Free Magic Binds by Ilona Andrews

couldn’t stop. Dead. He was
dead
.
    My father grunted and hurled Curran’s body back into the battle below. Past the field, the sunset was blood-red. Atlanta was burning, caught in the hot maw of an inferno. Black oily smoke boiled from the ruins of the city, melding into a funeral shroud above.
    The vision ended, the other reality with the battle and Curran’s corpse tearing like a thin paper screen, and I landed in my own body back in the cave. My legs were wet. I was standing in the middle of the pool, holding Sarrat in my hand. Coils of pale vapor rose from the blade, reacting to the echoes of my grief.
    My face was burning. My mouth tasted bitter.
    I returned my saber to its sheath on my back, dipped my hands into the cold water, and let it cool my skin.
    Nobody said a word.
    I finally made my lips move. “Is it always a spear?” Spears could be broken.
    â€œSometimes it’s a sword,” Sienna said. “Sometimes an arrow. Roland is always the origin of it and Curran always dies.”
    Damn it.
    â€œWhat if I don’t marry him?”
    â€œIt’s worse,” Sienna said.
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œBecause I’ve looked into your future over fifty times in the last month. I think that sometimes you waver, because you aren’t sure if you should marry him. The vision changes then. Do you want to see or do you want me to tell you?”
    I braced myself. “Show me.”
    She stepped back into the waterfall. The battle splayed out before me again, the blood and smoke, swirling around me. I spun around. Behind me Atlanta burned.
    A cry made me turn.
    My father stood in the same spot atop the tower. In front of him, on the wall, a creature knelt, swathed in rags. It held a baby up with clawed hands.
    I had to get to the tower.
    I ran like I’d never run before in my whole life. The air turned to fire in my lungs. Bodies bounced off me. My magic flared behind me, glowing.
    My father held out his hand, his face twisted with grief. The older warrior who had knelt before me in the courtyard this morning handed him the blood spear.
    No!
    I was almost to the tower.
    My father gritted his teeth, his face supernaturally clear before me. Tears welled in his eyes. He plunged the spear down. A baby screamed, his cry severing my soul. My father pulled the weapon up, raising it like a flag.
    My baby boy jerked, impaled on the spear. His pain cut me like a knife and kept cutting and cutting, carving pieces off my soul. He was crying for me, reaching with his little arms, and I could do nothing.
    His little heart beat one last time and stopped.
    Heat exploded in me. My heart burst.
    Water. Cold soothing water. I dived this time, trying to dilute some of the heat emanating from my skin. I stayed under until all of the air in my lungs was gone. When I surfaced, the cave was silent.
    I waded to the rocky shoulder and dragged myself out onto one of the large dark boulders. Sienna stepped out of the waterfall, her hair plastered to her head, her face pale; she made her way to the other side of the cave and collapsed on her back.
    â€œAre you okay?” Roman asked.
    â€œShe watched her child die,” Evdokia said. “Let her rest.”
    Rest was a luxury I couldn’t afford. “Is there are any version of this that doesn’t end with Atlanta burning and my son or Curran dying?”
    â€œNo,” Sienna said. “I’m so sorry.”
    â€œHow long have you been seeing this?”
    â€œOver the past month.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you tell me?”
    Sienna sighed. “I hoped I was wrong.”
    â€œCould you be wrong?” Roman asked. “These are only possibilities, not certainties.”
    â€œPredicting the future is like looking into the narrow end of a funnel,” Sienna said. “The further in the future the events are, the more possibilities you see. The closer we get to the event itself, the clearer and more specific the