Page 62 of Dark Shaman: Eternal Hope
His arms tightened around her. "We will find a way."
She knew he didn't mean a word of that and was just saying it to keep her from despairing.
"We will because the alternative is accepting this forever, and I can't do that. Not anymore." She thought of Tula's words at dinner. "This plant wants to experience growing free."
"You will," he said with no conviction at all in his voice.
She had to revitalize him somehow, to offer him hope even if she felt hopeless.
"What if we use the enhanced soldiers?" she whispered. "What if we could somehow use their evolution as a distraction? If they become coherent enough to act, even from their cells, Navuh would have to focus all his attention on containing them."
Eluheed shook his head. "I can't control them. I can barely maintain my own identity when I touch their consciousness."
"You don't need to control them. Just... nudge them maybe? Give them an idea?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it. "That's incredibly dangerous."
"Everything we do is dangerous." She took his hands. "Living here is dangerous. Loving each other is dangerous. Trying to escape is a choice, which is not something we get to do here."
He was quiet for a long moment. "The enhanced soldiers creating a distraction does not solve the problem of the cameras in the tunnel."
"It might. Knowing Navuh, he doesn't let anyone monitor that tunnel so they won't discover his escape route, and if he was busy with some emergency, he wouldn't think of looking at the feed from the tunnel."
"What if there is an alarm as soon as someone enters it?"
"Then we enter as soon as he leaves in the morning. Even with a vehicle, it must take him at least half an hour to get to his mansion, and during that time, someone is in the tunnel."
The despair in Eluheed's eyes turned into calculation. "If the tunnel is narrow, which it probably is, he can't turn around until he reaches the other end. It might give us enough time to escape."
25
ELUHEED
Eluheed had said all the things that Tamira needed to hear, but he hadn't truly believed in them until she started providing real solutions and shaming him into action.
He'd been so affected by the encounter with the enhanced ones that he was starting to suspect they were somehow sucking out his energy. He wasn't the type to give up easily, and yet he'd allowed himself to feel hopeless for a few moments.
Tamira put a hand on his arm. "I've never asked you to do this before because I know how much it takes out of you, and I know it's not fair to ask it of you today, but can you summon a vision about my future the same way you did for Lord Navuh?"
"Tamira…" He turned his gaze up and scanned the walls and the ceiling to remind her that what they said in there wasn't private, and she hadn't kept her voice low enough.
She stood and tugged on his hand. "I feel like soaking in the tub. Care to join me?"
He knew she wanted them to have privacy, and the bathroom seemed safer than the bedroom, although they had no proof ofthat. The safest was outside, far into the gardens surrounding the harem, but it was obvious that Tamira didn't want to wait until tomorrow. She wanted him to see her future now.
After she closed the bathroom door behind them, he waited for her to start the water for the tub. "That's not how the visions work, Tamira." He sat on the tub's ledge.
"Why not?" She sat on the ledge next to him and took his hands, her grip firm and warm. "You've had visions about others. About Navuh, about the enhanced soldiers. Why not about me?"
Eluheed let out a long breath, feeling the familiar burden of his gift—or curse, depending on the day. "Visions don't work well for loved ones. The emotional connection interferes. It clouds things. What I might see could be wishful thinking rather than true sight."
"Or it could be real." Her fingers tightened around his. "Please, Eluheed. I need something to hold on to. Even if it's uncertain, even if it might be your wishful thinking, I need something positive. To know there's a possibility of something out there for me. For us."
He wanted to say that there was no guarantee his vision would provide anything good, but studying her face and seeing the desperation she was trying so hard to hide behind determination, his resolve faltered.
If he saw something that could lift her spirits, he would tell her, and if he saw their plans failing, he would lie and say that he had seen nothing. To lie went against his religion, but he had already misled people and told untruths so many times since his arrival on Earth over a thousand years ago that one more lie wouldn'tmatter. As it was, he was guaranteed to end up in the seven hells of purification after he died and not in Sacred Dolis.
"Even if I see something, there's no guarantee that it's a future that will come to pass. Visions show possibilities, not certainties. Sometimes they show what might happen if we do nothing. Sometimes they show what could happen if we act. There's no way to know which."
