“Death,” Kinlear said. “Every time. Why does this matter today?”
His tutor laughed, lifting a hand to catch a butterfly. As if he’d heard even the tiniest flutter of its wings. “You are clever, Little Prince. But you are also, like your Scribe’s blade...incredibly dull. Have you ever heard of the termVeilborne?”
The way Magus said it – like a whispered prayer – sent a shiver running up and down Kinlear’s spine, though he hadn’t the faintest clue why. Even the finches chirruped and soared away.
“No,” he said, watching their little wings carry them north.
“Ah.” Magus grunted. “I suppose here, in Lordach, you call them Seers. Though of course, they’re often a farse.”
Kinlear couldn’t remember a singletrueSeer in his lifetime.
He knew only the stories of the ones that had died out, long ago, when the Sacred were born and magic was settled to the Pillars and the allowances of the Five. His father had removednearly every book that spoke of the Seers of old, if only because those with unpillared magic...forbidden magic...had all gone to join the Acolyte.
They’d defected and given up their eternal souls by choosing to fight on his side of the war.
Now, if someone claimed to be a Seer, they were tossed right into Rendegard, the prison that perched just on the edge of the Sundered Sea.
Nobody got visions anymore.
Not even the Sacred, for magic came only to those whom the gods gifted it to.
“To be a Veilborne was once a strange and beautiful thing,” Magus said, and cleared his throat. “Haunting, of course, for the dreams can be so visceral. So...true.”
“Nightmares,” Kinlear said. “And gods, I hope they aren’t true.”
He’d never be anywhere near a darksoul in real life. And if his dream-forest was to be his fate someday, his true end?
He hoped his illness would take him first.
“Have I ever told you,” Magus said, “that I was born a twin?”
That was certainly a new bit of information. Kinlear raised his brows in true interest.
“I had a sister, Marin. She was born second, like you. She nearly died at birth. Also like you, yes?”
Kinlear nodded.
“The order of our births mattered little at the time, of course, for my sister and I had no battle over crowns or thrones. But in sleep...Marin was troubled. She often found herself drifting, all alone, in an endless sea.”
It sounded like a different version ofhisdreams.
Kinlear shivered, even though the greenhouse was far too warm.
“For years, Marin could not swim her way out of it. She often woke up screaming until her voice ran thin...speaking nonsense about a strange, dark being who met her there, who pulled her under the surface until she drowned. Peculiar, that she shared the same sleeping fate. And evenmorepeculiar, that just like you...she was plagued by an illness in her waking days.”
Kinlear’s heart stuttered. He’d never met someone else like him...
A twin with an illness and terrifying dreams.
He wondered why Magus hadn’t told him the parallels, until now.
“What kind of illness?” he dared ask.
“Ah, not quite like yours,” Magus said. “Her condition was that of the heart. The dreams, though.” He blinked into the distance. “Eerily the same.”
He blew out a shaky breath. “What happened to her?”
“As Marin grew, her dreams shifted. Eventually she found her way out of the sea, and onto a black rock isle, where she began to see thingsbeforethey happened in real life,” Magus said softly. “Things that always came true, like the death of our mother. The destruction of our village. The sinking of a ship...and the premonition that someday, I would lose my sight in my chase for answers about her untimely death.”
