Page 55 of Visions of You
The air around the mage crystallized, frost spreading rapidly on the brick walls and grounding into icy spikes. With a sweeping gesture, shards of ice launched toward Jaron. He covered the girl with his body, taking the full brunt of the attack.
He grunted, staggering as the ice tore into him. Blood bloomed across his hoodie, dark crimson. Keegan wanted to scream, but no sound left his mouth. Visions flickered rapidly in his mind—different ways this fight could go down.
Jaron falling to his knees, his skin frozen and his breath rattling.
Jaron getting a hit in, but paying for it with blood, pain, and broken bones.
Jaron dying.
No.
No!
The images faded to black before the worst one came to pass. When the darkness receded, Keegan found himself back in the little library where he'd fallen asleep, his mind calculating Jaron's odds as if on autopilot.
How high was the chance that Jaron would die?
Low, very low.
So low, in fact, that if Jaron had been anyone else, Keegan would have dismissed the dream outright as an insignificant possibility. But he couldn't do it.
Even if Jaron didn't die, he would almost certainly get hurt.
That wasn't something Keegan could tolerate.
He pushed himself up from the chair, his muscles stiff from the uncomfortable position he'd fallen asleep in. He paced the room, his mind racing as he tried to figure out what to do. The sun was up, which meant he couldn't personally go to help Jaron. If he stepped outside, he would burn.
But he had to do something. He couldn't just let Jaron walk into danger like that.
If he called Jaron and told him what he'd seen, would Jaron trust him enough to abandon his mission? Keegan stopped in his tracks, trying to predict Jaron's reaction to such a call. He reached for his power, but pain lanced through his head, making him wince. He pushed anyway, gritting his teeth against the agony. This was too important.
Visions flashed through his mind, each one a different possibility. In some, Jaron listened to him and turned back. In others, he brushed off Keegan's concerns and kept going. And in a few, he got angry at Keegan for trying to interfere.
Keegan pulled himself out of the visions, his head throbbing with a blinding headache. He staggered, catching himself on the edge of the table. It took a moment for the pain to recede enough for him to think clearly again.
He could hardly make out the words said in his visions, but he got the gist—and an idea what to say to Jaron.
He pulled out his phone and dialed Jaron's number, his fingers shaking slightly. It rang once, twice, three times before Jaron picked up.
"Keegan?" Jaron's voice came through the speaker, sounding surprised but pleased. "What's up?"
Keegan took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. "I need you to come here," he said.
"Miss me already?"
"Yes," Keegan made himself say. "I think I'm ready to tell you about what I saw, about our fate."
On the other end of the line, Jaron was stunned into silence. Clearly, he hadn't expected that.
Which was why this approach might just work. If Keegan had just told him that something bad might happen to him at work… Jaron would have insisted that a certain amount of risk was part of the job and that he couldn't make someone else take the fall for him.
Keegan didn't care about anyone else, though.
He only wanted Jaron safe.
"You'll tell me?" Jaron asked.
"Yes."
