Shifting Fate

by Melissa Wright

  “Then we won’t,” he said, gesturing for me to follow him.

  I started for my knife and boots, and Logan turned. “You don’t need those, Brianna. We’re only going downstairs.”

  I flushed, leaving both to follow him through the door. Two guards were positioned at opposite ends of the hallway, heavily armed and perfectly alert. I took a little hop-step to catch Logan’s stride, but lost it again when he took the stairs two at a time.

  “Are you in a hurry?” I whispered toward his back as I rushed to keep up.

  He glanced over his shoulder, perplexed by my question. “No.”

  I bit down on a grin. He must have been one of those get-things-done people. Emily was one of those people.

  We walked into the kitchen, a massive, open-spaced arena compared to the last place I’d cooked a meal, complete with stainless, commercial-sized appliances. I followed Logan into the pantry, considerable in its own right, and watched as he rummaged through vegetables, boxes, and cans.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked from behind him.

  He stopped his exploration to look at me. “Something quick.”

  I realized I was hovering, and leaned back, picking a random can off the shelf to examine. It was caviar. They had an entire shelf of caviar. I would have settled for a single jar of peanut butter.

  Logan handed me an onion before gathering a few green peppers to stack on top of the other ingredients for our dinner. I followed him back into the kitchen where he dropped the vegetables into the sink and started a pot to boil. He washed the peppers and moved to set them on the counter, so I stepped out of his way, and then shifted again when he went for a saucepan. The third time, his brow drew down in annoyance and he took me by the waist to move me from his path.

  I watched from my new position as he deftly diced onion and pepper, threw them in with olive oil, added some garlic and parsley, and neatly slid pasta into the roiling water.

  The scent of tomato seemed amplified by the steam and my stomach panged. Luckily, he’d plated up spaghetti and warm bread within minutes, holding one in each hand as he gestured for me to come along. By that point, I was so hungry I would have followed him anywhere. He stopped just outside the kitchen, where a small nook contained a table, two chairs, and an east facing window.

  I sat, curling my bare feet onto the railing beneath the chair, and used all my strength not to shovel hot pasta into my mouth as Logan watched. After a moment, I regained myself and swallowed. “It’s delicious. Thank you.”

  The corner of Logan’s mouth rose, and suddenly, as if only then realizing he’d been staring, he went to work on his own plate.

  I tore off a piece of bread, finding I couldn’t seem to stop watching him now. There was a tiny little scar on his temple that disappeared behind dark blond hair. It must have been fresh, probably from the battle with Morgan’s men. My stomach turned. I pulled the chunk of bread in half, and then again. “Do you cook often?”

  His gaze slipped to my fidgeting hands. “Only when I need to eat.”

  I dropped the fragments onto my plate and asked, “You don’t live at one of the houses?”

  Logan glanced over his shoulder, and back at me. “No. I’ve stayed, occasionally, but I keep a private residence,” he dropped his own bread, “since I moved from Council.”

  Since Morgan had taken over his home. He let the silence hang between us, until I asked in a whisper, “Will you go back?”

  His eyes met mine, suddenly dark amber in the faint light. “I don’t know, Brianna. It … it isn’t the same.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. We had lost our mother, our home, everything except each other, Emily and I. We’d been more on the run than adrift, but there was no going back, either way.

  And now Emily had Aern.

  Logan gestured toward my food, pretending not to notice the hand pressed tight against my stomach, and said, “Finish up. I want to get an early start this morning.”

  This time, it was a Cadillac V. Daybreak was just starting to color the sky, giving its sleek black angles an unnatural glow. I had the strangest notion that it reminded me of their eyes, the way they all seemed to radiate that something “other” within, but when I looked at Logan, our gaze locking over the roof of the sedan, all I saw was a man.

  We settled into the car, strapped the seat belts on, and took yet another route to Council’s main building. I watched the sunrise reflected in the glass of the homes and buildings, thinking of all the people who didn’t know we even existed. I imagined they were inside, going about their daily business, not even concerned that if I couldn’t do my job, if I couldn’t find the connection to fix Emily, they would all die.

  Images of their faces flipped through my consciousness, broken and splattered, no time to so much as scream before the impact came. Liquid fire pulsed through the scenery, reducing it to metal framework and ash. And here, in this living nightmare, their eyes did burn. Not an otherworldly glow, but a blaze. The blood of the dragon.

  “Brianna,” Logan said from beside me.

  His words cut through the vision, and I closed my eyes hard, forcing the images away. I had seen them before, a thousand times. It was nothing new, but somehow, more intense. Painful.

  When my eyes came open, Logan’s hands were cradling my face. My fists were pressed hard against my chest and stomach; I felt like retching.

  “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.

  He gestured toward a small carved table in the corner. “This time, I brought lunch.”

  I stretched thoroughly before following him to curl up into one of the well-padded Queen Anne chairs. He sat across from me, laying wrapped sandwiches over the table’s engraved dragon design. I glanced up at him, trying to remember which line the color of his eyes signified. I was pretty sure Amber was some proto-language form of ertho. Earth.

  Logan seemed to notice my appraisal, so I distracted him with a question about the dragon’s line. “Are there any others left, aside from Aern and Morgan?”

  He pulled the cover back from his sandwich. “Not anymore. Things got a little crazy after Morgan was born. There were so many of us waiting for the day, watching for signs of the prophecy …”

  He trailed off, realizing that this was the prophecy, that I was a prophet.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You can’t even imagine how prepared my mother made me.” I knew prepared wasn’t the right word, exactly, but I didn’t need to explain what we’d gone through. It was certainly no surprise to find how central the prophecy was to all of their lives, because that had been practically all mine consisted of for eighteen years.

  “It started small, I guess,” he said. “Once the initial shock of a male heir in the dragon’s line calmed, there wasn’t much else to do but wait. We all had our place, and we were trained for the day Morgan would lead. But waiting was hard for some of them, especially the elders.”

  He sat his sandwich down, glancing at my own lying unopened before me, and seemed to understand.

  “There were some skirmishes, a few flare ups here and there, but for the most part we had things handled,” Logan said. “It reached a fevered pitch when Morgan got older and they knew he would soon lead.” His eyes met mine. “Things took a turn when their mother got sick. Aern and I must have been about fifteen at the time, Morgan close to twenty. When she died, their father changed. He became strict, enforcing rules on Morgan that he’d never lived by before, challenging the elders, calling the entire prophecy into question. There was a man, Tarian, who became convinced their father was trying to keep Morgan from ascending.”

  He hesitated, taking a measured breath, and a tingle ran up my arms.

  “They fought, and Tarian was killed. What we didn’t know, was that he had amassed a following. The battle that resulted took their father’s life.”

  The tragedies of my own family were not far from such, and when I spoke, my voice was barely above a whisper. “So, Morgan’s father was killed so that he could sooner take the seat of power.”

  Logan’s answering tone was level. “By the very people who wished to see him there.” His fist tightened almost imperceptibly where it rested on his leg. “And it wasn’t just his father. Most of the elders among their leadership were taken as well. Everything shifted. The younger of us were thrust into the positions left vacant, forced to choose a side between a split family.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  “And I chose neither.”

  His words lingered in the silence between us for a long while as I picked at the clear plastic covering my lunch. He’d spoken of living alone, of choosing neither, but he was standing guard over me in the Division household for the new leader of Council. “You were going to tell me,” I said eventually, “about the men.”

  The hesitation was there again, and I got the feeling Logan wasn’t a sharer, but this wasn’t exactly a normal situation. And I was the prophet.

  “My father was to protect the One.” His eyes fell for an instant to the archive ceiling, to one of the smoked glass domes that hid surveillance cameras. “He was killed with the others, and it fell to me, to those men, to take his place.”

  His words came back to me. Had it been Aern …

  He straightened. “We don’t work for Council’s best interest anymore. We work for the good of our kind.”

  What he didn’t say rolled through me. He was watching me, his team posted outside my room and in those black SUVs because I was their last hope. Everyone’s last hope.

  “Brianna,” he said after a long pause. I looked up, caught suddenly by the change in his expression. “Eat.”

  It wasn’t an order, but I obeyed nonetheless. Absently, I considered the story he’d told, comparing it with the details my mother had given me, lining our histories out on parallel timelines. Trying to find the connection. Trying to understand our link.

  I hadn’t seen anything of our people within the Council archives. My mother hadn’t explained our past, how our lines had lived in the old world, or if there were any others left, aside from Emily and me. The only reference to us at all was that of the prophecy, and it didn’t even imply we were not one of them.

  But I knew. I knew because I could see Emily’s makeup, could see she was built differently than Aern. Not physically, but her connections, and her apparent lack of those powers that the Seven Lines all held.

  When I went back to work, I focused instead on the newer works, the records kept since Morgan’s birth. Logan pulled documents for me, covering the desk with books and certificates, ledgers and registers. There were photographs, too, here and there among the files. I found one of Morgan at maybe four or five, a hollow, lost look in his eyes as he was posed in front of the Council banners. And another, older Morgan as he seemed to accept his place among the elders. My fingers slid over the faces of strangers, the prints dulled with age. Suddenly, I found something familiar in a candid shot of two scrawny young boys. I paused, drawing the picture closer to find Aern, maybe ten years old, arm over the shoulder of another boy his age, standing carefree on the manicured lawn of a large, open and unguarded estate.

  I looked up, comparing the picture to the man who stood across from me, and couldn’t help but smile, given the spiky blond tufts of hair sticking up in all directions in the photo. Logan narrowed his eyes on me, daring me to laugh. That only made it worse.

  M
y grin widened. “I’d never thought of you as a boy before.”

  His brows shifted. It wasn’t just an odd thing to say, it was the way I’d said it. I ducked my head back to the books on the table. He didn’t question it, but I could see him as I read, his body unmoving as he watched me from that same position across the table.

  I resumed working, the records of Morgan’s building empire dragging me in despite my need to keep moving through the archives. He’d amassed quite a collection of businesses, but that wasn’t unusual. What was weird, however, was the section of run-down warehouses and crumbling industrial plants. I tried to remember what Emily had said, if she’d told me where the warehouse Aern had been held was, but I couldn’t bring it to mind.

  “What about your visions?” Logan asked, moving to sit in the chair across from me.

  I glanced up distractedly. “What?”

  “The visions,” he explained. “You said flashes. Do you see everything?” I felt my brows draw together, and he gestured to the room around us. “I mean like this, did you know we’d be here? Did you see me coming?”

  His tone was completely casual, innocent, as if he were simply curious. I’d opened my mouth to answer no to the first question when the second one registered in my brain. Did I see him coming? A flush tore up my neck, coloring my cheeks before I could curb it. My mouth hung open in a kind of dazed guilt that he’d caught me so completely off guard.

  He nodded slowly, and I could see the knowledge lining up in his mind. My comment about him being a boy sparking the idea as he stood, watching, waiting for it to make sense. My reaction when I’d first seen him, my utter inability to even speak.

  This was not going to go well.

  “So,” he said with a measured air, “what, exactly, did you see … when I wasn’t a boy?”

  “Nothing,” I answered, way too quick, way too emphatic.

  “Brianna, if something is going to happen—”

  “What? No!” The words stuck in my throat as I tried to explain he wasn’t in danger. “God, no, Logan. It’s nothing like that. Just … It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.” Three nothings. Very convincing, Brianna.