CHAPTER 1 RAYA #2
trials,” I remind her. That was the exact reason I failed to pass the last round. By taking too long, being too indecisive, not trusting myself to simply know how to construct the right questions to ask.
“Well, not thinking them through isn’t doing you much good, so maybe you could try slowing down?
” she says, raising a perfectly arched brow.
Akari has always been what you’d call striking, even before she grew into her confidence and her willowy height.
Her eyes are long and angular, her skin a pale ochre in tone, and her hair black, bobbed, and sharply cut, a perfect complement to the razor-edge of her cheekbones and the way her lips purse when she’s mad. Especially at me.
“Can we please stop pretending that it’ll make a difference?
” I snap, too keyed up to keep my frustration from biting.
It’s one thing for me to cling to a dying hope—this is my life we’re talking about, my magic that’s going to end up bound—but quite another for Akari to indulge that delusion.
Six months ago, maybe; I still needed her optimism back then, her help training.
Whereas now, it’s starting to verge on condescending.
We both know that I’m running out of time to make good on my pedigree.
Perhaps I should just quit dreaming already and make peace with that fact.
“I’m not pretending anything.” Akari’s voice hardens in pitch.
“Trust me, if I thought you had no chance of making it, I’d have told you that to your face—if only so that you’d quit whining.
” She softens the jibe with a wink and a smile.
“Seriously, Ray, this story only ends with you losing your magic if you let it. It’s not about being the best or the strongest, you just have to do enough to skirt by,” she says, unlocking the door to our room.
“So, spend this last month proving you know how to direct a few basic questions and the seers’ guild won’t be able to keep you out.
Then you can take a job somewhere far, far away from them.
Far away from your parents, too, since they’re hardly helping with your state of mind. ”
On that, at least, Akari’s right. Once I’m in the guild, I won’t have to spend my life in a seeing tower like my parents, seeking complex futures for the Council to consider and discount.
I could travel the world as a ship’s weathervane, become a gambler’s aide or a gambling hall’s safekeeper, advise banking houses on how to best preserve their coin and their wealth.
Hells, I could simply sell glimpses of the future to anyone who can pay.
There are plenty of ways for an Indigo to make a living—just as long as they prove that they can accurately predict.
Which is the one thing I’m yet to master.
And while I appreciate Akari’s belief in my ability to learn the theory, I’ve been grappling with my power for years now, and the result never changes, no matter how hard I try or how long I let my questions steep.
I’m just not built for this brand of seeing.
The only thing that’s likely to help me is if there were an entirely new method of—
Wait. No. The thought that strikes me is like a bucket of water tossed into a cold wind. Not a new method of seeing, an old one. A practice long since abandoned on account of the damage it can wreak.
“What if it’s not about directing my questions,” I say, sounding the idea out. “What if I could show them the value of my power a different way?”
“Is there a different way to see the future?” Akari drops down to her bed, shrugging out of her academic robes. Black with the symbol for strength embroidered at the collar and sleeves, to signify her Orange color. “Other than asking questions, I mean?”
“There’s a different way to ask questions,” I say, shedding the itchiness of mine.
A way that requires more power but less skill.
“You had better not be talking about what I think you’re talking about.” Akari catches my meaning right away.
Open questions instead of the specific ones I’ve been taught to wield.
The one type of question that’s forbidden.
“It could work,” I say, ignoring the risk. “If I can figure out how to harness the resulting vision.”
“You are not figuring out anything.” In the space of a heartbeat, she’s shimmered over to my side of the room, so that we’re standing nose to chin and eye to anger, barely an inch of space left between us. “Getting expelled isn’t going to solve your problems.”
“I’ll only get expelled if they find out,” I tell her, refusing to flinch.
“Which they will when no other question you ask yields a vision,” she hits me with the obvious objection, the reason every Indigo child is warned against asking an open question from the moment they’re old enough to cast the spell.
Because an open question isn’t just a wrong question—it’s not merely too broad or too vague to pinpoint a path in a meaningful way—it’s a question that encompasses so many possibilities that it serves to antagonize the fates.
And while they will, generally, still deign to answer them, they may also decide that every subsequent question would now count as a repeat, and shut you out for weeks, or months, or years.
There have even been cases of Indigo Shades losing their ability to cast for good, staying fate-touched forever.
“Come on, Kiri, the risk of that happening is so small.” I hold my ground, stubborn.
That is how our magic used to be practiced for centuries before the guild started refining it to a skill.
It’s said that in the old days, the most powerful seers didn’t even need to worry about repeat questions, they could just trust that the future would always steer their path away from the cliffs.
But since that kind of magic is impossible to sell and even harder to replicate, year by year, question by question, the guild set to streamlining the technique.
They turned a nebulous art into a teachable science.
I’m just no good at wielding my power in the way that they picked.
“Ray, swear to me you won’t do this,” Akari says, clamping her hands around my shoulders. “Swear it right now, or for your own good, I’m telling.”
She’d never tell.
She’d yell at me until one of us dropped dead of exhaustion, but she’d never tell—we’ve known each other too long for that, practically lived in each other’s pockets since the day the Academy assigned us a shared room when we were six.
Back then, we didn’t have so many classes in common, nor did we have any idea that I’d prove to be an awful seer while she grew into the most accomplished Orange in our year.
We stuck together because my famous name coupled with her useful magic meant that neither of us ever got teased when we were kids.
Then as we got older, the bond we’d forged began to transcend the politics of power and the vast mismatch in our gifts.
And never, in all those years of breaking into the kitchens after dark, cheating on our homework, and covering for each other’s trysts, has Akari ever threatened to tell.
The only reason she’s threatening to do that now is because she knows it’ll knock some sense into me.
It should knock some sense into me.
When I first realized that I was in danger of losing my color, it would have.
But now we’re a month shy of guild selections and I’m staring down the barrel of a problem I can’t fix.
An open question could save my future. If I can control such a difficult feat of magic, the guild would have no choice but to acknowledge my value.
And if I can’t, well . . . the worst that’ll happen is I stop having visions altogether—which is exactly what will happen if I fail my trials again.
I can either endanger my magic now or let the Council bind it later.
At least this way, I stand a tiny chance of averting my fate.
I’d be jeopardizing my future on my own terms.
“I’m obviously not going to do it, Kiri.
” I squirm out of her grip, and since I don’t yet know if I’d actually have the guts to follow through on this gambit, it doesn’t feel like a lie.
Though, in reality, the idea is less a blossoming bud than it is a weed that’s taken root inside my head.
Growing, spreading, propagating, sprouting a whole field of wants, and what-ifs, and a hunger to do away with sense.
Because the truth is, using my power the way the Academy teaches has never worked for me, and if there’s anyone strong enough to corral the fates without consequence, then it should be the daughter of the two most celebrated Indigos to ever grace the guild.
So maybe I won’t be jeopardizing my future so much as forcing it back into its natural place. Maybe the only way to get the future I want is to stop playing by the rules and take a risk.