Crown of Cinders (Imdalind Series Book 7) (26 page)

“Go alone? What if Sain senses your magic? What if he ‘sees’ you?” Míra asked, her eyes wide as someone else ran into her, jostling her around before she came right back to standing. “You said—”

“That barely matters now,” I snapped. “There will be much more magic heading right toward him, and I need to find them before they get here. Do you understand?”

She nodded once, grinding her teeth together, her eyes back to the hard death look that was so familiar to her.

“Find Damek if you can. Find the blade, hide it and meet me in the old hall, where the men would meet. Once we have the blade and Ilyan we can end Sain. It’s the only way. We need a blade in our possession before we are to face him. Do you understand?” I didn’t even look at her. I stared at the city, at the ruins that were alive with light and Vilỳs as they took off into the air, attacking the dozens of helicopters and planes that soared across the now open sky.

Fire erupted from one as the Vilỳs took control, sending the helicopter down toward the city in a ball of fire. The soldiers who were going around the tents, searching for survivors, looked back at the explosion, only to increase their search. Many of them began to drop to the ground, attacked by the winged monsters my father had created.

This game had suddenly become very dangerous.

“You’ll need to stay hidden, Míra,” I finished, finally turning back to the girl. “These men will stop you. The Vilỳs will eat you. Everyone will destroy you.”

“Don’t worry, Ovailia.” A smile spread over her face so wide and innocent that it looked out of place, stretching her features the wrong way. “My brother died because of him. I’d rather die before he sees another day.” She smiled again, her white teeth glinting in the obstructed light. Then she turned from me, running around the tents and dodging soldiers and Vilỳs before she disappeared completely, shrouded by her magic.

“Ma’am!” a deep voice yelled at me, and I turned to face a large man clad in black armor, a large, unnecessary gun in his hands. “Do you need help? We have a large—”

“You are the ones who will need help,” I said, the chill in my voice matching the icy air that swirled around us.

The soldier looked at me in confusion. The look switched to fear as a Vilỳ flew behind me, coming right up, ready to attack.

“Zdechnout,” I hissed, and the creature fell to the ground with a thud.

Meanwhile, the soldier had cocked his gun, ready to fire. He stood, staring at me, confused about what had happened, confused about what I was and what side I was on.

“Ma’am,” he said, his voice shaking underneath the strength he tried to convey.

I smiled, the power in my look making the gun shake in his hands.

“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

“So you can save me?” A deeper grin, a bigger shake.

“Ma’am—”

“You think you saved us from hell?’ I asked, lifting my fingers to look at my perfectly manicured red nails. “You and your men have released it. You better hope I can kill him first.”

I smiled at the man who stepped back in obvious confusion. His eyes widened as he looked around him, desperate for backup, but before he could find anything, I snapped my fingers, sending a wall of flames up around us, circling the tiny alcove of the campsite in flame.

“Run,” I said before I left him, vanishing into thin air and leaving the man standing in the flames, staring at nothing but fire. Facing nothing but death.

For the first time, I actually hoped I could succeed before Sain killed us all.

W
ith a
whoosh
of wind
, the barrier fell. It pulled at coats and hair and dirt with such force that I was afraid it would sweep us away, back to the city that was now bathed in bright light.

Cowering against the force, we huddled over the fresh grave of my brother, snow swirling around us and coating everything with a fresh layer of white.

Just as it had in all the sights I’d had of this moment.

The cold air bit against my nose and cheeks as I looked up from the security of Dramin’s old blanket. The wind swirled before the gap in fur and skin as, for the first time, I saw the city of ruins that had been my home for the last few months.

Everything looked different in the yellow light of the sun. The hauntingly beautiful frame of this skeletal city glistened in the light. Broken glass twinkled from the twisted stone of the ancient architecture. The beauty of the dilapidation did not last before the wind began to slow and the screams began to fill the air. The howls of the creatures that had hunted us for so long ripped through the silence of the snow, tiny specks of brown and gray emerging from their hiding places within the ruins and exploding into the sky in streams of the undead. They defiled the beauty of the scene in ribbons of mud, the winged rats ready to feast on new meat.

With my heart clenched in fear, an angry agony gripped me as I pushed myself to stand, ready to soar into the air and fight the things, to stop them as they began to swarm the helicopters of the mortals who were already soaring into the city.

I got one foot off the ground, ready to follow Wyn and Ilyan who were already running to the low outcropping on the hill we stood on, but instead I collapsed in a terrifying free fall, my head spinning as my magic pushed through me with a speed that sucked the breath from my chest.

My sight spiked as I fell, the image of everyone running toward the city clear, only to have everything plunge to black with the impact of my head against the frozen earth.

The hollow memory of screams rang in my ears, the sound fading into the same black I looked into, my magic growing and swelling as it taunted me with sight.

However, there was nothing.

The heavy weight of the nothing pressed against my chest, spinning inside my head so fast I wasn’t sure what way was up anymore.

Then it stopped. Everything settled as the sound of my own breathing broke past the black in quick and fearful gasps.

“It has broken,” my own, older, voice cut through the dark.

The calm settled in my heart before I was plunged into color, my mind swarming with image after image as they flashed past me then slowed as the yell of the woman pulled at them, showing me bits and pieces of what I had missed, of what Sain had blocked.

Sain and Ovailia stood in an unfamiliar room. Sain ran his hand over her skin gently, his words soft when he whispered in her ear. The affection was not returned, however. When Sain was not looking, her face twisted, a hatred I had thought was only reserved for me glinting in her eyes. The hatred infiltrated the sight, the walls around them dripping with it before they faded.

My sight picked up into a sprint as flashes of cathedrals and funerals and tents and caves moved past me, some familiar, some new. Everything was confusing until my focus pulled toward a large stadium, Sain walking across the center of the empty arena.

My heart took off at once, this was something I hadn’t seen in weeks, something new.

With a smile and a flourish, Sain opened a large door, and a mournful whimper seeped from the dark in a haunting melody. It cut into my heart, twisting in my stomach, against my ribs. Sain, however, smiled wider, his eyes glinting with delight.

My soul turned to ice at the look, an anger I hadn’t known rising up. I would have stuttered right to him and destroyed him if I could, but this was the past, and the twisted man was no longer there. Still, the need remained, following me as I was pushed back into the quick succession of sights.

The images slowed as I caught a glimpse of Cail holding me in the forest, taunting Sain with my existence before his knife moved over my throat. The image immediately shifted to another of the wide pool I had seen before.

The water was still and calm, unmoving. Meanwhile, the ghostly shadow I knew to be me flickered in and out of the scene, appearing and reappearing with each painful beat of my heart.

I disappeared with a thud, watching the pool in expectation of my return. Instead of myself, it was a bright blue reflection against the water, a single dot of light floating above and below the surface. My eyes widened at the sight of it there, something pulling me toward it, needing to be with it. I could feel my magic swell with the need. But before I could act, it all vanished, plunging me through flashes of sight before settling on a something I had seen before.

A little boy ran down an alley, attacking the swollen and poisoned Vilỳs with ease; the power beyond what a child should be able to do.

He turned the corner, running past a stone storefront and into what was unmistakably the cave. It took me a moment to realize the change, to notice the stutter within the sight.

I stared at it, confused as to its meaning. I had seen this before. I knew that child, but he lay buried beneath the snow behind me. This scene could never be, and yet, here it was.

He ran into a darkened room where Ovailia stood, disheveled and broken in the dark, her bare feet bleeding against the stone, obviously waiting for him.

“I got it,” the child said in a panic before the door closed behind them.

The voice pulled me from my expectation, hitting me hard against the chest.

It wasn’t Jaromir.

It was Míra.

“Wonderful, and my brother?”

“He was in the blue room, the one where the fight broke out…”

“Stay here.” Ovailia rose in the dark, standing before the girl in a red dress that was ripped and stained with mud. “I will retrieve my brother, and we will finish this.”

Ovailia held out her hand in expectation, Míra stepping toward her as she pulled a jagged shard of red stone from her pocket.

A blade.

Ilyan.

This was it. This was how she was going to kill him. And Míra was going to help.

I had been wrong. I had been wrong from the beginning. The girl wasn’t going to save him.

She was responsible for his death.

The thought hit me when the sight shifted again, pulling me back into the large, carved hallways of the cave. Zooming amidst them like a mouse trapped in a maze, the motions pulled at the panic Ovailia had given me.

The emotion grew as the frantic movements continued, growing faster and faster until they stopped, freezing in place at the sight of a little girl standing in the middle of the hall, a child I had seen before, blood dripping over her face.

She stood there, her dark hair hanging limply around her face, blood dripping from her hair and hands into pools of red and black. Rosy looked at me with eyes as dead and black as her mother’s, made it clear she could see me, even in sight.

“This is where I died.”

The pain in her voice pulled at me, ripping me away from the child and dragging me back down the halls I had traveled, right into the room I had seen time and time again.

But this time, it was not the little girl who stopped the movement. It was Ilyan standing with the same death in his eyes, standing with the same blood dripping over him.

“This is where I die,” he said, his voice as dead and lifeless as hers.

“No!” I bellowed, the word ripping through me again and again as the sight began to move, down more halls, deep into the dark and to that same pool I had seen time and time again, the older version of me standing at the banks.

“This is where we change the world.” She said, her voice the same hollow that had been present in my sights since the cathedral came done.

She left in a flash as a roulette of moments sped over my mind before stopping on the static-filled images of the past: to Edmund who stood in a white robe before Sain, the vile man cowering before Edmund, his laugh booming inside my mind. Slowly, Sain stood, Edmund’s eyes widening as the pathetic man grew before him. A bright red blade glinted in his hand before he plunged it into Edmund’s chest, Edmund’s scream following as the sight shifted, fading to a dimly lit hall and Edmund’s corpse walking along a stage.

Edmund’s call of death faded, the sound overrun by shouts of fear. The sight shifted to his people, to their fear, before the images faded. The shouts increased as the images grew from the black into the same stadium I had seen before. This time, it was full of people. It was full of destruction.

Everyone fought against each other while Sain stood in the middle, laughing. He laughed as the people he was supposed to rule fell to their deaths. He laughed as he forced Chosen to step before him, wastefully ending their lives in an attempt to save his.

The stadium rumbled with an explosion then, and my sight flashed alongside the blast with a single image of the pool, of the blue light. My heart and magic reacted with the same desperation as before.

Sain’s laugh echoed through the still silence of the space, banging inside of my head before the black returned. Everything came back into focus, leaving me staring at the blue sky from where I lay, snow dusting over me.

Ilyan, Wyn, Thom, and Ryland looked over me with concerned expressions. Ilyan was angry rather than upset. He knew I was okay, and from the anger clear on his face, he knew what I had seen.

“Are you okay, Jos?” Wyn asked, her voice uncharacteristically freaked. The panic she stared at me with made it seem like I was dead.

But I wasn’t, not yet.

Without a word, I scuttled away from them, gasping for breath in an attempt to regain my bearings, desperate to put the onslaught of information I had received together in my head.

The icy air bit at my lungs as I heaved, my chest burning with each breath. I focused on the pain as everything fell into place, knowing exactly what we were heading into and not liking it.

Ilyan!
I yelled into his mind.

The man scuttled after me, wrapping the fur I had left behind around my shoulders. It was something I was instantly grateful for. The chill of winter was too much for me.

Mi lasko.
His concern was obvious. His touch was soft as he reached for me, but his eyes were hard, his jaw set.

I could feel the strength of his fear and anger through our connection, the replay of the sight consuming him.

“You saw?” I gasped, desperate not to have to replay it all for him yet panicked he might have seen too much.

I didn’t need him to see his own blood-covered visage. I hadn’t needed to see it, either.

“I saw enough,” Ilyan said, the source of his emotions becoming clear. “My father is dead.”

I nodded in acknowledgment, letting my memories of the sight flicker through him until he landed on the one I couldn’t shake: of Ovailia and Míra in that dark room, plotting his death.

We messed up.
It was hard to keep the tears at bay. It was hard to admit what that choice really meant for us.

For him.

It will be all right, my love
, he whispered into my mind, running his hand over my hair as he held me.

His body was tense and fearful against mine. His heartbeat plunged inside of me in a quick staccato beat, fueled by his fear and anger. The power in this man twisted through me, igniting my magic in a heat that burned the air.

“It will be,”
I said to myself, my voice swept away by the wind as I leaned against Ilyan. The two of us, bundled together, sitting on the cold ground.

The others came to us in a rush. Ryland and Thom looking troubled. Wyn, however, wasn’t even looking at us. Her focus was passed us, over the small outcropping of hills, toward the broken city that was alive with screams.

“Guys,” she whispered, her voice dead, “I think we might have a problem.”

Heart lodged in my toes, I turned, the wind blowing my hair over my face, over the ruins that were now a battlefield.

Smoke rose from the city in long tendrils, the gray plumes masking the Vilỳs that swarmed from place to place, heading right for us.

“We are shielded,” Ilyan announced as he stood, his magic emanating from his skin with a powerful pressure. The strength hit against me, pulling me in. “They cannot see us.”

“Thanks, bro,” Thom said with a grunt. “I’d rather not go through that again.”

“Mortals are idiots,” I growled as I jumped to my feet, glowering at the city as if it had offended me. They kind of deserved it. “We ripped apart the only thing that was keeping them safe. They should be running away.”

They had started a battle as we were about to go into another one.

“No, no, no,” Wyn moaned, breaking past Ilyan and me to get to Thom as a Vilỳ-laden helicopter nose-dived into the city.

A ball of fire erupted from between the two buildings with the impact, causing one of the few tall buildings in the city to collapse with a crash that rumbled the ground underneath us.

“They need to get away from them if they are going to do anything,” Ryland said from somewhere to my left. He stared over the city as the rest of us did. “Those rats are going to kill them all.”

“Those rats are going to kill them no matter what they do,” Ilyan’s voice was hard as he stood, his hair blowing in the wind, his gaze jumping from location to location. I could already hear him planning our battle inside his head. “We barely survived those things the first time. How do you think the rest of the world is going to do?”

“They’ll be fine,” Wyn snapped, her lips turning up into a smile. “They need to nuke the crap out of them. They thought it was a good idea to use it on the city before. Obviously, it’s going to work without a giant barrier to absorb the impact.”

“Yeah, I’m sure we will be fine. Nukes always end well,” Thom egged her on, the joke clear in his voice, although neither of them smiled.

None of us could.

“We cannot worry about them now. We need to move,” Ilyan announced, his voice the hard edge of regality I had come to expect in these situations. “My shield cannot last for long, not against the Vilỳ’s. Now is our time to strike. Joclyn has seen that Sain killed Edmund as we had assumed. He has taken control of the Chosen, and we need to act now.”