Page 105 of The Oracle of Dusk

Her head spun as her magic drained from her. She wouldn’t be able to suspend Theron much longer.

“Avatar! Please, help me!” she shouted.

The avatar duly obliged and stuttered to a halt.

“King Theron!” he gasped.

The avatar’s eyes widened as he looked over the king’s attire and then her own, rage darkening his features. He went to his knees and tried to move Theron without success.

“Please, I’m holding his death at bay, but I can’t hold on for much longer. You can heal any wound caused by a monstrosity. Heal him, before I exhaust my magic.”

The avatar nodded, pouring his divine magic over Theron. Slowly, slowly, the wound healed, closing up as both sinew and bone were restored. Sharp pain shot through her head and blood dripped from her nose yet still she held onto the magic. Her vision was swimming and her lungs crushed in a vise by the time the avatar was done. Aurora collapsed on her side the moment she released her magic, spent. The avatar came over to her side and used his divine magic to heal the wounds on her leg and face.

“Is he…?”

Aurora was terrified of the answer. What if she’d been too late? Her magic inadequate?

“He’s breathing. You did well.”

Relief crashed through her. She held back her tears. Though she hadn’t been able to prevent the events of the vision from taking place, at least he was alive. But questions lingered. Had she truly changed the future, or merely ensured it would happen as she’d always known?

The avatar picked her up, searched the halls for the nearest room with an intact bed, and placed her down gently.

“What’s your name?” she asked, her voice thready and weak.

“Hyllus, my lady.”

“Aurora.”

“You’re a good woman, Aurora, to put yourself at risk to save another,” he said, covering her with a sheet.

She almost laughed. She was a bloody mess—literally. Whosever sheets she was currently soiling would be livid when they discovered it, given how stingy the vivarium’s attendants were. If they’d survived, that is. The thought sobered her. Before exhaustion took her entirely, she needed to tell Hyllus what was to come, and their parts in it.

“I need to tell you something.” She grabbed hold of his tunic before he could leave.

“It can wait until you’ve rested, my lady.”

“No. It can’t. There’s a monster we must slay, Drakon. And we must do it before he has the power to destroy the whole of Trisia.”

“We?” he asked, a doting look on his tanned face as he searched her head for bumps and bruises, glaring down at the metal binding her wrists, following the chain to the collar at her neck.

What could she say that would convince him she wasn’t mad? That she didn’t in some way deserve her fetters? Nothing she’d said since she’d arrived had been believed, save by Theron, and even he had needed to see her visions. She wracked her foggy brain.

There was a theory that in every lifetime, a person had the same magic, tied as it was to the soul. If Hyllus was the first incarnation of the hero, and the hero was the same in every cycle, then he would share the same magic as Silvanus. It seemed she’d be putting her theology teachings to the test.

“I met another hero of the holy sword. Silvanus. During a cycle of calamity, he was given divine magic and made the avatar, his purpose to seal away a great evil—Drakon.”

“There can be only one avatar of Justice at a time, my lady.” He frowned, still looking for a wound on her head.

“I know. Silvanus had wild magic, as expected of an avatar. The magic of divine eyes. Just as you do.”

“My lady, I fear you’ve hurt yourself in ways I cannot heal.” While his tone was full of concern, she didn’t miss the fear in his grey eyes.

“I kept his secret because he was a good man.”

“And yet you told me.”

“Hyllus, I suspended Theron, kept him from the moment of death. But I couldn’t heal him. What do you suppose my wild magic is?” she asked. The hero in her time had been the first to realise her magic for what it was. Hopefully, Hyllus was the same.

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