Chapter 40 #2
Suddenly, the whispering stopped, and my heart followed for a good second. Even the fire seemed to take a break from crackling just now—and then the seer’s eyes opened wide, and she looked up at me.
Raw energy went through me, the heat and the cold under my skin—whatever the fuck they were—coming together and trying to kill me right where I stood.
They didn’t, though. The pain only lasted a second.
Then the seer said, “Sit.”
My knees were weak, my legs shaking, and that’s why I didn’t hesitate.
Slowly, I went and sat in front of her, the golden bowl between us.
I wasn’t afraid of her attacking me—she didn’t look like she could throw a punch if she tried.
But I was plenty afraid of the words that could come out of that mouth.
Words I’d be so tempted to believe because of what she was. An actual seer.
Betty was going to flip when she heard about this.
“I’m…I’m Nilah,” I said, when she kept her eyes down on that white liquid that really did look like milk diluted with water. It rippled slightly when she moved those old, wrinkled hands about, but nothing else was in it that I could see .
“I know who you are, Lifebound. The question is, do you ?”
The seer looked up at me, her voice so much stronger than I thought it would be. It didn’t waver, and it was far from the whispering she’d been doing at first.
For a second I looked at the door, still open, the room beyond empty. I could get back to it in two seconds if needed. I could run right out of here before she had the chance to do anything to me, the second I felt uncomfortable. And that put me at ease, if only for a little bit.
The fire dancing in the fireplace warming my back, though it was a good distance away, calmed down the racing of my heart, too.
“I’m Nilah Dune, the prince’s mortal Lifebound,” I said, and I sounded a little less afraid already.
The seer looked up at me again, said nothing for a good moment.
Allowed me look at her— really look at her and see the round shape of her face, the thin hair on her head, the deep, dark eyes that looked like spheres full of secrets when she focused on me, the way she breathed, steadily, slowly.
The way her hands moved, the sunspots on her knuckles, the neatly trimmed nails—and most importantly, her energy.
It was soft. Calm. Not at all like that of the fae, which pressed against my skin, weighed over my shoulders. Hers was just there, like fresh sunlight. Like a slow breeze, just gently letting me know it was there.
A voice in my head insisted that it was all on purpose, premeditated, but I wasn’t sure whether I believed it yet.
“Let’s see, shall we?” the seer finally said, and she offered me her hand over the bowl.
I licked my dry lips. “See what?”
“If that is the truth of you. ”
“You…you think it isn’t?”
The seer didn’t even blink when she said, “Not at all.”
Fuck me sideways. What the hell was I supposed to say to that?
My hand shook as I put it over hers. Stupid, stupid Nilah, I chided myself in my head, but I didn’t stop.
I shouldn’t have been touching this woman at all, shouldn’t have been in this room to begin with, but I didn’t stop.
Couldn’t, not anymore. I was way too curious to know what she would say about me.
If there really was an explanation for what the hell went on inside me when I lost control.
Why Maera’s scratch hadn’t shifted me.
Too many whys that needed answering for me to back down right now.
The seer wrapped her fingers around my hand and brought the other over it, too. Closed her eyes.
“What—” I started to ask because I wanted to be prepared, but then the pain that sliced open my palm cut me off, and instead I ended up screaming a little.
The seer took back her hand, and with the other turned mine upside down.
A drop of blood fell in the middle of the bowl—and she let go.
My heart pounded against my ribcage. I pulled my hand to my chest, terrified all of a sudden. There was a small cut right in the middle of my palm, like she’d used a knife on me and I hadn’t even seen it. How in the fuck?!
“What the hell? What was that for?” I spit, dragging myself farther from the bowl, trying to understand what the hell had just happened.
“Blood,” the seer said, eyes closed, hands steady over the white liquid—which looked like it was about to start boiling any second now .
“You could have just said so,” I said through gritted teeth, angry now because the cut had been tiny, and it wasn’t even bleeding anymore. It wasn’t painful in the least, but the anger remained.
“What do you need my blood for? What exactly are you doing?” I asked the seer, but she didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t speak, didn’t whisper, didn’t hum—just held her hands over the bowl, and let me ask a few more times while I watched the bubbles rippling on the surface of that liquid.
No sign of my blood in it, though. I thought it would at least turn it slightly pink, but it didn’t.
The seer was silent for a long time, doing nothing but breathing and holding those hands steadily over the bowl. I stopped asking questions eventually, and my own came back to fill my mind like I’d suddenly turned the faucet on for them to spill out.
God, it was so difficult to believe that this was my life now, that I was so far from everything I knew, the people I loved, the Nilah I used to be.
Now I was sitting on the floor with a seer in a room, with a crackling fire at my back, waiting with my heart in my throat for her to tell me what I was. Who I was.
Because I was definitely not the Nilah who first came through the Aetherway.
“Speak your question.”
My eyes opened before I realized I’d closed them. The seer hadn’t moved an inch, but I heard her voice.
“Who am I?” I asked, the words foreign on my tongue.
The white water in the bowl boiled. “ Noxavira. ”
My gut twisted. I’d heard that word before. The werewolves had called me that. The shadow between truths, Maera said. Old Veren.
“I’m not a shadow—I’m a human being,” I said, a little desperate now, because what were the odds that two people call me that? People who didn’t know each other. Who I’m sure had never met.
“You are no human being,” the seer said, eyes closed now, head slowly moving back. “Your fate is sealed in frostfire. I cannot see through it.”
My heart squeezed and squeezed. I dragged myself closer to the bowl and said, “Please, tell me what that means. Just…just tell me what I am.”
Now that was something I never, ever thought I’d say to anyone in my life. What am I. What a ridiculous idea not to know what one even is.
“You are what you were, and what you will be again should you so choose,” the seer said, her voice rough now, smaller, more like a whisper by the word. “I cannot see through.”
Red hot anger rose inside me. “Then who can?!”
The way her gaze locked on mine, like she was suddenly surprised. The water in the bowl began to bubble so much, it shook the entire thing. It was going to spill any second now, I was sure of it, so I moved back. Rose to my knees. Looked at the door— this is too fucking nuts!
“Seek the throne that stands with no crown. It will show you what she left behind.”
The words slipped from the lips of the seer in an almost robotic way. I stopped for a moment, my mind blank. “What?”
But the seer didn’t answer me. Instead, she raised her hands and then blood began to spill out from her eyes.
My God, she was crying tears of blood!
The image of her face like that would remain with me until the day I died. The seer was shaking, fucking vibrating where she sat, and the boiling water in her bowl began to steam.
My first thought was to scream for help because this couldn’t be normal.
Somebody needed to do something, help her, because her eyes were fucking bleeding—but I never got the chance.
Because the steam rose and became thicker, just like the mist over that river in the Illusion Game, and then it slowly began to gain color. Shapes.
I watched with my breath held and my nails sinking into my palms as the steam created an image I’d seen before—albeit only half.
A woman with light blonde hair, bright blue eyes, wearing dark blue velvet and a small, cryptic smile on her face. Holding a mirror in one hand, and a silver crown in the other, both over her knees.
Air no longer made it to my burning lungs.
It was the painting— the same image as that painting I’d seen in the Gallery of Time. What I’d thought was the handle of a knife was actually the handle of a silver mirror she held in her left hand. The picture was whole, detailed, clear as day, so there was no way to miss it.
The woman looked exactly like me indeed.