm.
“You cannot escape this, Davie. Seers wiser than you have tried and failed.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but then I was slammed into again, my brea
th being sucked right out of my lungs. Pain swamped me, and once more, I found myself flying through the light.
I erupted into my body painfully, violently, blurry vision just catching Mickey raising her hand again to pound into my chest.
I coughed, feeling like my insides were coming out of my mouth, and someone caught her fist.
“She’s up! Look, she’s up!”
Another someone rolled me over, and I spat up what felt like cups and cups of water. Suddenly, I was vaguely aware that my mouth tasted intensely of soap and I realized the lavender salts might not have been the best choice.
Lesson learned.
“Davie! Davie, are you alright?”
My vision was only barely beginning to clear and I tried to answer, but mostly ended up coughing a whole bunch more. When I eventually did stop, I was hauled up into someone’s lap, a hand stroking my hair soothingly.
“She’s back. Thank the spirits, she’s back.”
I didn’t need my eyes to tell that the cracked, upset voice came from Bronn. I could guess that it was his thigh I was gripping onto, all boneless and weak from my near death.
Or maybe it was an actual death. It was getting hard to say.
I had so much to tell them. They had to know what I had found out, the challenge that laid ahead. But just for a moment, I needed to rest. I wasn’t about to pass out, like what had definitely become my usual, but I absolutely needed new clothes and really hot cup of tea and honey.
But for the moment, I just wanted to lay still. So, I let my eyelids flutter closed as Bronn held me, my friends and sister beginning to move around me. As far as I knew, it was probably the last chance at peace I would have for a while.
6
Everybody Talks. Hopefully Not All at Once
“So they really do have another seer,” Mickey said, chewing at her thumb again. The digit was red and raw, but I couldn’t really reprimand her about self-mutilation considering I had just drowned myself in a tub to try to contact the missing woman.
“Yeah. She’s somewhere around my age, if I had to guess. They got her from some overseas adoption program. She was most likely supposed to cause the rebirth of the seers back in the old country, but when they brought her here and isolated her, they cut all of that off.”
“Has she really been isolated all this time?” Mal asked, sounding more bitter than I would have expected.
“As far as I can tell, yes.” I cupped my hands around the steaming mug of tea that Bronn had insisted he make for me. The warmth was nice, pulling me further away from that deadly abyss I had been hanging over. “It’s… It’s really terrible. She has a cell, I think. And a cot. But there are no windows. There’s nothing to do. And she’s so tiny.”
“Hey,” Mal interjected. “Ain’t nothing wrong with being tiny.”
I tried to chuckle at her attempt at humor, but the sound came out a little raw and twisted. “Not if it’s natural. But this girl…” I closed my eyes, recalling the details of her face. How she had been so pale that she was almost gray. How her eyes had been so black and lifeless. How her skin seemed to hang from her features even while her bone structure stood out in sharp relief. It all spoke of years of neglect and misery. Of lacking any sort of comfort or love. I’d gone through plenty of that on my own during our time in the foster system, with parents who would prefer to scream or hit instead of help, but it seemed that Sokhanya had it much, much worse.
“She’s basically been tortured her whole life. It’s her whole world.”
“And she’s deaf, you say?”
I nodded. “I don’t think she understands sign language either. They give her a notebook to write her visions on, but that’s the only means of communication she has, I think. I can’t tell if she can read lips or not. I’m thinking no, and maybe she just knows that when a dragon is yelling at her, they want something that has to do with a vision.”
Krisjian was very still and very tense in his chair, his face nearly as pale as Sokhanya’s had been.
“In my country, when you found me, we also had to run from these…dark dragons, as you call them. Are these the same ones that hold this girl?”
I nodded carefully, watching the youngest of my brood as he put together his thoughts.
“And if they had found me first, they would have done the same to me?”
“That’s the likely inference, yeah.”
“And they would do the same to any seer they got their hands on?”
“Yes.”
“Then we must save her.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what this whole plan is abou—”
“We must save her and put some sort of system in place so that no seer, young or old or orphan, is preyed on again.” He stood up, pacing on his skinny legs. “What if you had not awakened me and instead I did so on my own, a year or two later? I would be hungry. Helpless. Easy pickings. This girl, from this foreign country you say, she was helpless too.
“We’re vulnerable. And I understand that you all have had the privilege of protection, of proximity to help. But as more of us are born, or created, or whatever we are, the more of us are at risk.”
His words sank into me, truer than he knew, and I nodded.
“You’re right, Krisjian. There are a whole lot of people out there who want to hurt or use us. We do need to set up a way for others like us to find help. But right now, we can’t focus on that. We need to save Sokhanya and make sure that the anti-humanists dragons are never able to take any of us again.”
“As long as they’re alive, they’re always going to be a risk to you,” Mal said matter-of-factly.
“I’m well aware.” I clutched my mug a little tighter. “That’s why I’m putting a plan together to kill them.” I took a sip of the drink, soothing my throat as I thought better of my words. “Well, kill a very important selection of them.”
“And what is your plan exactly?” Bronn asked, the first words he had spoken since the bathroom. I could tell that he was still upset, that his limbs were wound up all tight and his lips were pressed firmly into each other.
“Well, I’m a bit shaky on a lot of the specifics. That’s where I’m hoping you lot will come in.”
“By all means,” Mickey said, leaning in. “This is a brainstorming session I can get behind.”
It was late into the night before Mickey and I finally returned to our rooms, and I was utterly exhausted in every sense of the word. My throat felt like it had been coated in glass shards, and my eyes were heavy with weariness.
I was all set to flop against my mattress, tired and worn out, when a knock sounded against my open door.
Turning, I saw Bronn standing there, leaning against the doorframe and looking just as tired as I felt.
“Hey, could we talk perhaps for a bit?”
I sighed wearily, tilting my head as I looked him over. “That depends. Are you going to lecture me about how our plan is completely insane?”
“No. I just… I just want to be with you. For a moment. Without the war or anything else. Just the two of us.”
I glanced to Mickey, who had a look on her face that was purely a big-sister expression as she headed toward our shared room. “Yeah, I can do that.”
It was so sweet how he sagged with relief, his hand extending to me. “Thank you.”
“No need for thanks,” I said, taking his hand in mine and letting him guide me out. “Even a seer needs a little downtime.”
He nodded and we left the room, walking down the stairs and out onto the open lawn.
I was pretty surprised that he thought it was safe enough for us to be outside, but I guessed the guard was pretty high, and it wasn’t like there were going to be any anti-humanist dragons flying around with my shield up.
Instead of walking down the front path of the estate like we had before, we walked around the side of it, toward the back. It was nothing like the castle out beyond the woods, so it was conceivable to finish a circuit around the building even in my exhausted state
.
“Sometimes I feel like you like danger,” Bronn murmured as we strolled along, the night sky soft and velveteen above us.
I tried not to take offense at that, breathing in and out before responding. “Why do you say that?”
“Do I really need to explain? I just watched your sister beat life back into your chest while I tried to force air back into your lungs. I wish I could say this was the first time I watched you die. But it’s not, is it?”
I grimaced at that. I had known that it probably wasn’t going to be a pretty sight, but I still felt a bit guilty that I had put him through that. “I was just doing what needed to be done.”
“But did it?”
I extricated my arm from his and turned to him, taking in his expression. His thick brows were drawn together in concern and those soft lips that I was growing more and more familiar with were pulled down in a frown. “What are you trying to say, Bronn?”
“I am saying that… Don’t you think perhaps there is a chance that you make decisions that are needlessly dangerous?”
I licked my lips, trying not to react rashly, but felt myself starting to do so anyway. “Bronn, I don’t recall accusing you of such things when you became the war general for your whole people.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I understand your life, your position, comes with certain risks. I understand that you can do things that no one else can do. But there is a difference between taking a calculated risk to save the ones you love and being reckless.” His hands came up to slide along my arms, gently squeezing as they traveled upwards until they were cupping my chin. “Can you honestly tell me you’ve calculated all of these recent things you’ve done? That you’ve weighed all the pros and cons until there truly is no option left?”
“I…” I looked up into his face, into those sharp, bright eyes that were filled with so much emotion it made my heart ache. My heart had been aching far too much lately. If I kept going, it felt like it was going to just give out like an old, abused tire. “…probably not.”
He smiled softly, but the expression looked pained. “I understand why you can’t listen to me when I tell you to stay in the castle during battle. I understand why you do the things you do, but the more time I have with you, the more times I watch you flirt with the line between life and death, the more I realize that I won’t survive losing you again.”