SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

”What did you see?”

Selendra did not answer at once.

That alone was enough to cool the wound in his hand. She had walked in carrying a warning, spoken of futures with the calm of someone long used to dangerous things, and set her teeth into him without once losing her grip. Now she looked shaken, and on her that was worse than open fear.

”Selendra,” he said, lower. ”What did you see?”

Her gaze came back by degrees, finding his face first and the hand at his chest after. The blood below his thumb had slowed, though the print of her bite stood clear on the skin.

”The same field as before,” she said at last. ”Down to the stone.”

Alfons did not move. ”The battlefield. With the eight towers.”

”With the eight towers. There is no mistaking them, Alfons. They were yours.”

His eyes cut to the window. The towers stood whole and dark in their ring around the keep, the eight he had grown up beneath and read as proof that nothing under heaven could move House Vaelion. He could not look at them now without painting cracks into stone that had none.

”Tell me all of it,” he said. ”Not the careful version.”

She drew a slow breath. ”There were no armies this time. None. The field was there, the marks of a battle all over it, broken stone, frost burned into the ground, lightning scars, mana thick enough to choke on. Several towers were close to coming down. But by the moment I saw, the fighting was already past the point where armies were the question.”

His jaw tightened at the word, though he let her keep going.

”Only three people were left standing on it,” she said. ”You were one of them.”

”And where, exactly, were you putting me.”

”At the center of it. At the very center of it.

His fingers closed once around the wounded hand. ”And the other two.”

”One on your left. One on your right. Both turned toward you, not toward each other.”

”And their faces, I assume, were the one thing the great Nocthar sight could not be bothered to show you.”

”I could not see them. However hard the vision pulled, the faces would not come clear.” She held his stare. ”I am not enjoying it any more than you.”

”You saw my towers half in ruins. You saw the field. You saw me in the middle of it. And the two men the whole thing turns on, those you lose in the smoke.”

”That is what I was given. I do not choose which parts come through, and you know that.”

”I know what you’ve told me,” he said. ”Which is not the same thing, and we both know it by now.”

She did not argue it. ”It is all I have.”

He turned to the desk and stopped short of touching it. The room looked obscenely ordinary; only the bite on his hand insisted any of it was real.

”What was I doing there,” he asked.

”You were not fighting.”

That brought his head around.

”You stood between them,” she said. ”You were not striking either one, only holding the center while they both waited on you.”

”Waited for what.”

”That is the part I felt more than saw. My class gives some things as pictures, others as weight, and this came as weight. You were not there as a soldier throwing spells at whoever stood nearest. You were there because the road past it turned on what you chose.”

A decision, in the heart of his own land, between two men, the towers broken around him. His father surfaced first, since Roderic threaded through every sealed room in this house. But battlefields did not grow around one man, and whatever stood out there was not only blood he already knew.

”Did either of them speak,” he asked.

”No words I could hear. Only pressure, off both of them, the same from each. Neither moved first. The field hung on you.”

”Hung on me to do what.”

”I do not know.”

”Selendra.” The warning sat plain in it. ”Do not hand me that twice.”

”It is the truth, whether you like the size of it or not.”

”It’s a truth with half its teeth pulled.”

”It is still better than a lie with all of them in.”

He looked away, not in concession but because temper would make him careless, and he could not afford careless in front of her. His blood had bought enough already.

”If any of this is real,” he said, ”someone reaches the center of my family’s land, and I am left standing in it.”

”There is a future where that happens, but that is only one of many possibilities. I will not promise more.”

”Choosing a side.”

Her expression moved, barely. ”That is how it felt.”

He caught the care in it; she would not stretch past what she believed.

Neither of them spoke for a breath.

He had taken her for someone bringing a warning. It felt more like she had pressed a blade into his hand and declined to name the throat.

”You tell no one about this,” he said.

”No one?”

”No one.”

”That is a great deal to ask of a guest in your house.”

”It was my blood.”

”And my sight.”

His gaze came back to her, cold and even. ”Do not turn this into a game with me.”

”I am not.”

”Then hear me. Not an heir, a servant, a lord, a buyer, an oracle, a priest, or some bored noble with coin to burn. Whatever you saw stays in this room.”

Selendra let her eyes drop to his injured hand.

”You should have asked for terms before you opened your hand to me.”

It cut exactly where she meant it to. Alfons went very quiet.

”But I understand the warning,” she added.

”That is not the same as agreeing to it.”

”No,” she said. ”It is not.”

His face held, though his fingers flexed once at his side.

She crossed to the door, and he let her go, since stopping her would give away more than her silence cost. At the handle, she looked back over her shoulder.

”Do not bury what I told you, Alfons. A future like that does not surface because nothing is moving underneath.”

”And you assume I have not worked that out.”

”I think you have worked out more than you will say out loud.”

She opened the door.

”Selendra.”

She stopped.

Alfons had not moved from where he stood, but the room felt colder around his voice.

”If even a word of this leaves your mouth, I will kill you.”

Selendra looked back at him.

For once, she did not answer quickly.

”That is not a request,” he added.

”No,” she said at last. ”I can hear that.”

”Good.”

Her fingers rested on the handle a moment longer.

”Good night, Alfons au Vaelion.”

The door shut behind her, and left him alone with the towers, the bite in his hand, and a choice no one had offered him yet.

In the corridor, Selendra walked with the taste of his blood thinning on her tongue and the vision burning behind her eyes.

’This will be worth watching.’

Her steps slowed at the turn of the hall.

’And I think it is time I called on an old acquaintance.’