Kinlear’s stomach twisted.
All tales he’d never heard from Magus before...and he wasn’t sure he wanted to, anymore. His palms were sweating. He reached for his vial, a nervous little tick as of late.
“And... was she right?” he whispered. “About the things she saw in her dreams.”
“Quite right,” Magus said, and nodded. “Every time. Some things happened quickly, but others, particularly the worst of them, took far longer to come true.” He sighed. “My sister diedearly. Terribly. I was there when she took her last breath. Just as I was there when she took her first.”
Kinlear could picture it.
One twin, losing another.
He saw Arawn in his mind...a king who would someday rule without his twin brother by his side. Suddenly, the sun was too bright, the warmth of the greenhouse too stifling. The birdsong and the butterflies, too merry.
Magus stared ahead, while he twisted and twisted his cane, boring a hole into the ground. The grass was now entirely gone beneath it.
“I spent many years after her death, quite furious at the gods. I’d always been confused by them, but after Marin...” he sighed. “I traveled far and wide, searching for answers about her dreams. Her illness. Her final fate. I blamed them for the terrors she faced, the things she had to witness before their time. And while there are few answers to be found here in Lordach...” He swallowed. “I found them elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” Kinlear asked.
“South,” Magus said. “Across the Sundered Sea. Where ancient knowledge hides.”
Kinlear wanted to press for answers, but the old man kept going, as if he hadn’t the time.
“It wastherethat my sister’s vision about my own sight came true. A sacrifice. A choice.” He clenched his scarred hands – there were strange marks on his palms, not entirely unlike Kinlear’s penance brands – but he gave no explanation as to their origin.
“I learned that Marin did, indeed, havemagic.It was given from the realm of the gods, as all magic is...but...perhaps it was not from the Five entirely. Perhaps...there are other powers at play.”
Kinlear’s heart dropped.
He reached for the stone in his pocket...wishing he could speak to Arawn. Wishing he werehereto listen...
But his hand fell away as something inside of him whispered,no.
Arawn would not take the risk of entertaining this conversation. He would tell Kinlear to call for the guards. He would tell him to throw Magus in prison for even daring to speak ill of the Five.
But this?
Thiswas the kind of lesson Kinlear had always longed to learn.
The dangerous kind.
The kind that felt like a terrible secret.
“But all of this is impossible,” Kinlear whispered.
“Is it?” Magus smiled as another finch landed on his shoulder, tweeting a merry little song.
It felt out of place, a jarring shift that had Kinlear’s breathing set on edge.
He coughed, tasting blood. A sip of his vial settled him, but he sensed that soon, another fit would come.
“You’re speaking of something that could get you killed,” Kinlear hissed, as he recorked his vial. “Something a defector would say.”
Magus waved a scarred hand. “I’ve no intention to defect, boy, especially if that’s what they expect of me. I’ve never cared to walk the path others assume is mine to follow.” He smiled as another finch landed on his shoulder. They were drawn to him, as if he were a magnet. “Now, tell me. Have you ever seen anything else in your dreams? Anything, beyond the dying woods and the monster?”
“No,” Kinlear said. “Nothing but?—”
His words trailed off as in his mind, he heard the distant echo of two dark wings cutting through the sky. He remembered the figure in the darkness. The savior spun from shadow.
