Page 166 of War Queen
“Yes, actually. I was wondering—could you show me all the paintings of Alexander?”
His face grew serious, and he hesitated.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
The ball of his throat bobbed. “Allof them?”
She opened her mouth, then stopped. Then she glanced around. Looking back at Samuel, she said, “How many are there?”
His throat bobbed again. Then he gave a jerky nod and waved her to follow him.
Norah stepped into the hall and followed the old seer to the back room. She’d been there with Catherine before, although she hadn’t remembered a lot of paintings with Alexander then. In the room, he moved to the far wall and pulled away some of the larger paintings. Behind them sat a door, and he opened it.
Her pulse quickened.
It was a small door, perhaps for a storage closet, but as they ducked inside, she saw it opened into a room as large as the one before.
And all around them—paintings of Alexander.
She moved through them, her mouth open. “You saw all of these?” she asked.
“Yes, Regal High.”
“How are there so many?”
He shrugged. “The life force that draws the attention of the Eye—it must be very powerful.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but she got the idea. Lucien was powerful—that wasn’t news. Her eyes traveled over the paintings, not looking for anything specific, just… looking.
She stopped on one.
Alexander stood, sword in hand, facing another man armed with two.No—not Alexander.Lucien. He had only a battle garb around his waist, no tunic. No markings showed on his skin. Was this an old vision? Maybe he hadn’t gotten them yet? She stared at him. It was so easy to think this was Alexander. But it wasn’t. She could see it now.
Her eyes swept the details around him: sand under his feet, and in the near distance, a curved wall with grated gates evenly spaced.
Where was this?
She moved on through the paintings, noting others that were similar, and more of the background for her to put together that he was in an arena. An arena in Rael? Mikael said Lucien had been a blood sport fighter before he’d led the rebellion. Is that what she was looking at now?
Another painting made her stop.
It was a sprawling landscape of blood and battle, with Lucien at its center. A flag lay on the ground, nearly trampled into the mud. Red and yellow—so familiar. Had she seen it before?
“What kingdom has these colors?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Regal High. I’ll have Rector Tusten research it.”
Was this an old vision or was it yet to come? Her heart beat faster as she focused her attention back on Lucien. He rode a black horse, dressed in armor of black and blood. He had the markings on his neck in this one.
Norah moved to another painting, then another. She pulled back the canvases and looked at the ones underneath. Then she moved to the wall and flipped through the ones standing on their side.
Lucien—they were all Lucien. In fact, nothing she saw was Alexander. But Lucien was a seer, and seers couldn’t be seen by other seers. None of this made sense. “Did Alexander ever see these?”
Samuel shrugged. “Some. Not all. Visions of the lord justice never came to be, so we stopped paying mind to them.”
Because they were never Alexander.All this time, they were seeing Lucien, and they didn’t even know.
The door to the room swung open, and she jumped.
