She was thinking of running.
Defecting to the Acolyte, because she believed it couldhealhim.
“I will gladly bow to a power that can save you,”she’d told Kinlear.
He just never thought she’ddo it.
It was so obvious now, the way it played all out in his dreams.
It’s your fault,his mind hissed again,for not caring enough to understand it.
He’d been so focused on the ending of his dream...that he’d forgotten to pay attention to the beginning.
So, Kinlear found himself here often, alone in the barn, after Soraya’s death. It was where he once trained mighty eagles for flight. It was where he once stole his first kiss with her, shortly after they were Matched. Letters had first sparked their love, but when they were together, in person...it was electric.
To the point where, if he allowed himself to focus on those memories for too long, he felt as if he could hardly eventhinkbeyond the self-loathing that appeared.
You are Veilborne,he told himself.You are worthy in this place.
He sighed, and stopped to duck into a dusty storage alcove, setting his cane down beside a haphazardly stacked tower of hay.
This exact spot...
It was where he’d stood, his back up against the hay, when Soraya showed him a strange black book, and claimed the answer to their future together was in it.
We could live forever, you and I,she’d said.Wild and wonderful and free, so long as we join the Acolyte.
But it would never happen.
He would never be able to see past the promise of his visions...and it always ended with Kinlear on the raphon’s back.Kinlear...andher,the Ravenminder, soaring to kill the very thing Soraya wanted to bow to.
And even though Soraya was real, and right in front of him...
Kinlear still clung, each night, to that vision of the woman in his dreams. He couldn’t give up their future, a Veil-seen fate, for one of defecting, with his first love.
He would die a great prince, the savior of his kingdom.
...Or he would be stubborn enough to find a way to live in mediocrity until then.
Kinlear sighed now and sat down on the hay.
The alcove here was full of barrels and bags of shavings and buckets of extra grain. And, thanks toPast Kinlear,who often planned so perfectly ahead, it was also where he kept one of his many stashes of winterwine safely tucked away.
He scooped up a bottle, uncorked it with his teeth, and leaned his head back against the wall...
And drank.
He drank and he planned.
He thought of how he would shape his future, if he had the chance to live, if his illness gave him long enough to defeat the Acolyte before it stole him.He imagined how he would speak to her, his Ravenminder, the next time they met. Would he ask her name first, for he’d never caught it before, or would he go right to talking about the ravens?
Clever birds, I’ve always thought,he’d say, channeling his most princely exterior.Tell me, my Lady, what is it thatyousee in them?
He took a sip. It burned going down, and he smiled.
He would get to know her, as best as he could, without their interaction seeming like a challenge. He would be the perfect, polished prince his mother wished him to be.
He would be mysterious and charming and dreadfully clever.
