Hiding in Plain Sight

[Thalia]

Her Oaths tightened like a fist. Mira gasped at the pain, and half stumbled over her own feet in the effort to stop, hands bracing against the nearest wall. If her pace slowed it did little for the tumbling terror in her chest, but the reprieve did at least pierce her with confusion. She couldn’t explain why she was so afraid, not just because she lacked the words, but because she lacked the comprehension. Mira did not fear death. Not her own, nor the Dragon’s. If this man heralded the Wheel’s slip from its axle to spin no more, so be it. If he led the Shadow’s armies to reform the world in its image, she accepted it. She didn’t know why she ran; only that it was primal, like a riptide, and she had been helpless in its current.

In her disorientation she turned towards the only sure thing around her, and grasped Val’s offered hand, reeling herself in tight enough to steady her forehead against his chest. “I’m not surprised he’s here. I’m surprised he’s here,” she hissed after a moment, stung with a little betrayal for the ambush. Light blossomed above then, and she winced. He was looking at things, and she did not like the way it felt like fingers crawling all over her brain. She wanted to close her eyes against it, but didn’t want to look away either.

In truth she’d always assumed that when his master returned for him, Valtin would simply sweep away on new and long-awaited tides. He exalted this man, had served him with both faith and fervour in such lofty echelons it’d been a hair’s breadth from the heights of Chosen. She knew, because she’d coaxed every story he’d willingly tell just for the way it animated him, especially those times when Rosene’s absence felt like a chasm riven into her chest. Mira liked to talk. She liked to listen. And she did not like being alone on those days. Val was no philosopher, but he was as ambitious as Rose had been. Only where hers had been a cool and collected charisma, cold and cruel as starlight, Valtin’s was vibrant and violent. The kind that burned its path through the Pattern.

Mira had no such desire for power, and no such skill to offer. And for all her prescience, she had never imagined a future in which she would actually have to meet the face that haunted more than half her life. She considered what it meant as her shuddering pulse slowed. Curiosity was tangled with something else by then. Beside her Val smelled like sweat and the forge. She’d seen the look shining bright in his eyes. If heat stung her own for a moment it was only because she knew something of the destination, if not how long the path would take. But nothing good came from binding a beast in chains, and even less from knowledge of the Pattern’s tapestry. He was happy, and there wasn’t an ounce of her that would steal it from him.