When I don’t step away, she brushes her fingertips across my left cheekbone.
Her touch is like…
A snowflake floating across my face.
She withdraws her hand, but she’s holding her breath, and I wait, listening carefully to her changing heartbeats, anticipating the moment she’ll break her silence.
“What you should know about me,” she says, “starts with a question.”
“I will answer.”
“Do you understand how my visions work?”
“I believe so,” I say. “I’ve studied the Oracles for as long as I could read. Your visions allow you to foresee harm to others. Sometimes you can foresee harm to yourself.”
Her breathing pauses. A held breath. “Are you aware that I’m vulnerable during them?”
Is this what she’s worried about?
“Oracle visions have a momentary paralyzing effect on your body,” I say. “Although I don’t think that’s common knowledge because I read it in an obscure text.”
“What you’ve said is correct. Except that I can speak during an Oracle vision, even if I can’t move.”
Interesting. I choose my question carefully. “Are you concerned for your safetyduring a vision?”
She folds her hands into her cloak. “Yes and no. When I was old enough, I was my father’s protector.”
I note the way she speaks in facts. Not a request for help.
The better she gets at this, the greater will be her chances of survival once we leave this forest.
“But there’s a new aspect of my visions that my father never had to contend with.”
Another fact.
“I have what I’ve come to callblade visions.”
Now, I’m wary. “The Dragonstone Blade has embedded itself into your arm, so?—”
“You can see it?”
My brow furrows. “Of course. It’s right there.”
Her hand visibly clamps around her arm beneath the cloak. “Others can’t see it. I’m not entirely sure who can, but I suspect it’s only…”
She doesn’t seem prepared to say it, so I speak it for her. “The three kings.”
Each one of us tied to her by a thread of power.
“That makes sense, given that the curse binds us. It would also make sense,” I continue, “that once the blade embedded itself in your arm, the curse would alter your power. There has never been such a powerful curse. Tell me about these blade visions.”
She breathes more easily now, but her heart thumps harder. “Like my Oracle visions, blade visions are out of my control. But they’re far more dangerous than a momentary paralysis. I have no awareness of my actions during them. None at all. I can speak and act, and you wouldn’t know I wasn’t myself except?—”
“Except for your face.”
Finally, I have an explanation for the icy beauty I witnessed her transform into back at the village, and then againduring the strange vision of her on the rooftop: a blade vision. Prompted by the curse.
Her lips are parted, her indrawn breath sharp, but her exhalation is softly relieved. “How did you know?”
