Crown of Cinders (Imdalind Series Book 7) (22 page)

Thom was silent. I couldn’t even look at him. Admitting that flooded me with far too many memories of that night, of watching my little girl go through that, of Thom running away.

It hurt too much.

Pressing my lips into a tight line, I steeled myself, knowing I needed to continue. “I would put the blade in your hand when everyone was asleep, part of me hoping that maybe you would also hear her, that maybe you could hear the good thing. Maybe it would wake you up.” Shaking my head in embarrassment, I leaned against the footboard, the creaking of springs and frame loud in the silence.

“But I saw her, Wyn. Even if I didn’t wake up, I saw her. I talked with her. I held her …” His voice caught as my chest tightened, a heat spreading over my face as I tried not to let the tears force their way past my badass exterior.

I already knew I wouldn’t be successful.

Just hearing him say it brought back that moment, that same beautiful and horrifying moment of holding her, of loving her, even if it was one last time.

“So did I,” I said, my voice breaking as the tears that began to fall down my face. Chilled rivers of them flowed over my cheeks before splashing against my collarbone, a hiss barely audible as the heat in my skin sent them back into the air in steam and smoke.

Thom’s eyes widened as worry overtook his pain. “Running a bit hot, are we?”

“Yeah, I warned you I would burn you,” I said without thinking. “It’s been an issue ever since Jos and I knocked down that chapel. I should probably try to restrain my magic a bit better, but seeing as Jos isn’t around, it’s not my first priority.”

If I needed to be around her, perhaps I would wear a full body sock.

I laughed at the thought, lost in my head.

Thom, however, was staring at me with changing degrees of confusion and worry.

“Wyn?”

“That blade messed up a lot, Thom.
A lot
. But I also got to see her when Edmund took control of the blade. I
saw
her.” Speaking carefully, I lifted the hand he had been so mesmerized with, the hole angry and red, as if it knew I was talking about it. “She saved me. She saved us.”

Hand before me, I uncurled my fingers with my palm facing Thom as I smiled at him through the gap before pressing my palm against my eye and looking through the hole like it was the spy glass Joclyn wanted it to be.

“See? You should—”

“He tried to take control of me, Thom. He pushed the blade into my hand, but Rosy saved me. She fought his control. She got me here so I could save you …”

My stomach fluttered, my words shaking as I retold everything that had happened.

His lips pressed into a tight line as the story unfolded. The fascination faded into horror as he finally understood what the gap in my hand really was.

The look of realization on his face was making me uncomfortable.

Shifting my weight, I started to move away, but before I could get far, Thom grabbed me, pulling my hand toward him. His soft fingers moved over the skin, his touch gentle now, as if the skin of my palm was sacred.

His eyes grew wide with fear before narrowing in the perpetual anger that made him so Thom.

“We have to stop him. We have to stop all of them. We have to make them pay: Edmund for hurting her, Ovailia for helping—”

“What if Edmund is dead?” I interrupted, the same tinge of regret I had been fighting smacking me around. I wanted to kill Edmund. The fact that I might have missed my chance was infuriating.

“It doesn’t matter. We will destroy who ever we need to in order to save her,” he said with his usual grumble, as if the end goal made it all better. “Besides, if Edmund is dead, and Sain is responsible, he may have had more to do with her death than we thought. Sain let Ovailia poison me, he’s been working with her. He’s been working with them both for a long time.”

“I want to say he’s your best friend, and that he wouldn’t … But I don’t think I can swallow that lie anymore.”

“He’s not my best friend, not anymore!” he snapped, his anger erupting like the volcano he was. “My best friend would not have told Edmund of our escape and told him how to kill her in order to make the blade.”

My gut twisted, the memory of the night rushing back to me, unwanted. “He was in the sight of our escape, Thom. We both saw him.”

“He can control it more than he wants anyone to believe.” He sighed, slamming his hand into his forehead in a regret I didn’t think I understood. “I’ve seen him do it before. If he had any part in Rosy’s death, I will end him.”

“You would kill your best friend?” I asked, not believing for a second that it was possible for him to do. “You risked everything for him before …”

I knew he could, but that type of reversal didn’t seem like Thom. Then again, Sain’s betrayal didn’t seem like the man he knew, either.

“I would kill whoever I needed to in order to make this all stop.” Now that sounded like Thom. “No matter how long of a line I have to stand in to get there.”

“That line seems to be getting longer every day,” I said with a sigh, the tension in my shoulders leaving as his thumb moved over the skin of the hand he still held. “I’m gonna have to fight to be first, aren’t I?”

“Not as much as you think. I know that bloodlust in your eyes better than anyone, Wynifred. If you get there first, take the shot. Don’t hesitate. Do it for her. Besides, as long as someone destroys him, I’ll be happy.”

“That, I believe, is a given,” I said, unwilling to let my eyes leave his. The gentle flicker of red daylight glinted past the window, making everything a bit more nefarious than it needed to be. “I don’t think there is any way this can end without Edmund slash Sain face down in his own blood.”

“You say that like you are speaking of the epic ending of a six-year-old’s birthday party.”

“Maybe I am.” I shrugged, my hand finally leaving his as I lay back down next to him.

The deep laugh I loved so much filled the depressing space and sucked the ominous pressure out of the air.

“All we need is a clown,” I quipped.

“Or pony rides.”

We laughed at that, but it was shallow, full of all the fear and trepidation our world was surrounded by.

Ignoring it, I curled into Thom, letting all the crap pass us by. I wasn’t going to move anytime soon. I would stay like this for the rest of my life if he asked me. Of course, that required Thom never leaving the bed and me not beating him in destroying the mysterious Edmund slash Sain combo, both of which were not going to happen.

“You better not go anywhere else,” I gasped out, knowing how pathetic the worry sounded in my voice and not really caring.

“Where am I going?” he teased, poking his fingers into my side. “Guam?”

“You know what I mean.” My voice was barely above a growl.

“I could say the same thing, Wyn,” he said, the grip he had on me increasing as he pulled me closer. “Before Jos saved you, I thought for sure you were a goner.”

“Nice to know you were rooting for me to pull through.” It was hard to keep the irritation out of my voice. Though I knew he didn’t mean it the way I had taken it, I was suddenly on high alert, expecting the dream to turn into a nightmare or some such nonsense.

“I was, Wyn.” He sighed, his hand leaving my arm to run down the side of my head, his fingers soft as they glided over my hairline.

I shivered.

“Just as you were, I never left your side—”

“I think,” I said, my heart suddenly beating a million miles an hour, “that we have had quite enough of near-death experiences and bedside vigils.”

“I can agree with that,” he said with a laugh, his fingers tangling in my hair as I rested against him.

The tension in my neck and chest began to release.

“Good, because the less of those this world has, the more it can have of other things.”

“Other things?” he asked.

I was walking into a bear trap, and part of me didn’t care.

“Yeah … you know, like monster truck rallies and Styx reunion tours that go on outside of Wendover, Utah, and kisses and terrible books and—”

“Wyn?” Thom said as he pressed his finger against my chin softly, tilting my head enough to look at him.

Instead of the deep, passionate blue of his eyes, I was met by a mischievous glare and a sly smile. It was a look I returned, knowing Thom far too well not to realize something was coming.

“Yes?” I was understandably wary.

“How did you manage to destroy the cathedral and
not
be murdered by my brother?”

“Let’s say that Ilyan had more important things on his mind.” I snickered, leaning against him again. “That and I saved him from an army of undead corpses; that probably helped, too.”

“
Undead corpses
?” Thom gasped, obviously concerned.

“We have much to talk about, young kemosabe.”

“Thank God we have a lifetime to do it.”

“Indeed.”

E
verything was still
in the drenching silence of misery that had taken over the camp, soaking into each of us until we were nothing more than a damp rag.

At least, that’s how I felt. And, with the way Ryland slumped against the wall next to me, he was a damp rag, too.

Damp and hollow and empty, like the long hospital corridor we sat in. Like our souls.

I might be mistaken, but I thought mine might have slithered away, off to find a land full of real sunshine.

I told Ryland that, and he tried to smile, but mostly, he cried and slammed his head into the wall we sat against.

“Don’t do that, Ry.” I moved to lean against him, but thankfully, I stopped myself from resting my head on his shoulder just in time. The familiarity of this position made that movement too easy.

“Don’t do what?” he snapped, his anger working hard to mask the crippling pain of loss. “Cry? Yell? Run out and find the little brat who did this to us?” His voice rose with each word as he gestured with his hands toward the large wooden door at the end of the hospital, toward the room that used to be a broom closet and now held the three sheet-covered bodies of our family.

I stared at the door as his fingers began to shake, my heart in pain that I tried arduously to dismiss. But looking at the door and knowing what was behind it hurt.

“No.” I felt the need to cry but couldn’t make the tears come. It was lost, just like my soul. “Crying is okay, especially right now. Hurting yourself, however …”

He cast me a sidelong glance. “Point taken.” His response was barely above a growl, one that spanned over the still silence of the room, over the soapy floors that some of the healers had desperately tried to clean before being ushered out by Ilyan, who was on his way to another council. The council would decide the fate of those who had chosen to fight against us. The council would also seal our fate for the battle that was coming.

You couldn’t win a war if everyone left. And that, if what Ilyan and Ryland had told me about the battle I had missed was true, was exactly what was going to happen.

I didn’t know how much more of this I could take.

Sighing, I slammed my head into the wall exactly as Ryland had, regretting the action immediately. That hurt.

“Now who is hurting themselves?” Ryland prompted, the anger still drowning his voice.

“I’m not hurting myself,” I retorted, my eyes burning with the ripple of the impact. “I’m trying to dislodge whatever it is in my brain that is causing this mess and get us out of this nightmare and back to reality.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy, Jos.”

“Nothing ever is.” This time, I did lay my head on his shoulder. I knew I shouldn’t, but right then, there was no monster left in him. There was only my best friend.

There were only two broken hearts.

“I loved her, Jos,” he admitted after a minute, his shoulders tensing into a rock underneath me.

I hadn’t expected that.

I tried to swallow, but it was all dry and prickly. The tension in his muscles moved through me, knotting my stomach.

“No, Ry.” I was barely able to get the words past my desert dry-throat. “You still love her. That doesn’t have to go anywhere.”

“But she does.”

His heartbreak echoed my own. It leached into his words and tensed in his chest, pressing against my own heart so heavily I was having trouble breathing again. The flood of tears came shortly after.

Our sobs were the only sound in the long hall, broken and pained and heart-wrenching until the loud slam of the door interrupted us.

All thoughts of tears were forgotten as Wyn began walking toward us, bottle and glasses in one hand, Thom leaning heavily on the other.

“Thom.”

The one good thing in all of this. The only good thing left, it seemed. We hadn’t lost everything.

Struggling to my feet, I raced toward them.

A wide grin spread over Thom’s own tear-streaked face. “Hey, Silnỳ.” His voice was soft and weak, his gaunt face pulling oddly under the smile.

I hadn’t noticed how much weight he had lost while he had been lying in the bed day after day. Now, seeing him standing, he was little more than skin and bones. His arms were sticks, the muscles and sinews popping out along his joints and neck like the seams of a puppet. Even his eyes seemed sunken.

I realized I was scared to touch him as I stopped mere inches away before I collided into him. It was something he noticed, and he smiled.

“What? No jubilant greeting for me?” Wyn taunted, her smile as strained as the rest of us, although her joke was unsurprisingly pure.

“I see you every day, Wyn, so don’t be greedy.” I contemplated hitting her then stopped when Ry stepped around me in an attempt to reach his brother, shock on his face.

“Hello again, brother,” Thom said, his voice just as weak as his body looked. “We meet again.”

Ryland chuckled uncomfortably before stepping forward, embracing Thom as though he had known him longer than the few days before Thom had been plunged into his never-ending sleep.

“As long as you stick around, I’ll be glad for it,” Ryland gasped out, his voice strained. “What brings you here? I didn’t expect to see you—”

“We need to see Dramin,” Wyn said, pulling my focus from the men and back to her, back to the bottles she was holding and the door that stood behind us. The door might as well have a spotlight on it.

“We need to say good-bye,” Thom continued.

Their words hit me hard in the chest, sending the stationary room into a spin as a sight tried to take control, tried to pull me down.

Pushing it away, I shook my head, willing the people before me to come back into focus. Still, my heart pounded in my chest.

I was not a fan of being in the same room with my brother, of seeing him one last time … of never hearing what he had been trying to tell me.

I didn’t think I could be there when they pulled that sheet down. I didn’t know if I could see that without it destroying me. I was positive it would.

I had seen Dramin’s funeral far too many times in sight. I knew the moment we all stood on the mountain side and placed that handkerchief on his face was a gateway to something bigger, and now it was here.

I still didn’t want to accept it.

Wyn interpreted the horror on my face as any good friend would. Her eyes softened as she placed her arm across my shoulder, the glasses clicking behind my back. “Don’t worry, Jos,” she whispered low enough that the men who were inches from us couldn’t hear. “We’ll wait. You don’t have to be there.”

Mi lasko?
Ilyan’s voice filled my mind, his soft, soothing words pulling me from the horrors of what Wyn was planning.

Ilyan.
I hadn’t been certain my stomach could wind itself up in heavier knots. I was wrong.

One word and everything in me was iron and ice.

“Is it done, then?” I asked aloud, forgetting that Wyn was in front of me.

She screwed up her face in confusion, but I waved it off, and her confusion was quickly replaced by an eye roll and a scowl of irritation.

I ignored her. I was getting pretty good at that, especially when I wanted to hit everyone.

Yes, I’ve just left the council.

I tensed, feeling his trepidation. I could feel the fear that was traveling alongside his magic.

I shivered.

How did it go?
I didn’t want to ask.

His magic pressed against me, the sound of his steps hollow as they moved across our connection, from his ears to mine. He wasn’t far. I didn’t know if that made it better or worse that he was running in my direction.

That bad, huh?
I tried to put a joke into the words, but it didn’t stick. It melted away like the emotional bomb we were surrounded by.

It wasn’t good
, he finally answered, his voice tense in my head as the door opened with a smack, and everyone turned at the sound, looking at Ilyan as he strode into the room.

“How
not good
was it?” I asked before anyone else had a chance to speak.

The look of joy they’d all had at the sight of Ilyan vanished with my question, their heads bouncing back and forth in confusion that slowly slipped into fear. They all knew where he had been, what he had been doing.

Ilyan walked toward us, his lips pulled into a tight line as flashes of images from the council began to filter into my mind through our connection. The yelling faces and hurled rocks smacked me right in the chest.

“You’re not giving me much confidence for what we’re going into,” I gasped as I pushed the memories away. My voice was broken and strained, so much so that it barely made it past my throat.

“If you don’t have much, then I don’t have any,” Wyn said, her voice hard as she held onto Thom, taking a protective stance in front of the emaciated man. “I was at that bloodbath we tried to pass off as a council. I highly doubt this one could have gone any better.”

Ilyan reached us then, his hand firm on Thom’s shoulder. The touch was meant to be comforting, but the look he fixed me with fell short of that.

I didn’t want any more bad news.

“They aren’t giving me much hope for what is coming,” he said with a sigh, and my shoulders tensed as the bands of his memory began to loosen, letting the misery that was plain on his face fill me. “Many of them wish to leave.”

I could have never expected that.

Neither could anyone else.

Ryland finally took that step back while Wyn took one forward, forgetting about poor Thom who struggled a bit to hold his own weight. Luckily, Ryland was paying enough attention to at least notice and catch him.

It all happened in a matter of a second, a shuffle of movement that fluttered around me while I stood in place, thinking if anything else were to happen today, the barrier would fall, and then we would all be screwed.

Hell, we were already screwed.

Sain really had won. All of his planning, all of his deceiving, had worked. I had never been more ashamed to be his daughter.

The emotion swam toward Ilyan, and he moved his hand to my shoulder, pulling me toward him as if he were afraid I would suddenly take off and try to kill that vexing man. Not that it would be a bad thing.

“How many?” Wyn asked, her question awakening the memory in Ilyan’s mind, pushing it back into mine.

My magic flared at the invasion, a sight glistening around me as my magic showed me the same moment.

Beyond the empty hospital, I could see the council in shadows, see the wide majority of people step forward in the hall, their hands raised above their heads. A solitary vote for dissension. For leaving.

“More than half,” I answered for him, watching the scene continue as more and more joined them. Only a handful were left on the outskirts, sheepishly standing their ground, although many of them looked unsure of their choice. They wouldn’t last long. “No more than two-thirds.”

Thom groaned, Wyn swore, and Ryland looked like he was about to throw up. His jaw worked wildly as he tried to find words, his skin turning pale as he twitched a bit, looking at something far over my head with enough anger that I could have sworn the ceiling had offended him somehow.

“I guess it’s better for them to leave than to fight,” he said to the ceiling, his voice strong despite everything about him looking weak. “We couldn’t trust them … We can’t save them anymore.”

“Where are they even going to go?” I asked, the sudden ridiculousness of their request hitting me in the gut. My pride bristled at the treachery I was enfolded within.

“Some payback for saving them—walking away. Where are they going to go? Into the infested city with no escape? Dumb,” Wyn asked, putting all of my irritation into words. “They’ll be lucky if they survive.”

“It is their choice,” Ilyan said, his voice strong as he straightened himself up to his full height, his anger and frustration clear. “We can’t save everyone. If they choose to die, so be it. All we can do is save ourselves and do our best when the time comes to enter Imdalind.”

“You mean, kick some trash,” Wyn spat, anger radiating off her. She smashed her fists together before stepping back to Thom, though she didn’t offer to take his weight from Ryland. She stared at Ilyan and me so intently I could feel my magic prickle in expectation.

Breathing deeply in an attempt to control my magic, I pushed it away. I really didn’t need to bring down the hospital, too.

“I can take down Sain on my own, anyway,” Wyn continued, the same anger pulsing within her. “You just need to get me there.”

I really didn’t need to remind her again that it was my job.

“I’ll get you there.” As far as I was concerned, she could have it. Although I didn’t see many complications with killing my own estranged father, I knew it was wishful thinking.

“How many are left?” Ryland asked as he finally looked away from the ceiling, pulling the conversation away from Wyn’s murderous tendencies and back to the new complication.

“Less that twenty,” Ilyan answered.

This time, I joined in Wyn’s over-exaggerated frown. That was worse than I had thought.

“Did you let them go?” I asked, knowing he had no other choice.

He nodded, his lips a tight line of defeat, of fear, of acceptance. It was a simple move he could not control and one that might have sealed our fate.

“Good riddance, I say.” Wyn smiled through the dark cloud that had covered us. The usually joyous expression was full of far too much savagery to be comforting. “If it’s only the four or us, we can get in, kill your dad”—she pointed at me—“and all y’all’s sister”—she waved toward the boys—“and we’ll be set.”

“Excuse me. There are five here,” Thom interjected, pulling away from Ryland in an attempt to stand on his own.

“Are there?” Wyn asked, her banter loud as she placed one finger against his chest and pushed him back into Ryland. Luckily, his brother was ready for him. “I see four unless you were planning on me pushing your wheelchair into Imdalind …”

“I will walk on my own, thank you.”

“You can barely stand!”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t fight.”

They continued to bicker, Thom’s smile deepening as Wyn’s exasperation grew.