Page 128 of The Reveal
“What do you want, then?” I ask.
His mouth twists even more. “Power, obviously. But I want it overme, Winter. I want power overmyself.”
He doesn’t sayfor once, but I hear it.
I reach out my hand, and I don’t know what I’m about to say, but there’s a calamitous noise so loud it makes the air itself seem to shake.
When we turn, the smooth surface of the lake now looks like it’s ... boiling.
“She is coming,” I belt out, in a voice that is not mine. I feel it echo not just in me, but in Augie. In everyone around us.
In the tall trees that stretch for the stormy sky.
Out in the blue water of the lake, Wizard Island trembles.
And then, as it shakes, it begins to rise.
Savi is still chanting. Now she catapults herself straight up into the air, then out over the water so that she’s hovering over the intense blue of the lake, and the island seems as if it’s rising to meet her.
She stretches out her arms, as if crucifying herself in midair. Then, as her hair whips around her and her eyes blaze like fire, she begins again.
The counterspell rains down all around her, like more weather.
I shuffle the cards, but I don’t need to look at them. They tell me what I need to know. They pour into me, and I need—
I needsomething—
I reach out, stretching along the lines of magic that I can suddenly see spooling out of me, and Augie, and every creature here. Lines of brilliant color that dance into the sky and need only to be pulled to lead me to the person in question.
That’s how I find Ariel. I look for the thickest cool-blue line, the one that whispers of age and time, and I pull it.
Hard.
Little seer,he says, but he’s inside me. He’s speaking inside my head, that rich, dark voice like a caress.How clever of you to find me this way.
I whip my head around, and I think I see him, deep in the center of that swirling, deadly mass of cloaks and creatures, fangs and claws. They fight and fight, they stain the snow red below their feet, and still they keep going.
And as the cards pour into me, I pour into him.
I watch as he follows my predictions. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t question. I don’t have to prove to him the things I see.
He treats my visions like cold, hard facts, and because he does, the tide begins to turn.
The cards are shuffling so fast in my hands I can barely keep up, and my fingers ache, but they would need to be cut off before I stopped.
I won’t stop.
Not until we all do.
The priests,I tell Ariel down the line that chains us to each other now. Maybe it’s magic. Maybe it’s our bond. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s ours. I know it’s permanent.
And there’s not one part of me that wants to fight it.
I hate priests,he replies, and his voice in my head is so cool, so calm.
Then I can see what he’s doing, with my own eyes, and in my head, too. I see the fight before me as if the battle is on a movie screen. I glimpse it occasionally through his eyes, and on top of this, the cards show me different views as they please.
It’s a whole kaleidoscope, ever shifting, but I understand each view and where it fits.
