Chapter 24 #3
“You’re a mind reader?” Lory had believed that reading minds was a rare ability and one exclusive to Flame-born, if at all. She’d never thought that there could be two of those supposedly extinct mind-power wielders crammed into one and the same academy.
With a shake of his head, he measured Lory, waiting for her to comprehend. “I’m not the one possessing such powers, Miss Vednis.”
Holy fucking shit!
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer you leave your gutter language on the streets.” The grin started to vanish, but only so much, a remainder of it ready to tell tales of a kindness an Ashthorn instructor could never show.
“You mean—” A muscle ticked in Lory’s jaw a moment before it dropped, and she nearly lost speech entirely. “You mean it’s me?”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously?” This time, she didn’t merely think it; she addressed him through her mind.
“Obviously, it’s not me, or I’d have figured it out in my fifty-eight years, don’t you think?”
“But—I can’t hear you.” Lory focused hard, listening for a whisper of Nahrit’s voice inside her head, then shook it. “Nothing.”
This time, Nahrit’s grin widened. “That’s because you’re not reading my mind.
You’re projecting your thoughts.” He gestured at the door, and it swung shut on an invisible power.
Not wind, or Lory would have felt it. “A talent that hasn’t been heard of in centuries.
The ancient Flames had all sorts of mind powers.
Reading, projecting, a combination of both.
Usually, it was constricted to bloodlines, the path only open to family members or to their soul-bonded partners. ”
The world spun even sitting down, and deep inside Lory’s chest, one single throb cried the name Khayrivven.
She shut her thought down before she had the opportunity to finish his name. Nahrit couldn’t know.
“How do you know so much about the Flames and their powers?” Better to go on the offense than wait for him to sniff out her secret. A secret that could be the death of both Khayrivven and her.
Don’t think about him, don’t think about him.
“You have nothing to fear from me, Elory. I’ve been secretly watching over him since the day he crossed Ashthorn’s threshold clad in the brown of the common army, head bowed like a man broken.
But his mind is made of steel, a fortress no one can penetrate.
Not even the obstacles the Master of Whispers has made up to torment the man who might best him one day.
” Leaning forward, Nahrit pinned Lory with a gaze.
“But you, Elory Vednis… You have managed to breach the head of the Triad’s most questionable pick of the century.
A Criu boy, brought up in the Brestolyan army between men and women loyal to the king who killed his parents, forged by a training so brutal he should have long broken. ”
Those black eyes nearly swallowed her whole. “Something has kept him going, and I’d like to know if you might have been the one.”
The lump in Lory’s throat barely slid down as she repeatedly swallowed. “I only just met him.”
Truth.
But this wasn’t what Nahrit had been referring to.
“A Flame-born woman who will change the fate of this kingdom.” Nahrit’s words were familiar, yet not the exact ones she’d heard before. And the way he said them… like he was reading them from a book.
“My friend, the man who made the prophecy, phrased it so much better than that, but isn’t that who you are? The woman who will change the fate of Brestolya.”
If Lenya’s spies overheard this talk, they’d both be dead. All three of them; only, Khayrivven wouldn’t see his end coming.
Then another thought struck Lory.
What if the Medica Hand was one of those spies? What if she’d just condemned herself and everyone close to her to death? She couldn’t utter another word.
“No use keeping your mouth shut, Elory. Your mind is giving you away.” A glint in his eyes suggested he might strike any moment, but the smile returned, and he leaned back in his chair.
“Your secret is safe with me, Elory. Though you’ll need to learn to control your projecting, or you’ll seal your own fate before you can fulfill your destiny. ”
Paralyzed, Lory sat in her chair, staring into those black orbs, and her heart thundered in her chest the beat of a future she might not live to see.
“How do you know about the prophecy?” It was the only question she should be asking before she made up her mind if Princeton Nahrit was trustworthy or not.
“That is a long story. One for another day. All I can say is that, had I known my friend’s son survived and was wasting away in the common army, I wouldn’t have chosen to become a teacher at this academy.
I would have done all I could to get him out of there.
But as the Guardians willed it, they brought him to me, and since I have learned that his will is unbroken, I’ve left him alone, unburdened with the knowledge about yet another traitor inside Ashthorn’s walls.
He is better off not carrying that burden when he is carrying that of so many people’s lives.
” Wisdom glimmered in the man’s eyes. “Doesn’t mean I can’t aid his endeavors from the sidelines.
His father wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. ”