Just this morning, the future made a resolute point of denying me answers, after only offering me a single vision that was as impossible as it was insulting and abstract. Nothing in the books I searched shed light on anything it showed me. Nothing explained how I could have seen my own death, or why the future would bother harping on about some romance—and a super fucking illegal one, at that.
A Shade and a Hue.
Together.
In love.
The very thought is enough to shudder me senseless. That’s not a future I would ever allow to happen—regardless of whether it wasfated or not.Or impervious to change.Fernay can take his assertion and shove it somewhere crass. Professor Lyons has also taught us about this type of path before, but he held that they’reaverseto change, not impervious, and I’m more inclined to believe him than some centuries-dead scribe. Averse just means I’ll have to try harder, and that’s if I even accept that anything in that vision has a basis in fact.
Which it doesn’t.
“Raya—are you listening to me?” Akari tosses a pencil at my head, snapping me back to the present.
“Yeah, I—what?” I try to shake the guilt from my expression. I’ve not yet told her about the open question or the preposterous premonition that came after. I meant to, I really did, but the moment I returned to our room, she demanded to hear the same story I’d told the trackers, then she demanded that I accompany her to the archives so that we could study up on Hues, and then it just . . . didn’t feel like the right time anymore. We’d veered too hard towards a different subject.
“I said: are you sure all three of them were halves?” she repeats, glancing up from the book in her hands. “It was pretty chaotic in there, could you have maybe . . . gotten it wrong?”
“I saw their eyes, Kiri—and they were as close to me as you are now. No spiked rim, not burned black. Then when the third one compelled me, his irises definitely flashed.”
“Okay, well, then that makes the girl a . . . Bronze and him a . . . Gold,” Akari says, turning my insides to ice.
A Bronze, a Sapphire, and a Gold wielding Red magic in an Orange-convened trial.
That’s every single color from my vision.
“Erm . . . and how exactly did you decide that?” My foot taps a nervous staccato against the table. Of all the visions in the world, this can’t be the first one I actually get right. It just can’t be.
“By looking at this list of known Hues and their gifts.” Akari spins the book around. “According to this, only a Bronze can interact with their surroundings in the Gray, so no other half breed could have unlocked the chains—and it would explain why you saw her openthe door instead of wisping through it. Her physicality wouldn’t allow for wisping. Then, since you’re certain the second one didn’t use a pre-spelled charm to compel you—”
“He didn’t,” I say, adamant. If he had, then not only would I have found some spent crystals in his wake, but his eyes wouldn’t have flashed Red with the casting.
“Then he must have been using live magic, so his gift has to be stealing power, and that equals a Gold.” She taps the relevant paragraph.
“But that—”Doesn’t make any sense, does it?“Can a Gold even steal enough magic to glamour an entire chamber of full-bloods?” A feat that, on a good day, would be a struggle for a seasoned Shade.
“Who the hell knows.” Akari shrugs, pointing to another Hue on the list. “This says that a Sapphire can sense the presence of other Shades, so how did this one get himself caught in the first place? And this part claims that only an Emerald can cast a stable In-Between—the rest are supposed to be pretty terrible at it—which also doesn’t fit with what you saw.”
No, it doesn’t. All three of them made it look easy, like the spell was an afterthought, not a strain.
“So basically, nothing about this is adding up?” I sigh, my nails raking deep trails along my scalp.
“Not even a little. But you do know what it means, right?” The enthusiasm in Akari’s voice is at direct odds to the defeat in mine.
It means I’m no closer to disproving my vision.
It means our guesswork has failed to set us on the right track.
It means I should really tell Akari the whole truth already.
“That . . . the Academy’s not as impenetrable as we all thought?” I say instead.
“Well, yes, that too.” Akari snaps the book shut and leans hungrily across the table. “But it also means that there are three Hues in
Sarotuza right now.”
I instantly catch up to her meaning.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting ideas.”
