Shifting Fate (5 page)

“
I don’t think I can do it,”
I said. “You’re not the same as the others, there’s something
…
different
about
our makeup. With them, it’s only a matter of finding connections,
fusing them in place. But with us, those fibers are different. I
can’t see them. I can’t see what I should do.”

“
You will,” Emily said. “I
know you will.”

I stared into her sea green eyes, past her
attempt to hide worry and concern, and knew she was telling the
truth. She believed I could do it. She believed I would save
them.

And if I didn’t, she would die.

Logan came back within minutes of Emily
leaving my room. I wondered if he’d gotten any sleep at all, but he
looked as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. When he came
closer, the fresh scent of soap confirmed it.

“
Your sister said you needed
rest,” he offered.

I nodded. “I’m just going to sit here for a
while. I have some thinking to do.”

He sat on the small table beside where I was
curled into the couch. After a moment, I realized he was examining
me.

“
I’m sorry,” I said, pulling
a pillow onto my lap. “They aren’t usually that bad.” A shiver ran
through me at the thought, the recalled image, and he moved to
reach for a woven throw. I wrapped it around me, not wanting to
admit it wasn’t the cold.

“
Is there anything I should
do … the next time?”

“
No,” I said. I thought of
the busted door, his arms around me. “You did just
fine.”

It was the last thing I remembered until I
woke hours later. I was stretched out on the couch, throw tucked
tightly under my chin, and—I realized when I stretched—barefoot. I
glanced at my boots, standing neatly on the floor at the end of the
couch, and sat up, finding the knife that had been stowed there
lying on the side table.

Logan saw me looking at the blade, but made
no comment.

“
What time is it?” I
asked.

“
Almost four.” At my yawn,
he added, “You sleep like the dead.”

I nodded. It happened every time I worked
with the connections. The magic took something out of me. And it
wasn’t just that, I was starving.

“
You need to eat,” Logan
said, though I wasn’t sure if he could read the hunger in my
expression or it was simply the knowledge that I’d worked through
lunch and slept through dinner.

“
I can wait for
breakfast.”

He frowned.

“
I’m not going to wake
someone up to cook for me.”

“
Then we won’t,” he said,
gesturing for me to follow him.

I started for my knife and boots, and Logan
turned. “You don’t need those, Brianna. We’re only going
downstairs.”

I flushed, leaving both to follow him through
the door. Two guards were positioned at opposite ends of the
hallway, heavily armed and perfectly alert. I took a little
hop-step to catch Logan’s stride, but lost it again when he took
the stairs two at a time.

“
Are you in a hurry?” I
whispered toward his back as I rushed to keep up.

He glanced over his shoulder, perplexed by my
question. “No.”

I bit down on a grin. He must have been one
of those get-things-done people. Emily was one of those people.

We walked into the kitchen, a massive,
open-spaced arena compared to the last place I’d cooked a meal,
complete with stainless, commercial-sized appliances. I followed
Logan into the pantry, considerable in its own right, and watched
as he rummaged through vegetables, boxes, and cans.

“
What are you looking for?”
I asked from behind him.

He stopped his exploration to look at me.
“Something quick.”

I realized I was hovering, and leaned back,
picking a random can off the shelf to examine. It was caviar. They
had an entire shelf of caviar. I would have settled for a single
jar of peanut butter.

Logan handed me an onion before gathering a
few green peppers to stack on top of the other ingredients for our
dinner. I followed him back into the kitchen where he dropped the
vegetables into the sink and started a pot to boil. He washed the
peppers and moved to set them on the counter, so I stepped out of
his way, and then shifted again when he went for a saucepan. The
third time, his brow drew down in annoyance and he took me by the
waist to move me from his path.

I watched from my new position as he deftly
diced onion and pepper, threw them in with olive oil, added some
garlic and parsley, and neatly slid pasta into the roiling
water.

The scent of tomato seemed amplified by the
steam and my stomach panged. Luckily, he’d plated up spaghetti and
warm bread within minutes, holding one in each hand as he gestured
for me to come along. By that point, I was so hungry I would have
followed him anywhere. He stopped just outside the kitchen, where a
small nook contained a table, two chairs, and an east facing
window.

I sat, curling my bare feet onto the railing
beneath the chair, and used all my strength not to shovel hot pasta
into my mouth as Logan watched. After a moment, I regained myself
and swallowed. “It’s delicious. Thank you.”

The corner of Logan’s mouth rose, and
suddenly, as if only then realizing he’d been staring, he went to
work on his own plate.

I tore off a piece of bread, finding I
couldn’t seem to stop watching him now. There was a tiny little
scar on his temple that disappeared behind dark blond hair. It must
have been fresh, probably from the battle with Morgan’s men. My
stomach turned. I pulled the chunk of bread in half, and then
again. “Do you cook often?”

His gaze slipped to my fidgeting hands. “Only
when I need to eat.”

I dropped the fragments onto my plate and
asked, “You don’t live at one of the houses?”

Logan glanced over his shoulder, and back at
me. “No. I’ve stayed, occasionally, but I keep a private
residence,” he dropped his own bread, “since I moved from
Council.”

Since Morgan had taken over his home. He let
the silence hang between us, until I asked in a whisper, “Will you
go back?”

His eyes met mine, suddenly dark amber in the
faint light. “I don’t know, Brianna. It … it isn’t the same.”

I knew exactly what he meant. We had lost our
mother, our home, everything except each other, Emily and I. We’d
been more on the run than adrift, but there was no going back,
either way.

And now Emily had Aern.

Logan gestured toward my food, pretending not
to notice the hand pressed tight against my stomach, and said,
“Finish up. I want to get an early start this morning.”

This time, it was a Cadillac V. Daybreak was
just starting to color the sky, giving its sleek black angles an
unnatural glow. I had the strangest notion that it reminded me of
their eyes, the way they all seemed to radiate that something
“other” within, but when I looked at Logan, our gaze locking over
the roof of the sedan, all I saw was a man.

We settled into the car, strapped the seat
belts on, and took yet another route to Council’s main building. I
watched the sunrise reflected in the glass of the homes and
buildings, thinking of all the people who didn’t know we even
existed. I imagined they were inside, going about their daily
business, not even concerned that if I couldn’t do my job, if I
couldn’t find the connection to fix Emily, they would all die.

Images of their faces
flipped through my consciousness, broken and splattered, no time to
so much as scream before the impact came. Liquid fire pulsed
through the scenery, reducing it to metal framework and ash. And
here, in this living nightmare, their eyes did burn. Not an
otherworldly glow, but a blaze.
The blood
of the dragon.

“
Brianna,” Logan said from
beside me.

His words cut through the vision, and I
closed my eyes hard, forcing the images away. I had seen them
before, a thousand times. It was nothing new, but somehow, more
intense. Painful.

When my eyes came open, Logan’s hands were
cradling my face. My fists were pressed hard against my chest and
stomach; I felt like retching.

“
Are you okay?” Logan asked
softly.

I took a deep breath, forcing it past the
constriction of my chest. We were stopped, pulled over on a side
road. I raised a trembling hand to Logan’s, managed a nod.

He lowered his hands, but kept mine in his.
“We can go back.”

“
No,” I said. We were
running out of time. They were getting closer, the prophecies were
hurting me. Warning me. “I have to do this, Logan. It has to be
now.”

He didn’t speak, only watched me for a moment
longer before turning back to the wheel. And he kept hold of my
hand.

Chapter Six

Confessions

By the time we reached the archives, I’d
recovered from the vision. I suspected the entire episode had
rattled Logan more than he let on. He paced the back wall, letting
me work in silence for about an hour before he subtly began
checking on me. The third time he crossed in front of the table, I
looked up at him; fingers laced behind his back, eyes darting from
wall to ceiling. Maybe he was just bored.

“
Logan?”

His gaze flicked to mine, and I bit my lip.
He couldn’t help, I needed something to spark an idea or a vision.
No one could help with that, it was all me.

He must have seen the conflict in my
expression.

“
Don’t worry, Brianna,” he
said. I offered him a sarcastic smile and he leaned against the
chair across from me. “It will probably all work out.”

Probably. That was the best
I could do, when so much … when
everything
was on the line. I leaned
forward. “And what if it doesn’t?”

He sighed. “Well, then I suppose we should
enjoy it while it lasts.”

I stared at him for a long, motionless while,
when suddenly the corner of his mouth turned up.

It was plain he was trying to make me feel
better, and if I was honest, I supposed it did. A little.

“
Can I ask you something?”
he said, voice lowering as he once again became serious. He
indicated the page in front of me. “Why did you learn
this?”

The question had me taken aback, until I
caught the drift of his thought. If I had to know the language,
then the answer would be within the pages of the oldest texts.

“
It’s not that,” I answered,
hesitating a moment to consider the idea, “I don’t think.” I
relaxed into my chair, recalling long-ago conversations with my
mother. “There are the visions,” I explained, “like this morning
and yesterday. They’re just flashes really, glimpses of what’s to
come.”

He moved forward, elbows resting on his knees
so that his hands disappeared beneath the table.

“
And then there are the
prophecies,” I continued. “They’re more like a knowledge, an idea
that’s suddenly in your head that you know to be true.” I struggled
to come up with a comparison. “Like the alphabet song.”

He stared at me.

“
You know how they teach you
that melody so you always remember your letters. The song is with
you, even now, but you don’t remember learning it. It’s just
there
. And it’s
true.”

“
So, the prophecies come to
you in a rhyme?”

I laughed. “No. I’m trying to explain how
they feel.” I drew a loose strand of hair behind my ear, knowing I
was giving the “feeling” of the prophecy way less gravity than it
deserved. “The predictions come to me in words. No, it’s not a
nursery rhyme. It’s a heavy, all-knowing verse in the ancient
language.” I realized I’d come back around to my point. “That’s why
my mother taught me, because she knew.”

Logan sat up. “Why would the words come to
you in the ancient language?”

I sighed. “I don’t know.”
I’d often wondered myself. They felt so real, I was almost certain
I would understand their meaning regardless, but she had wanted me
to comprehend every facet of the language. Some days, I wondered if
they weren’t my words at all, but some other, now gone
someone
that was pushing
the prophecies to us with a long-dead magic. How else could they
belong to both our kind and the Seven Lines? But that wasn’t
important now, and I shook it off, coming back to our conversation.
“Could be worse,” I said, smiling at his questioning expression.
“They could be haikus.”

His lips twitched. “That would be worse.”

It could always get
worse
, I thought. A chill ran over me and I
sat up, once again returning to the pages in front of
me.

“
Brianna,” he said softly,
waiting for me to look up from the book, “you will put things to
right.”

It was hours later when he finally stopped me
again. My body ached and my forearms were creased from pressing
against the edge of the solid mahogany table. I scrunched my eyes
shut tight before blinking them back open to focus on the canvas
backpack he was holding.

He gestured toward a small carved table in
the corner. “This time, I brought lunch.”

I stretched thoroughly before following him
to curl up into one of the well-padded Queen Anne chairs. He sat
across from me, laying wrapped sandwiches over the table’s engraved
dragon design. I glanced up at him, trying to remember which line
the color of his eyes signified. I was pretty sure Amber was some
proto-language form of ertho. Earth.

Logan seemed to notice my appraisal, so I
distracted him with a question about the dragon’s line. “Are there
any others left, aside from Aern and Morgan?”