Dark Awakening by Kendra Leigh Castle Page B

am? What exactly am I supposed to be able to see, huh? The future? Can’t do that. The hearts and minds of other people? You’ve struck out there too. I’m not a mind reader or a visionary. And I think you’ve made a really big mistake.” Her words tasted as bitter on her tongue as they sounded. But Tynan didn’t seem the least bit put off. When he spoke again, his voice was soft but insistent.
    “Maybe you don’t think so, Lily, but you’ve got the outward signs—more, in fact, than I was aware existed—of the sort of human who can see creatures caught betweenthe living and the dead. It’s not about prophecy but vision, and you should be capable of that too. You may not know how yet, but you can be guided.”
    She swallowed hard, hearing the dry click in her throat. “So you’re saying I should be able to see ghosts?”
    “Ghosts, and other things. Vampires can do some incredible things, but we can’t see beyond the here and now. Walking with death the way we do seems to rob us of our ability to look beyond it.” His voice hardened slightly. “Just be glad I was sent by someone who cares what condition you arrive in.”
    His words made her break out in gooseflesh. She’d never seen a ghost—not that she was aware of anyway. Her nightmare, though, was something else, something more real than just a recurring wisp of an ugly dream. She’d always known it, just as she knew there was something strange about the tattoo that throbbed and burned upon waking. But the nightmare, vision, whatever it was had never done her any good—it was just there, an unfortunate part of her. That her life now seemed to hang in the balance because of it seemed hideously unfair.
    “I can’t see anything that would help anyone,” she insisted, pushing back against the beginnings of despair. “And this”—she swept her arm around the ruins of her hallway—“is this anything your queen is going to want from me? What does this have to do with vision?” She gestured to the tattoo she’d tried so long to hide, now exposed as half of her thin sweater hung in tatters. “You wanted to know how I got this, what it means. I don’t know that either!”
    Tynan’s expression clouded as he looked at her mark. “Yes. We’ll need to sort that out first, I suppose. The mark is… unusual. As are your abilities.” He didn’t soundhappy, and his honesty surprised her, but it was obvious that her objections had done nothing to deter him.
    “Maybe I don’t care,” she said, though it cost her to even speak the lie. “Maybe I don’t want to know what it means.”
    But within her, the energy she’d awakened so brutally still twisted and roiled, impossible to ignore. She didn’t know how to use it, how to control it. She never had. And now that it had been unlocked, it would begin to look for a way out again.
    “Damien doesn’t scare easily,” Tynan said softly. “But I saw fear on his face. Fear is only going to make him more dangerous to you, because what he fears, he’ll work even harder to destroy. You need protection, Lily. Whether you like it or not.”
    “What if I flat-out refuse you?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
    He arched his eyebrow, and his gaze went to pure steel. “There is no refusal. I’d think you would have figured that out by now. If you continue not to see reason, then I take my chances that you’re nothing more, or less, than a human Seer with a strange mark that looks oddly like something a vampire would have. I’ll take you to Arsinöe by force, and you can see how far spitting in the face of a pharaoh gets you. Then you can find out what the Queen of the Ptolemy and her court think of your little symbol there without ever knowing yourself. And if you fail at what you’ve been brought for…” He trailed off, his voice dangerously silken.
    She was glad he chose not to finish the sentence.
    Lily glared at him helplessly. “But what if I’m nothing, Tynan? What if I can’t have