J. Ward - Lover Unbound

Still, though he might feel no remorse, he did blame himself for the fear and anger in her face when she'd come to. Thanks to his mother, he'd gotten a nasty look at what it was like to be forced into something, and he'd just done the same thing to the one who'd saved his life.

Shit . He wondered what he would have done if he hadn't gotten that vision, if he hadn't had his curse of seeing the future speak up. Would he have left her there? Yeah. Of course he would have. Even with the word mine running through his head, he would have let her stay in her world.

But the fucking vision had sealed her fate.

He thought back to the past. To the first of his visions…

Literacy was not of value in the warrior camp, as you couldn't kill with it.

Vishous learned to read the Old Language only because one of the soldiers had had some education and was in charge of keeping some rudimentary records of the camp. He was sloppy about it and bored by the job, so V had volunteered to do his duties if the male taught him how to read and write. It was the perfect exchange. V had always been entranced by the idea that you could reduce an event to the page and make it not transitory, but fixed. Eternal.

He'd learned fast and then scoured the camp for books, finding a few in obscure, forgotten places like under old, broken weapons or in abandoned tents. He collected the battered, leather-bound treasures and hid them at the far edge of the camp where the animal hides were kept. No soldiers ever went there, as it was female territory, and if the females did, it was just to grab a pelt or two for making clothes or bedding. Further, not only was it safe for the books, it was the perfect spot for reading, as the cave ceiling dropped to a low height and the floor was stone: Anyone's approach was instantly heard, as they'd have to shuffle about to get near him.

There was one book, however, that even his hidden place wasn't secure enough for.

The most precious of his meager collection was a diary written by a male who'd come to the camp about thirty years prior. He'd been an aristocrat by birth but had ended up in the camp being trained due to family tragedy. The diary was written in beautiful script, with big words that V could only guess the meanings of, and spanned three years of the male's life. The contrast between the two parts, the one detailing events prior to his coming here and the one covering afterward, was stark. In the beginning, the male's life had been marked with the glorious passing of the glymera's social calendar, full of balls and lovely females and courtly manners. Then it all ended. Despair, the exact thing Vishous lived with, was what tinted the pages after the male's life changed forever just after his transition .

Vishous read and reread the diary, feeling a kinship with the writer's sadness. And after each reading, he would close the cover and run his fingertips over the name embossed in the leather.

DARIUS, SON OF MARKLON

V often wondered what had happened to the male. The entries ended on a day when nothing particularly significant occurred, so it was hard to know whether he'd died in an accident or left on a whim. V hoped to find out the warrior's fate at some point, assuming he himself lived long enough to get free of the camp.

As losing the diary would make him bereft, he kept it in the one place where not a soul tarried. Before the camp settled herein, the cave had been inhabited by some manner of ancient human, and the prior inhabitants had left crude drawings on the walls. The hazy representations of bison and horses and palm prints and single eyes were considered curses by the soldiers and were avoided by all and sundry. A partition had been erected in front of that portion of the walls, and though the artistry might have been painted over in its entirely, Vishous knew why his father didn't do away with them. The Bloodletter wanted the camp off balance and edgy, and he taunted soldiers and females alike with threats that the spirits of those animals would possess them or that the eye images and handprints would come to life with fire and fury.

V wasn't afraid of the drawings. He loved them. The animals' simplicity of design had power and grace, and he liked to place his own hands up against the palm prints. Indeed, it was of comfort to know that there were those who had lived here before him. Perhaps they had had it better.

V hid the diary between two of the larger depictions of bison, in a crevice that provided an accommodation just wide and deep enough. During the day, when all were reposed, he would sneak behind the partition and set his eyes aglow and read until his loneliness was eased.

It was a mere year after he found them that Vishous's books were destroyed. His only joys were burned, as he had always feared they would be. And it was no surprise by whom.

He had been feeling ill for weeks, approaching his transition, though he knew it not at the time. Unable to sleep, he had risen and ghosted to the hide pile, settling in with a volume of fairy tales. It was with the book in his lap that he fell asleep.

When he awoke, a pretrans was standing over him. The boy was one of the more aggressive ones, hard of eye and wiry of body.

"How you laze whilst the rest of us work," the boy sneered. "And is that a book in your hand? Mayhap it should be turned in, as it keeps you from chores. I could get more for my stomach by doing so."

Vishous pushed his stack farther behind the hides and got to his feet, saying nothing. He would fight for his books, just as he fought for the scraps of food to fill his belly or the castoff clothing that covered his skin. And the pretrans before him would fight for the privilege of exposing the books. It was always thus.

The boy came in fast, shoving V back against the cave wall. Though his head hit hard and his breath rushed out, he struck back, slamming his opponent in the face with the book. As the other pretrans rushed over and watched, V hit his opponent over and over again. He had been taught to use any weapon at his disposal, but as he forced the other male to the ground, he wanted to cry that he was using this most precious thing to hurt someone else. He had to keep going, though. If he lost the advantage, he might well be beaten and lose the books before he could move them to another hiding place.

At last, the other boy lay still, his face a swollen mess, his breath gurgling as V held him down by the throat. The volume of fairy tales was dripping blood, the leather cover loose on the spine.

It was in the ragged aftermath that it happened. A strange tingling shot down V's arm and tunneled into the hand that held his opponent to the cave floor. Then an eerie shadow was suddenly thrown, created by a glow coining from V's palm. At once, the pretrans under him began to thrash around, his arms and legs flapping against the stone as if his whole body were in pain.

V let go and stared at his hand in horror.

When he looked back at the male, a vision struck like a fist, rendering V stunned and sightless. In a hazy mirage he saw the boy's face in a stiff wind, his hair blown back, his eyes fixed on some distant point. Behind him there were rocks of the kind found on the mountain, and sunlight shone upon both them and the pretrans's motionless body.

Dead. The boy was dead.

The pretrans suddenly whispered. "Your eye… your eye… what has been done?"

The words came out of V's mouth before he could stop them: "Death will find you on the mountain, and as the wind comes upon you, so shall you be carried away."

A gasp brought V's head up. One of the females was close by, her face drawn in horror as if he had spoken to her.