The witch is scared and that doesn’t bode well.
“Don’t tell me,” I say. “I’m going to die?”
Still huddled on the floor, Selestra doesn’t laugh.
She shakes her head, disbelief coating her soft features. You’d think she’s never made a prediction before.
I just hope whatever she’s seen in my future isn’t as awful as the look on her face.
I could almost swear she wants to sob or scream, but that’s impossible, because she’s a Somniatis witch and they’re born heartless.
Empty, right to the core.
“Aren’t you supposed to tell me my future now?” I ask. “I’ve bargained my soul for it. Seems the least I could get is a prediction.”
“I—I don’t…” Selestra trails off.
Her eyes focus in on my hand.
I look to where Seryth’s crest slithers across my palm, marking me as a prediction seeker. As someone who now belongs to him.
I clench my fist hard enough that the bones crack.
“Tell him.”
The king towers over Selestra, who’s still on the floor and trying to find her breath.
“Don’t make me look a fool, Selestra,” he warns.
His voice is cold enough for her to shiver. Selestra looks up at the king, meeting his eyes with her own. She presses her lips together and for a moment I think she might cry.
Instead she wipes the uncertainty from her face.
The shakiness and stuttered breath disappear, and Selestra tilts her chin up high enough that I can practically see her swallowing down whatever it was she felt a moment ago.
Selestra rises to her feet. Unsteady, but determined all the same.
“Death will first come for you in three days’ time,” she tells me. Her voice is cracked. “It’s a fight of some sort. There was an angry crowd and a fire broke out. I didn’t recognize the building, but it had red floors. It might have been one of the dorms in the Last Army barracks.”
I wait, but when she says nothing else, I quirk a brow.
“That’s it?” I ask. “Just some fight?”
So simple, so easy.
So clearly not the half of it.
I see Selestra’s jaw set firm as she considers her answer carefully, like a soldier trying to strategize in battle.
“That’s it,” she confirms.
“Why didn’t you say that to begin with?”
“It took me a while to sort through it,” she says defensively. “I’m not used to making predictions.”
She’s not a bad liar, I’ll give her that. It’s almost convincing how she sweetens her voice and touches a hand to smooth out her forest hair.
The picture of innocence and confusion.
Only she hasn’t had as much practice as I have in the art of pretend.
Part of being in the Last Army is knowing how to spot a liar and deciphering the tales captives tell to save their own necks.
Selestra Somniatis isn’t as slick as she likes to think.
But to accuse the heir to the Somniatis magic of anything like that is treason, and that’s something even I can’t get away with.
“You’re getting blood all over the floor, Selestra.”
Theola rises slowly from her throne.
Selestra looks down to her elbow, cut open by her fall, like she hadn’t realized she was injured until now.
I hadn’t either. Now that I see her blood, mixed with the matted locks of hair from the jars she broke, my hand twitches by my side. I’m almost overcome with the ridiculous urge to check her wound.
I ignore it.
Selestra isn’t some helpless little girl who needs to be rescued.
She’s a witch.
I turn away from her and adjust the blade I keep strapped to my back.
My father’s sword.
“Perhaps we should let her bleed,” the king muses. “Such a sloppy vision should suffer consequences.”
Theola stares at her daughter’s bleeding arm. “Yes, but the floor shouldn’t suffer,” she says plainly. “I’ll fix it.”
She closes her eyes and takes in a long, deep breath.
I feel the change in the air, the cold creeping up through my bones as her magic slinks down the stairs and across the tiles.
Then Selestra’s wound is gone, the gash on her elbow suddenly clear. Jars still litter the floor, but the heir no longer drips blood onto them.
Somniatis witches are snakes.
Shedding their skin and building themselves anew.
“So it’s really just a soldier’s brawl?”
King Seryth appears to consider this as he settles back down onto his throne.
“That shouldn’t be any trouble for you, Nox.” His lips turn upward, slow and deliberate. “You are your father’s son, after all. A true legacy in my army.”
He watches me closely. He wants me to react to that.
He wants to see me flinch at the mention of my father. To test me, as he’s done so many other times over the years.
King Seryth always wants something from me, and it’s never a thing I want to give.
I keep my voice light.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll make my father proud.”
Seryth cocks his head to one side. “Indeed.”
“Thank you for the prediction,” I say. “May I have my coin?”
Theola closes her hand to a fist, and when she opens it again, a piece of gold Chrim sits in the center of her palm. It glitters for a moment, until she slowly places it into the chest pocket of my uniform.
She pats the spot, right above my heart, and says, “Until we meet again, Nox Laederic.”
I bow, quickly, in place of driving my sword through the king’s chest. It seems the more polite option and the blow would be wasted on an immortal anyway.
I turn to walk out of the hall, but then my gaze meets Selestra’s.
It’s brief and fleeting, a stolen moment when her eyes focus on mine and something—a look I don’t quite understand—pools inside them.
I dismiss it.
I don’t need to understand the witch. All I need is to survive this month and whatever death throws at me until I get what I want.
Until I take the king’s immortality and bring this family to its knees.
When that time comes, I’ll kill them all.
Starting with the heir.