Visions.
The future...just as Magus had said.
He saw his return home to the Citadel. He watched his own long embrace with Arawn, a happy reunion. His brother’s muscles dwarfed him. His magic blazed as bright as any Firemage king.
He saw Soraya slamming her fist against his chest. She was utterly breathless, as if she’d run to get to him. “Leave us like that again, and I swear to the gods, I’ll kill you myself.”
The sky changed.
Kinlear was older in the next vision.
His eyes widened – it couldn’t be true – for he saw himself in an Eagleminders’ cloak, gold fabric lining the white hood. He wasn’t just close to the great birds...he was right there with them, Minding them as he saw fit. It was a future he’d never expected. A future he wanted to run to, with open arms and his heart beating out of his chest.
Things shifted again, until he saw a beautiful Sacred woman.
Soraya, with her dark hair and her eyes like the night. But she was older, a furiously talented Rider...
And... she washis.
He’d never thought it possible, but he saw the moment of their Matching, when the gods chosehimfor Soraya, instead of Arawn.
He saw the pain in his twin brother’s eyes.
He saw a speaking stone shoved into a drawer, forgotten, and a chasm that widened between twins, as their love for the same woman stepped in.
He fell further into the future, tears filling his vision as he saw his own life flash before his eyes. They were glimpses, beautiful little snippets of what he was to someday call his own.
An answer to all his prayers.
A life that was worth living, after all the pain, all the suffering...
He’d never wanted anything more than this.
The good mixed with the bad. The beauty in the chaos. In the future, he saw that his illness still plagued him.
But Soraya was there.
He saw–his eyes widened, and warmth flooded him even as he fell through the darkness– the two of them, together in a dark room, behind a rune-locked door, with their lips pressed close, and no clothing between them as they did something that was beautiful...and utterly forbidden.
“I love you,” she whispered to him. “I will do anything to save you.”
The vision shifted.
He saw himself coughing and bleeding and being put in runic stasis, time and again.
He saw the rage in Soraya’s eyes as she stood over his sleeping body and told the gods, “Take me. Please...heal him. And take me instead.”
He saw her hands holding a black book. He fell past a vision of empty pages that flickered too fast.
He saw--
Something shot past him, shifting the vision again.
A war eagle, brilliant and bright.
Gods, it was soaring fast. Recklessly, it flew into the wind and the snow and the oncoming night. He could feel the galefrom its feathers, hear the rumble of its screech echo deep in his chest.
And though it hadn’t happened yet, Kinlearknewthat eagle, for in the visions, he had trained it himself.
