Who?
Oh.
The wind moaned in alarm. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t the right place or the right time. It nudged the boy, pushing him toward a metal column.
It was the solange-eyed one. He stalked into the tunnel like a man entering a gauntlet. He wasn’t wrong. The narrow platform lined by steel columns did have a similar feel.
The wind shivered. There was something wrong with the solange-eyed one. He looked the same: rough-hewn face, battle-ready, muscled like his father, with the graceful agility of his mother, one hazel-green eye and one cosmic-storm eye. The same.
Perhaps it was the expression that was different. Before, the wind could see the kindness of the fawn-like one in him. Now, it only saw a hunter.
In nature, there were animals who killed for survival. There were others who killed because they liked it. The solange-eyed one had the look of a leopard who longed to slaughter an entire fold of fenced-in sheep and then leave them to rot. There wasn’t any of his wolflike father or his gentle mother left in him.
The boy tensed and slowly pulled his hands from his pockets, shifting so he could watch the solange-eyed one’s slow, stalking gait.
The solange-eyed one was looking for something—or someone.
The wind held still and quiet. In the tunnel beneath them, a train rumbled through, vibrating the tiles.
“Maybe he won’t notice me,” the boy whispered.
Shh!
Didn’t the boy know better? Don’t speak when a predator is hunting!
The solange-eyed one tilted his head, listening. He’d been walking toward the mother and her son, but then he stopped. His muscled back tensed, and then his hands curled, his fingers drawing to his thumbs.
The wind curled around the boy’s chest, pressing against his quickly beating heart. The boy held his fingers to his thumb. He couldn’t—shouldn’t—conjure. While the solange-eyed one couldn’t see illusion like the girl, he could feel it when another conjurer created an illusion. That trickling, cold-water feel was what alerted conjurers that someone like them was nearby.
Hide, the wind whispered.
Now wasn’t the time to fight the solange-eyed one. This wasn’t the place.
The wind didn’t know what would happen if the solange-eyed man and the boy fought in this narrow, dirt-smudged tunnel.
The boy held still. He was quiet. He was a Ward. He blended in with the tile, unnoticeable and unnoticed.
The solange-eyed one’s shoulders loosened, and he started walking again, staring at the tiles, peering at the mother and the son.
The boy let out a quiet sigh. Then, at that soft exhale, the solange-eyed one spun around.
The wind shrieked just as the rushing wind of a train sped through the tunnel. The train’s headlight speared them, lighting the boy as if he were standing in a spotlight. He held still, a deer in headlights.
The solange-eyed one’s lips curled into a cruel smile.
“Well, he’s noticed me,” the boy said, his smile gone.
The wind rushed around him, pulling the train’s air to itself, building a whirlwind. The train’s doors slid open, and a flock of people hurried out, shoving into each other and congealing in a giant mass of humans scurrying toward the exit.
For a moment, they blocked the solange-eyed man from the boy. The train cars had dumped so many people onto the platform that the narrow space was swimming with them.
Run! The wind shoved the boy. Run!
“Good idea.”
The boy was about to disappear into the crowd when the river of people parted. The solange-eyed one was still staring at where the boy stood, and when he saw him, his smile widened.
“I thought I saw you,” he said, and although the boy may not have heard him, the wind did. It shuddered at the deep scrape of his voice.
