Reaching for the brighter spot in his mind, Nocren chose to follow danger.
* * *
Avenor, hunched over a desk, writing a letter addressed to his father. A sheet of numbers lay next to him, the figures not matching those he put in the letter.
The scene dissolved, reassembling to show Mayor Krowe toasting Avenor. “Settled! And for a third less than we predicted.”
Another fade to darkness, the vision blurring until clarity unfurled once more.
A man stepped out of a room, pulling a heavy door braced with iron shut behind him. The clang of metal against metal filled the air as the man dropped a bar into place, locking the door from the outside. Another clank sound followed as the man fussed with the door. He turned around, one hand leaving his pocket. Avenor. Then he walked away, the glow of runes etched into the door fading in the background.
* * *
“Well?” present-day Avenor prompted, the impatience in his voice dragging Nocren out of the wind’s touch. “How does my future look?”
Bleak, he wanted to say. But for everyone else most of all.
“You’ve nearly reached the end of your trials,” Nocren made himself say. “Successfully, I might add, but not without effort or conflict.”
Hunger filled Avenor’s face, but also a flicker of doubt. “I’d like how that sounds, if you had specifics. You just used some pretty words and a light show to cover how general that fortune was.”
“It’s not a fortune,” Nocren said through gritted teeth. “It’s… possibilities, not the definitive future.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me.”
Truly, the Goddess Syvrine must’ve smiled on Avenor. It was the only explanation for how he’d made it all these years without a broken nose.
Rain pelted the glass as the wind surged. Nocren’s magic pulsed beneath his skin, eager to taste the thin stream seeping through the windowpane.
He hesitated. It had been so long since he’d done such personal readings. What he did for the Sentinels was always small. Open questions, like what could he expect if he cleared that trail? What were the warning signs for each Coalition delegate? How should he approach them? A touch of the wind here and there, more like consulting an almanac. Most days, he didn’t consult the wind at all. Just an ordinary man relying on his wits.
He’d forgotten the slippery feeling of the wind when it was eager like this. Hungry to show him everything. Anything. This was the wind at its most dangerous, the potentialities it would show most colored, whether by Nocren’s own desires or Avenor’s.
Change whispered through his skull—still inharmonious, but this time with an unmistakable similarity to how it felt with Calya.
No, not similar. Connected. If she was in trouble…
Nocren closed his eyes once more.
* * *
A slim figure rifled through a desk, tossing all manner of papers and random writing paraphernalia aside. The woman paused, picking up a thin notebook held together with twine. She started to unwrap it, then froze, her head whipping around to look over her shoulder, bringing her face into view.
Calya.
Change, the wind pressed into Nocren’s mind, but this time with a sense of foreboding. He didn’t remember feeding the wind more of his magic, but the scene dissolved just as it had during the last sequence of visions, slowly coming back into focus in a dimmer light.
A dark room devoid of any furnishings aside from a plain sconce on the wall, its torch unlit. The feeble light came from above, slivers of it creeping in through the slats of the ceiling. Not a roof but floorboards. A basement cell.
More light flooded the room as a door at the top of a short flight of stairs opened. A silhouette filled the doorway—Avenor. He gazed down at the bottom of the cell. Sensations rolled from him, dread and hope coalescing into panic-infused relief.
Calya was on the floor, hands bound in front of her.
* * *
Nocren’s eyes opened, the sticky feeling of Avenor’s rejoicing still burning in his mind. Avenor’s emotion in the visions had not been a kindly release but that of frayed nerves—the shaky exhale of a man who knew he’d escaped harsh judgment by the skin of his teeth. Guilt and glee rolled into one.
It set off something dark and defensive in Nocren’s chest.
