Page 34 of Stranger's Choice
Chapter 11
Auraelie must havelooked as exhausted as she felt after her day of scanning futures. When she arrived in the throne room the next morning—Prince Sebin would not return until later in the day—Lhashiki rushed to her side and fussed over her as much as one could without touching.
“You poor thing,” Lhashiki said, steering her out of the throne room and into a room set aside for those serving the Emperor. “I know His Imperial Majesty asked a lot of you yesterday, but those gray spots you reported are so worrying. I know it eases his mind having you search for the cause, and you mustn’t feel bad simply because you haven’t found a way past the blocks.”
There was no one in the room except them, so Auraelie folded her legs under herself without hesitation.
Lhashiki sat next to her and continued, “I told His Imperial Majesty that you did your best yesterday, and that he ought to let you recover today.”
Auraelie remained silent. She knew more was coming.
“Of course, he wishes he could allow you this day to recover, but he realized it is time for you to visit Peroen again.”
“Today?” Auraelie asked softly, already knowing the answer.
“This morning,” Lhashiki confirmed. “After your visit, you may recover for the rest of the day. Until the foreign prince returns, that is.”
“Of course.” Auraelie rose, suppressing a sigh at the effort needed to accomplish such a simple task. The drain on her magical energy translated into all too real physical exhaustion. The Emperor may only be sending her to scan one person’s future that day, but it was also the one person he expected her to touch directly during the visit. The stronger connection gave Auraelie a clearer view of the prince’s future, but also drained her power exponentially faster. The risk of going into convulsions was much higher. If she stayed in contact a second too long, or if he touched her accidentally afterward, she might end up in worse shape than after that servant had held a dagger to her throat.
At least Prince Peroen knew the risks and did his part to mitigate them. He understood his place in his father’s court and accepted it. As evidenced by Lhashiki’s use of his given name, the Emperor did not hold his son in high esteem. The prince did not merit the same tactics the Emperor employed on his courtiers. When His Imperial Majesty decided he needed to check on his heir’s future, he ordered him to submit to the scan.
Auraelie scanned Prince Peroen’s future every month or two and had done so since she first arrived in Kalitalo when the prince was a boy of no more than ten. Her visits to the prince were not on a set schedule, and the timing of this one was within the normal range, but the Emperor had been sending her closer to two months apart, of late, not one.
The gray spots she had reported yesterday had truly made him nervous if he was sending her to his son again so soon.
Auraelie had never seen anything in Peroen’s future to justify the Emperor’s worries that his son might rise up and usurp the throne. The imperial heir was smart enough to recognize his father’s fears and do everything in his power to allay them. He barely socialized with anyone from the court, he kept to himself, and he had devoted himself to the arts since childhood rather than any pursuits that might make him a threat.
The Emperor feared the absent-minded musician and painter persona was all an act. Auraelie suspected it was more of a defense mechanism that had become the truth through the years.
Because she scanned Peroen’s future so often, she never looked into his distant future, saving herself the headache—literally—of expending more power than was necessary. But in those bursts of his near future, she saw everything he did or might do. Peroen wanted to be left alone to enjoy his arts, nothing more.
It took Auraelie a little while to track down the prince after she left Lhashiki. He had already departed his room for the day, and he wasn’t in his private art studio, his conservatory, or the imperial music room. Eventually she found him in the hall of portraits, a sketch book on his knee as he sat in front of a painting of his great-great-grandfather.
She cleared her throat.
He looked up from his sketch, blinking at her for a moment. “Is it that time again already?”
“Yes,dyela.”
“Well, let’s get it over with, then. The light is perfect right now, and even though I’m not painting, I’d hate to waste it.”
Auraelie knelt by the prince’s side. He held out a hand, and she placed her fingers lightly on his palm. She kept her power contained to the near future, but that was the only control she exerted. The contact, light though it was, pulled her into a series of visions that tugged at the dregs of power she still had after yesterday.
Peroen played thegohtadar. He painted beautiful scenes of the forest, sunrises, and a woman wreathed in mist. He ate, slept, and flirted awkwardly with a palace maid. In short, he lived his normal life with no hint of all the upheavals and uncertainties Auraelie had seen the day before. Between one heartbeat and the next, before she pulled her fingers back, her power surged one last time, and a future blinked out of existence before the vision could form.
Auraelie rubbed her fingers together and stepped back. “Thank you,dyela.”
He nodded, pulling his hand back but looking at her expectantly.
Auraelie realized he was waiting for her usual reassurance that she had seen nothing worth reporting. Technically, she hadn’t seen anything worth telling the Emperor, but what she hadnotseen was something she should report. She knew she wouldn’t.
“You should leave the painting of the lady in mist out where the maid will stumble across it.” Auraelie said as calmly as possible.
Prince Peroen nodded and went back to his sketch, the exchange already forgotten in his mind.
Auraelie wished she could push it aside so easily. That last moment of her scan, however, was not something simply forgotten or ignored. A turning point had disappeared.
That had only happened to her once before, when she decided on how to act and was so firm in her convictions that her power read it as a certainty rather than a possibility. She knew what decision had cut off this future before it formed. She hadn’t consciously decided, but it had hovered in her mind since Lhashiki told her to scan Peroen.
