Chapter 30 Kailin
KAILIN
"The most disturbing visions are not those of what will be, but of what might be if we fail to act."
—Shaman Frena Boqa
Alar's skin was warm against mine, his breathing deep and even. We'd made love, and for a few precious moments, I'd made him forget about the letter from his mother and the impossible choice he was facing. Now he slept peacefully, one arm draped across my waist.
I should have gotten up to take the sleeping draught. So far, I'd been so good about it, never missing a dose, but I was comfortable and drowsy, and I didn't want to get out of bed.
One night without the medication wouldn't make much of a difference. Perhaps I would have a dreamless night naturally. As I closed my eyes, a tendril of unease followed me into sleep, but I ignored it and drifted away.
The dream started differently from my prophetic visions. There were no panoramic vistas, no foreign noises, and no urges to hunt. It felt like a regular dream. A human dream, without the gradual sinking into animal consciousness and the sense of inhabiting other bodies.
It was like stepping through a doorway into another reality, or perhaps a movie.
I was on the Citadel's roof, but something was wrong. The stone beneath my feet was scorched black, still radiating heat. Smoke drifted across the platform, acrid and choking. In the distance, dragons roared—not the joyful sounds of flight but screams of rage and pain.
Bodies lay scattered across the roof. Cadets in their training uniforms, still and broken. Blood pooled on the stone.
My heart hammered. Where were my friends? Where was—
There. A figure was slumped against the parapet.
I knew before I reached him. Something in the way he lay, the angle of his body. I ran, my feet sliding on blood-slicked stone.
"Alar!"
He was covered in blood. It soaked his uniform, spreading in a dark pool beneath him. I fell to my knees and touched his face with shaking hands.
His eyes opened. Those familiar blue eyes, now clouded with pain.
"You should have saved me..."
"I tried." My voice broke. "I'm sorry."
"Some fates..." He coughed, and blood flecked his lips. "Can't be changed..."
"No. Don't say that. You're going to be fine. We'll get a medic, we'll—"
But his eyes were already going distant. The light was fading. His last breath escaped in a soft sigh, and then he was gone.
Dead.
Alar was dead in my arms.
Gasping, I jolted awake.
Sweat soaked my nightclothes and the sheets beneath me. My heart raced so fast it hurt. For a terrifying moment, I couldn't remember where I was, couldn't shake the image of Alar's lifeless eyes.
Then I felt warmth beside me. Heard his steady breathing.
I turned and saw him there, sleeping peacefully. His chest was rising and falling with each breath.
Alive.
I reached out with trembling fingers and touched his face. His skin was warm. I felt the flutter of his pulse at his throat. He was real. Present. Living.
It was only a nightmare.
But Elu, it had felt so real.
I pulled my hand back before I could wake him and checked the clock on the desk. Three in the morning, still hours until dawn.
I hadn't drunk the sleeping draught, that must be the cause of the disturbing dream.
Missing a dose after nightly regular use had caused a rebound effect, bringing on a nightmare.
It was also possible that it had been triggered by my anxiety about the letter from Alar's family.
My subconscious had processed and amplified fears I'd refused to acknowledge while awake.
It hadn't been a vision. It had only been a nightmare born of stress and medication withdrawal.
I slipped out of bed carefully, trying not to disturb Alar, and retrieved the small bottle from the drawer. My hands shook as I measured the dose into water and drank it down. The bitter taste made me grimace, but I welcomed it.
Anything to prevent more dreams like that.
I crawled back into bed and curled against Alar's warmth. He murmured something in his sleep and pulled me closer, his heartbeat steady against my back.
Alive. He was alive.
The sleeping draught worked quickly, and I felt myself sinking into unconsciousness, darker and deeper this time, and mercifully, dreamless.
Morning came too soon. I woke up feeling like I hadn't slept at all, my body heavy and my mind foggy. It reminded me of the nights after Podana and before the sleeping draught therapy.
I was back to being exhausted before my day even began, and this was despite having slept for an extra hour because I was excused from conditioning.
"You okay?" Alar asked as he returned to our room from the showers. "You look tired."
I winced. "I forgot the sleeping draught and had a bad dream."
His expression tightened with concern. "Did you create more connections?"
"It wasn't that kind of dream."
"Do you want to tell me about it?"
I shook my head. "I want to forget about it."
Later, when we entered the mess hall, Shovia took one look at me and frowned. "You look terrible again. What happened? You were doing so well."
I sat down next to her. "Forgot the sleeping draught and had a strange dream."
She tensed. "Did you merge with animal consciousness?"
I shook my head. "It wasn't one of those. It was a nightmare rather than anything prophetic. The Citadel was under attack."
I didn't mention the bodies. Didn't mention Alar dying in my arms, his last words, the terrible finality of his eyes going dark.
Shovia looked skeptical but didn't push. "Stress dreams are normal. We're all anxious about the bonding ceremony."
"Exactly," Morek added through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. "I dreamed that I showed up to the Day of Volition naked and all the female cadets wanted to touch me." He shivered dramatically. "What a nightmare."
The others laughed, and I forced myself to smile, but I couldn't shake the effects of the dream. It clung to me like a black, suffocating smoke.
After breakfast, we filed into the strategy room for our first class of the day. Captain Odinah was briefing us on defensive formations, using a model of the Citadel to demonstrate proper positioning during an attack.
Was that a coincidence? Or was the universe trying to tell me something?
I kept seeing the roof as it had been in my dream—scorched, blood-soaked, littered with bodies. I kept hearing Alar's voice: Some fates can't be changed.
"Cadet Strom." Odinah's sharp voice cut through my thoughts. "What's the primary weakness in this formation?"
I stared at the model, my mind blank. "I...the eastern approach?"
"Wrong. You weren't paying attention."
"Sorry, Captain. Won't happen again."
She cast me a warning glare. "See that it doesn't."
The lecture continued, but I'd lost any chance of catching up. My mind kept circling back to the dream, examining every detail, searching for meaning.
Was it prophetic? It hadn't felt like Podana. That vision had been overwhelming, drowning me in hundreds of simultaneous consciousnesses. This had been singular, focused, undeniably mine.
But also undeniably real in a way normal dreams weren't.
I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Things didn't improve during my flight training later that afternoon.
I couldn't focus. My signals were delayed, and my body positioning was wrong. We nearly clipped a tower during a turn because I'd been staring at the Citadel roof, looking for scorch marks that weren't there.
"Land," Ravel said after the third near-miss. "Now."
Onyx descended to our usual isolated peak, and as soon as we dismounted, Ravel turned to me with his arms crossed over his chest.
"What's going on, Cadet Strom? You look like death."
I winced. "Bad night."
"That's not an answer."
I didn't want to tell him about the dream. Speaking the words out loud would make it even more real, more disturbing. But I knew Ravel wouldn't ease up until I told him everything.
I sank onto a sun-warmed rock. "I forgot to drink the sleeping draught and had a disturbing dream."
"What kind of dream?"
"The Citadel was under attack. Bodies everywhere." I swallowed hard. "Alar died in my arms."
Ravel's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. "Tell me everything."
So I did.
Ravel listened without interrupting. When I finished, he sat beside me on the rock.
"It felt real," I said. "But not like Podana. That was overwhelming, hundreds of consciousnesses. This was just me. Witnessing something terrible."
"You didn't drink the hallucinogenic tea, right?"
I shook my head. "It was probably just withdrawal from the sleeping medication that I missed. Or maybe stress about the letter from Alar's family."
I'd forgotten that I hadn't told him about the letter. Ravel also didn't know who Alar really was. Only Saphir, Codric, and I knew who he really was.
"What was in the letter?" Ravel asked.
"His father is ill, and his mother wants him to come home." It was the truth, just not all of it.
"He can't go," Ravel said. "If he goes now, he can never return."
I turned to look at him. "What if his father is dying?"
"Then he will have to make the choice. He can't go home and return to the Citadel. It's too dangerous."
Well, that was one way to solve Alar's dilemma. He just couldn't go.
"Besides," Ravel continued. "Alar is part of the prophecy of the seven, which means that he cannot die as he did in your dream or go home."
I felt the weight of a mountain lift off my chest. "So, it might not happen?"
"Probably not. But most likely because you prevent it from happening. That's why you were shown the attack."
"How am I supposed to prevent something when I don't know when or why it happens?"
"I don't know. That's the burden of prophecy."
I groaned and buried my face in my hands. "I hate this. I hate not knowing if what I saw was real or just my fear taking shape. I hate that my abilities are so unpredictable that I'm afraid of dreaming the future."
"No one said that being a seer was easy."
"Should I tell him?" I asked.
"Would you want to know if someone dreamed you would die?"
I thought about it. "I don't know. Maybe?"
"It might make him paranoid," Ravel said. "Change how he acts."
"Or save his life."
"Or become self-fulfilling."
I frowned. "How?"
"He acts differently and causes the exact situation you saw."
That possibility chilled me. What if telling Alar about the vision was what led to it coming true? What if my warning created the very circumstances that killed him?
"I hate this," I repeated.
"I believe you." Ravel wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and I welcomed the comfort, resting my head on his arm.
For a long moment, neither of us said anything. We just gazed into the distance, looking over the mountains.
"I won't tell him," I decided. "Not unless the vision repeats and gets clearer. I need to know why it happens, and how I'm supposed to save him."
"That's reasonable."
"Is it? Or am I just being a coward?"
Ravel turned to look at me. "You're trying to protect someone you love while also honoring your abilities. That's not cowardice. That's wisdom."
"It doesn't feel wise."
"It rarely does in the moment."