Page 213 of A Winding Wave of Magic
The seer walked around the table, hands steepled in front of his chest as he approached. He came to stand in front of me, and I flinched as his hands dropped.
One black brow lifted. “We are seers. What would we do with our hands?” Then he closed his eyes and started to murmur a spell.
At first, it felt like my head was being swaddled in wool, thick and heavy. Then a pressure grew, and the spell, which had turned into more of a mantra, started to overlap in my mind, like children singing in a round.
I grabbed my head. Heat was building along with the pressure—a hot vise that needed relief.
“??????????? ????!” cried the seer and flung his hand toward the ceiling.
My power—or something like it—followed the gesture like a ribbon, a light show of dust and magic. Every face in the room tipped up to watch the specters dancing across the vaulted rock.
I watched, entranced. “Oh.”
It was…stunning. Me, and yet not me. A facsimile of my power rather than the real thing—or at least all the power I’d Had in the past.
The magic swirled and eddied like a pooling river bed. Then Senni spoke again, and it consolidated into lines of a language I couldn’t read and images I recognized as my memories.
“There,” Senni pointed to a particular line in the text scrolling overhead. “She began late. Small bursts of power when she was eight, ten. Telepathy and bardic reading occurred nearly simultaneously, but she mostly divines in dreams.” He looked down at me with genuine surprise. “And all of it, only through contact? How is that possible?”
I spread my hands on my knees and said nothing. He could See the truth anyway.
“She must touch her subjects to See them,” he translated to the Council. “She has no range because her power has no shape.”
A badly stifled growl sounded behind me.
Chancellor Se held up a hand at Jonathan, his eyes flickering with power. “You will remain seated and silent, Dr. Lynch, until the examination is finished, or you will leave.”
“Then I would request Mage Perumal to remain civil,” he replied through grinding teeth. “I am well within my rights to do whatever is necessary to protect my mate, Council or not.”
It was then I saw the way his eyes glowed—not from magic, but from a deeper instinct. The savage wanted very badly to get out and protect me.
I turned forward, aware that anything I might be thinking would likely be discovered in a moment—including my memories of Jonathan and me on the streets of Dublin and in the hotel.
“It’s fine,” I said. “What do I need to do next?”
Senni gestured to the writing on the ceiling, which was moving like several lines of ticker tape all stacked up. “It’s simple. You say you are an oracle, Ms. Whelan. You must prove it and demonstrate your skills, one each on a member of this Council. Your Sight will be amplified here for all to watch.” He turned to the Council members. “Already we know the girl’s Sight is bastardized through touch—that alone should tell us her magic is polluted.Ifshe can See some element of a present mind, who would like to show theirs?”
Every member of the Council seemed to cringe at the prospect. I didn’t blame them. This was why most fae didn’t like seers, according to Gran. No one wanted to have their minds read.
“I will.”
The American shifter who had spoken up to Senni earlier stood and rounded the table.
“I’m Miriam Chang,” she informed me as she came to stand in front of me and held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Cassandra Whelan.”
Tentatively, I took her hand and saw that She was curious about me. Obviously wondering if I was up to the challenge, but she admired what she thought was either bravery or just naivete. Either way, it was what made me look at everyone straight in the eye.
She was an artist herself, a sculptor in the middle of preparing for a major exhibit at the Whitney, where she would much rather be at the moment than evaluating me.
Thinking about that made her mind wander briefly to the sculpture she was in the middle of, a bust of a woman she had been thinking about for years now. Because the truth of it—maybe it was time to admit it to herself—was that she was in love. And if she didn’t tell Ma?—
Miriam pulled her hand from mine before I could finish reading the rest of her thoughts.
“In love, Miriam?” Senni teased. “I’m impressed. Usually, those kinds of memories practically shout themselves the moment you enter a room.”
Miriam turned to the seer with a stare that could have frozen the entire room. For a moment, I genuinely wondered if my breath would be a white cloud of condensation.
“You have what you need,” she said to Senni, then returned to her seat.
