Lies and Prophecy by Marie Brennan Page B

enough to feel as if he had a measure of privacy. “But I’d like to know why. What are you preparing for, that makes you half-kill yourself like this?”
    We were well away from the party now, the trees overhanging us and beginning to crowd the bank. I was almost certain Julian wasn’t going to answer when abruptly he said, “You’re thinking about Guardianship, aren’t you.”
    It was one possible reason for his choices, but— oh. “I won’t even ask how you figured that out. Yes, I am. If I can get past my trouble with CM. You’re changing the subject.”
    â€œNo, I’m not. If you’re thinking of it, you’ve looked up the training. You know what it’s like.”
    â€œBut if you’re preparing to be a Guardian, why are you even in school? I need this. You don’t.”
    Julian bent his head briefly, perhaps to watch his footing. “There are things I can learn better here. But Kim—” A muscle flickered in his jaw, as if he had clenched his teeth before going on. “Education is only part of it.”
    â€œAnd the rest is….”
    Robert was right; Julian only opened up if something pushed him. Normally I waited for circumstances to do it for me, but tonight I’d taken matters into my own hands, and for once it was producing results. “For ordinary Guardians—people like you—it’s different. A job, like any other. You go where you’re sent, and you fix problems because you can, because you’re the sort of person who wants to.”
    It was more or less what I’d said to Grayson. “So why do you do it?”
    â€œBecause we have to,” Julian said, almost too quietly to hear. “The problems find us. Or we find them. And we can’t walk away, can’t tell ourselves somebody else will take care of it for us, because we have these gifts and we have to use them where we can, to help people. They encourage that in our training, but the truth is they don’t have to; it’s just there. Part of us. Maybe just because if we don’t put an end to the problem, it might put an end to us.” He paused, halting the flood of words, the startling honesty. His next words chilled me to the bone. “My kind rarely lives to be old.”
    My kind. As if the wilders were a race apart—not just humans with strong gifts, but something else entirely. Something more like the sidhe.
    I bit my lip. What was the life expectancy of a wilder? I’d never asked. And no point asking if he wanted that life. From the sound of it, that would be like asking if he wanted to breathe air.
    He stopped, and I walked on another few steps before realizing he wasn’t at my side. Turning, I saw him standing perfectly still, a black-and-silver statue in the middle of the path.
    He wasn’t looking at me.
    I took a hesitant step toward him, and then another. “Julian?”
    No answer. I’d never touched Julian without permission, not once in more than two years of knowing him—but I reached out now to put my hand on his tense shoulder.
    He threw me off with enough force to send me stumbling into a tree. Even as I hit the trunk, something went wrong. Julian twisted, crying out, his whole body contorting. The air around us turned black. Storm clouds appeared out of nowhere, blotting out the stars and moon, and let loose a torrent of cold rain. Julian stumbled, fell to one knee, lurched to his feet. He clawed frantically at his body, as if trying to tear something off his back; his nails caught the velvet of his doublet, splitting the seams, ripping it off. The rain plastered his white shirt to his back before it joined the remains of his doublet on the muddy ground.
    Julian collapsed to his knees on the dead grass beside the stream, raking his own skin bloody. Clinging for support to the tree behind me, I desperately centered myself and threw a telepathic shield over him.
    It had no