Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE: REINA
HAZY VISION
Sometimes people say they hate themselves when they are angry with themselves, but for me, it is never just sometimes. I have always hated myself. This half-person I am.
For the past two weeks, I have been seeing a girl in my dreams. She is afraid. A gun goes off. Then somehow, I see a familiar face. Seeing that face sends a chill through me. A hospital, a doctor, a gun. What makes them different from an ordinary strange dream is that they are a reflection of something real.
My mother was one of the strongest seers in the village, while all I have are vague dreams. It really is not fair. That is why I have always hated this useless part of me. If I had not married for love, I would not even be here. Though I made a mess of that too.
That morning, I woke up early to check the breakfast. As always, Edric was the first to arrive.
“Good morning, Reina.”
“Good morning,” I said, trying to smile.
“Are you all right? You look tired.”
I was an intuitive, and Edric was every bit a healer. He could tell I was worried.
“Edric, I have a vision, but it is not clear yet,” I said.
“It seems strong,” he said without looking at me.
Nothing could be hidden from him.
“Yes. There is a girl in it. I am not sure if she is Broken, but I saw Şehrazat too,” I said.
Edric went pale when he heard her name. He walked away without saying anything.
When I saw the same dream again the next night, one of those deep fears that rarely came over me settled inside my chest. That morning, I volunteered to take Amir his breakfast. He was sitting by his window, watching the sea. He smiled when he saw me.
I pulled his wheelchair up to the table and straightened his cap.
Amir had grown up in a mountain town near the border of Pakistan. He belonged to a community with a deep spiritual faith. When he was a child, his older brother caused him to fall from a horse, leaving him paralysed from the waist down. No one knew whether his ability came from what he had been through or whether it had always been there. At first, Amir thought they were only dreams. Then he realised he could travel while he slept. During the day, he read about the world. At night, he visited all the places he had read about.
Amir was still a young man when he realised he was not only travelling. He was also being drawn towards the light of souls who needed him. That was around the time he met Edric’s father. As soon as Benedict Ellington received his letter, he set off. After a journey that lasted several months, he brought Amir here. He admired him so much that he not only made him a member of the community, but also became one of his closest friends.
“There is a girl. Have you ever come across her?” I asked.
Amir carried on slurping his soup without paying any attention to me. I continued.
“Şehrazat may want her too.”
Amir looked at me. His already tiny eyes became even smaller when he smiled.
“The city is Izmir. I will tell you the place. Tell Edric,” he said.
Izmir was only a few hours away. I left the room without waiting for Amir to finish his meal and delivered the news.
Edric set off within a few hours. That night, he called and told me he had checked into a hotel in the city. Now all we had to do was wait for a sign.
That was the hardest part of this work. As much as I hated to say her name, everything had been easier when Şehrazat was with us. There were two intuitives among those who had left with her. Now there was only useless me.
Edric had been gone for three days. That night, I felt an uneasiness in my chest, as though my heart had been taken captive by the darkness. The pain inside me was strong enough to almost split me in two.
Nina called out from a distance.
“Amir wants you.”
I ran to his room.
“It will happen at a hospital with a snake statue in front of it,” he said.
I called Edric and told him.
“What can you tell me?” he asked. He did not want to pressure me, but he needed information.
“Only that there will be an armed attack. A woman in her late twenties. She may be a lawyer, or the person she is going to kill may be one.”
