Page 77 of A Chill in the Flame
“I was never here, and I always will be.”
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“Your Highness?”
Ceneth continued to stare blankly forward. He’d died all over again. His body entombed the void of his heart as he stared blankly forward.
“Your Majesty?” the medium attempted once more.
His eyes slid to the medium, blinking against the stark contrast from the woman who’d been sitting there only moments before. The silk of their scarf, their androgynous features, their larger hands. Ceneth slipped his hands out of the medium’s. He smelled the smoke from his hearth and the medium’s spiced scent, but a lingering perfume of fresh spring rain remained faintly in the air.
“Thank you.” Ceneth cleared his throat, shaking his head as if to remove the cobwebs from where they’d knit within his mind.
“Did you learn all you sought?”
He stood from the table and took a few steps toward the door. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what I needed to learn when I began, and I’m perhaps more confused than I was before. May I ask you something?”
The medium dipped their chin.
“Time?”
They clucked their tongue knowingly. “You asked her about the afterlife, and she spoke of past and future, correct?”
Ceneth shook his head, uncomprehending. He began to pace around his room, walking from wall to wall with the carpeted rug, amidst the candles and paintings and four-post bed painting a striking, royal scene around him. “Do they all do that? She referred to a loom.”
The medium stood as well, straightening their shirt and pants and adjusting their scarf. “I’ve heard others speak of the loom. I cannot know anything for certain, except that they are not gone, even though they are. They depart from our moment in time, but they continue to exist in the past, in the future, just not in the present.”
“So, I’ll see her in the future?”
“No, for you, every moment is always the present. For all of us, each second, each minute is the present, no matter how old, or how gray, or how long.”
“She is always one second out of my grasp in either direction?”
“I cannot say for certain, Your Majesty.” They were apologetic, but their voice was firm.
“Every time but now?” His question was flat, empty, and hopeless.
The medium looked at him sadly. Ceneth’s emotion must have been familiar. This was a reaction they’d seen before.
He nodded, rubbing his temple as if fighting off an early headache. “Right, right. Thank you for your help. I’ll be sure you’re fairly compensated.”
The medium shook their head. “When the King of Raascot requests your natural wellspring of abilities, you do not ask for something in return. It was my pleasure to serve you. When your advisor met me, they asked me to move onto the castle grounds. Will you be calling on me again?”
Ceneth inhaled slowly through his nose. “She asked me not to.”
The medium nodded. “Yes, I expect she did. But that was not my question. Her will and your will may not be one in the same. For now, I will stay.” They offered a subtle bow asthey departed from the room, leaving Ceneth alone, always one second out of Caris’s reach.
Thirty-six
“She’s going to be mad about this.”
Dwyn drummed her fingers against her arm impatiently. “No, she isn’t. She hates snakes.”
“Then why did you force her to picture a snake?” Tyr demanded, sword dripping with a sticky, tar-like blood as he stood over the slain body of an enormous serpent. The sulfuric stench of spoiled meat and rotten eggs wafted from its steaming corpse. His lips pulled back in a snarl as he shot a glance to the bits of the regency’s road he could spy between the trees. They’d been running parallel to the road, picking their way through the woods just out of eyesight from passersby until he came upon a snakelike abomination. A goddess-sent gust of wind rustled the branches, moving their hair and clothes as it brushed the leaves together, sending the demonic cloud of noxious odor as far from them as possible.
“Because she—” Dwyn stopped in the middle of her sentence. “Wait, how did you know? Goddess, dog, how long have you been spying?”
He wiped the black substance on his pants as he shrugged. “It’ll be good for you to keep in mind that the walls have ears.”
