Chapter 2
Sage
“Fucking hell.” Flint shoved me aside, knocking me onto my butt, and grabbed Payne’s hand. He closed his eyes, his expression hard. “Shadow venom? I thought you said you fought bears.”
Grefin stared at me, his eyes wide. “We did. Just bears.”
“Then how?” Flint grabbed the jug of antivenom from my hand. “It’s over here,” he called out to the guardsman who’d run to the cabinet for the medicine the moment he’d heard the words “shadow venom.”
The healer looked from the jug to me and frowned then grabbed Payne’s hand again and closed his eyes. A flicker of light, barely bright enough for me to see, danced over Flint’s fingers for a quick moment before he released Payne.
“You got it to him just in time,” Flint said as he stood and rushed back to Kit. “Another heartbeat and it would have been too late.”
Oh, thank the Father.
I sagged back, my body throbbing in pain from the sudden overexertion, and a strange giddiness bubbled in my chest.
I did it.
I’d changed the future.
Which meant I had proof that if I kept my secret long enough, Sawyer would be safe…
Except I hadn’t seen Sawyer safe. I’d only seen that I’d taken his place and was murdered in the Gray instead.
But I had to cling to the hope that it was possible. I could change my fate. I could survive the attack that was coming and Sawyer would be safe.
Please, Father.
Grefin grabbed my wrist, yanking me closer. “How did you know?” he demanded as he glared at me. “How did you know Payne was poisoned?”
“I—” I glanced at Payne, who stared at me, his color already improving as the antivenom aided by Flint’s magic coursed through him. His eyes were wide with a different kind of shock from before.
This shock was disbelief, and I couldn’t blame him. I had no way of knowing he’d been poisoned, and I didn’t know how to explain it.
Sure, there were fae-touched humans — those who possessed a magical ability and not the men who were attracted to other men. But the gift was so rare, and I had no doubt being able to see the future was even more unlikely.
“There weren’t any serpents,” Grefin pressed. “There’s no way you could have known.”
His gaze dropped to my bare feet then jumped to my waist where I hadn’t secured my sword.
I wrenched free of Grefin’s grasp and crossed my arms, praying he wouldn’t notice my chest. Despite wearing a shirt and my jerkin, I now felt naked, like they’d discover the truth at any moment.
“Where are your boots?” He pressed his free hand against the side of his head and groaned.
“I was—” I bit the inside of my cheek.
I had to tell the truth. Once the chaos in the infirmary had calmed down, Flint and the other guardsmen would ask questions, and there wasn’t anything I could say other than the truth… and there was a chance they wouldn’t believe the truth either.
My stomach tightened and my mouth went dry.
There was also a chance they would believe me and want to use me, and I wouldn’t be able to help them because I couldn’t control my magic.
And what was done was done. I couldn’t take it back and I wouldn’t. Payne was alive, and I would deal with whatever came next.
“I’m fae-touched.”
Grefin rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here or how you knew.”
Payne tipped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “It does if by fae-touched you mean you’ve been blessed with magic.”
Grefin’s head snapped toward Payne, his eyes wide.
“You have the sight. It’s the only way you could have known we were here and that I was poisoned,” he huffed a bitter laugh. “I didn’t even know I was poisoned until it was almost too late. I thought—” He pressed a hand over his heart and looked at Kit on the table. “I thought our bond…”
Flint held Kit’s hand, his eyes closed in concentration, while one of the guardsmen stitched and bandaged his numerous injuries, and the other worked on Lewin.
“So you just knew?” Grefin asked.
“I was soaking in the tub and saw you collapse,” I told Payne.
“You could have prevented all of this,” Grefin said, his voice gruff as he jerked his chin toward Kit and Lewin, the men working to save them, and all that blood and pain.
I wished with everything I had that I could have stopped it, but my visions didn’t work that way. Hell, before a few days ago, I hadn’t even had visions. All I had was a sense that something bad was going to happen.
“Why didn’t you stop this?” Grefin demanded as he lunged at me, his expression wild.
I jerked back but wasn’t fast enough. Grefin landed on me, his weight pinning me to the floor, and he grabbed the front of my jerkin, yanking me up and making my muscles scream in protest at the sudden movement.
“Why didn’t you stop this?” He wrenched his arm back, his hand clenched in a fist.
I flinched and brought my hands up to protect my face, but Payne grabbed Grefin’s arm and yanked him off me.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Payne said, shoving Grefin away from me. “It’s a miracle he managed to save me in the first place.”
“I can’t control what I see,” I said, my voice shaking as I scrambled back to put more distance between me and Grefin. “And I can’t control when I see it. Tonight was the first time I’ve ever been able to change something.”
Flint looked up from where he was working on Kit, his expression grim. “And we’re grateful for that. Thank you.”
Grefin’s shoulders slumped, and he pressed the towel back against his head wound. The fight seemed to drain out of him as quickly as it had flared up.
“You need to tell Rider, though,” Flint added, his expression clear: if I didn’t tell Lord Rider, he would. “Two of the three fae ever recorded to have the sight went mad, unable to tell reality from vision.”
A chill swept through me. “And the third?”
“Was a woman, and her bonded mates kept her sane,” Payne said.
So if I didn’t want to lose my mind, I needed to reawaken the mating marks that weren’t guaranteed to ever reawaken and that I wasn’t supposed to have in the first place.