Crown of Cinders (Imdalind Series Book 7) (29 page)

In a flash of color, the space under time sped by me. Ribbons of red and gold wrapping around as I moved past them and back into the caves of Imdalind, back into the throne room and my high seat.

The slight pop of my return was the only sound in the silence of the cave. The battle was far behind now … with my enemies.

I would return to it once I knew what had happened. Once I found out where she was.

Once I destroyed her. She was my first priority.

“Foolish child, I should have never given you life!” I cursed to the emptiness.

Breathing deeply, I absorbed the silence, savoring the smell of blood and water that lived in the walls of this sacred space, the fire and smoke of the battle left far behind.

It smelled like home.

Breathing it in, I savored the silence before dashing to my throne, desperate to jump into sight, to plunge into a future that was now ahead of me and find her before she found me.

Settling onto the rigid throne, I placed a hand over Edmund’s skull and sighed as I let my magic flood into me. My eyes drifted to black as a sight took me.

I braced myself, expecting the usual flash of images, expecting the barrage of what had been kept from me thanks to the Zámek. Instead, I stared into the vast white nothing I had seen in the barrage of sight Joclyn had pulled me into before, staring at the same girl, the freckled, green-eyed child I knew too well.

“Hello, Sain,” she said, her voice tugging at my heart as my memories pulled me somewhere I did not want to go. “It’s been a while.”

“Joclyn.” My voice caught as I greeted her.

The tiny girl smiled so widely the bridge of freckles on her nose wrinkled together into a strip of brown, just as they had when she had been a child.

“You didn’t listen to my previous warning, I see.” She stepped toward me, the dark swing of her hair against the glaring backdrop pulling my focus. “You killed him, anyway.”

“Oh, I didn’t kill just him,” I taunted, my irritation at the way she spoke to me rising. Irritating child. “I killed as many as I could. I did it for you.”

The words ground my teeth as the apparition approached, her eyes darkening angrily with each step she took. My shoulders knit together, pulling with a white-hot rage that cut into my anger.

“You will suffer for that choice, Father.”

“Suffer?” I laughed, the sound cracking against the white. “I made the choice that was required for the sight that was given. I will suffer for nothing!” My voice rose as my fists beat against my thighs. The pain was enjoyable against my agitation.

I fought the need to rush her, knowing I wouldn’t be able to hurt her here. I had tried before. I was close to trying again.

Joclyn read my mind, smiling before she began to laugh. The sound was the same high-pitched giggle that Jeffery used to love in his child. Now it grated on me, the positive association to a life I had never wanted infuriating me.

“You will suffer for more than you know. You were warned—”

“
You were warned
,” I mocked, flipping my hand through the air in irritation, the lack of a magic spark obvious. “I was shown a future, and I have done all in my power to guide the world toward that beautiful bliss!”

“Is that what you think?” Joclyn asked, stopping her forward progression as she cocked her head to the side. “That you are guiding them toward what you saw? Or what you have created?”

“I know what I saw. I know what needs to be done. My people have suffered from the moment I was removed from their lead,” I hissed past clenched teeth, my jaw grinding together as I glowered at the girl. “It is only with me, a true Drak, at their head that they can be saved from the evil I have seen.”

“The evil you saw was created by you. Are you so blind you have not seen that? Father—”

“I am not your father,” I interrupted her with a growl.

She just stared at me with that knowing smile that had always irritated me.

“You say that, but that is because you do not realize what I truly am.”

“You are nothing,” I hissed, my magic attempting to bubble from me.

“I am more than the
hell
you claim to be. You have told many people that before. Hell does not work for others. Hell devours them for its own.” Her anger rose to meet mine, her eyes flashing red in a warning I did not heed. I did not attempt to hide the twitch of my lips, the truth of her words causing my chest to swell in glorious pride.

“Yes,” I hissed, a smile finally breaking free. “I am hell, but only because I have to be. To stop the destruction I have seen, I have to be.”

“You are foolish to think they are one in the same. You cannot lie to me, Father. I will see through it. I see everything. I am—”

“You. Are. A. Child,” I snapped, rushing toward the girl, happy when she jerked back in an attempt to escape me. The subtle movement prodded me on, anger and magic rising into a comfortable heat against my bones. “You are nothing, and you see nothing. How could you ever understand such things?”

“If I am nothing but a child to you, if Joclyn is nothing but a girl to you, then you are more foolish than I assumed,” the girl scoffed. The youthfulness of her voice faded into the terror I had seen in her before, into the maturity that had haunted my sights for so long. “How could I be here if I was nothing but a child?”

“I am the first and hold more magic than anyone below me. My magic showed me all I need to know.” I threw my hands up in the air as I stepped closer to her.

Again, the girl did not budge.

“I taught you to use your magic. The magic that showed you Edmund’s purpose, how he would unite our kind with the mortals. It showed you Ovailia’s true mate, the man who would help her bring a great ruler into the world. It showed you of—”

“Enough!” I roared, the single word soaring through the air with such force that it ripped past the white space I was trapped in. A dark line cut over us, zagging across the sky in a bolt of lightning.

The little girl didn’t even jump at the sound. She stared with that same ridiculous grin, her face squashed together awkwardly.

“Enough?” she asked in her ridiculously high voice, a giggle following. “What have you had enough of? Truth? Or have you finally grown tired of the lies you shove down your own throat?”

“Enough of you!” I shouted.

The crack above us enlarged. The dark line opened to reveal a flash of light, color and shapes moving in a strobe beyond the white space.

I stared at it, heart pulsing in confusion as eyes looked down at us, followed quickly by a hand and the white of someone’s eye.

“Not possible,” Joclyn said from beside me.

I didn’t look at her. I stared above me at the flash of a Vilỳ moving beyond the white that trapped us.

“When you have truly had enough of me, you will have moved on from this world.”

“It’s sight,” I stated, my heart beating eagerly at the realization.

“Yes?” the girl asked, her query confusing.

I waved her off. I didn’t need any more riddles or threats, not with what I was staring at just there, just beyond us. I could get at it if I tried. I had to destroy a little girl first.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Joclyn said, pulling my focus back to her as she read me, clearly understanding what I had been thinking.

The thought irritated me, as it did her. Her smile was gone, a deep scowl replacing it, digging into me with a clear warning.

I didn’t care.

“I will do whatever is needed to get me to what I have seen. Haven’t you noticed?” My voice was low as I leaned over her, my face inches from hers as I hissed in anger. Little droplets of spit flung over her, but she didn’t even flinch. “I need that sight, and I will destroy you in order to get there. You mean nothing.”

“I am everything.” The tiniest bit of a whine filled her voice. It dribbled over the air and twisted against my spine. I flinched, tasting the ugly desperation of the child, letting it heat my power.

“You are a mistake.”

I expected her to flinch, to cower and cry, run away. The Joclyn who Jeffery had raised would have, but this girl simply stared at me with a death that was more frightening than the smile she had previously held.

“Oh, Sain.” She clicked her tongue like an adult ashamed of a child. The role reversal might have been funny to anyone else, but it grated on me. My irritation was reaching a point I didn’t think it ever had before. “You are a fool. By the time you remember what I am, what your daughter is, it will be too late for you. Let’s hope it is not too late for the rest of us.”

I opened my mouth to retort, ready to scream and yell, but the white space collapsed around us, and the girl vanished with the crack of the collapse.

Sight poured around me. The larger than life image drowned me until I was left staring at the jarring image of my own death. Of my own blood seeping over my throne and pooling at my feet while everything around me was wrapped in fire.

Wyn’s fire.

I had seen it before, but it could not be. I would not let it be!

“No!” I screamed at the imagery, screamed at the sight as it left, fading to black before the large cave came back into focus.

My breath was heaving, and I desperately tried to catch it, but I couldn’t. I could barely calm down from what I had seen. The cruel reality hit me in the chest as the very woman whose fire had devoured me walked through the door with my daughter right behind her, wide smiles on both their faces.

“See? I told you he would be here.” Wyn laughed as she stepped into the middle of the hall as though she had been invited.

She hadn’t.

“Of course it would be you.” I smirked, rising from my throne as my magic erupted, ready to fight the two powerhouses before me. I already knew I could not face them. “Both of you. You just won’t die.”

“Really? Because I think I could say the same about you,” Jos said, her smile fading as her attack flew toward me.

Wyn smiled from beside her. “Let’s see if we can fix that.”

J
oclyn’s attack
cut through the pitch of the hall in a bolt of white light that shimmered in the dark, heading right for the wicked man who sat on his ugly throne with an equally ugly smile on his face.

Watching the liquid lightning soar, I waited for it to hit, for it to impact with the shield I knew surrounded him.

He was a coward. Cowards always hid behind people and walls. He had killed all the people he had hidden behind. Now it was just walls.

Walls, I could tear down.

The idea was far too exciting.

The lightning of her attack encompassed the massive hall in ferocious bolts, ripping through the air to rebound off his barricade.

Shielding my eyes as best I could, I refused to look away. The thunderous impact banged through my skull as I stared, wide-eyed, at the blast. The same lightning that spread through the air also spanned over his barrier, cutting into it, weakening it, showing me every flaw. The ground swelled under my bare feet with the impact. The power of the shield rippled past the stone, reacting with my magic in a sting.

He was hidden behind a wide shield that spanned from floor to ceiling and across both walls in one solid mass.

Even if I used the fire magic to its full potential, I would have trouble getting past. A shield of that strength had a major flaw, however. It was impenetrable from either direction, so unless he weakened it, he wouldn’t be able to attack us.

I was fairly certain his ego wouldn’t allow him such pacifism, especially against “little girls” who should “already be dead.”

He was really getting on my nerves.

Sure enough, Sain laughed at Jos’s failed attempt. The sound was forced as he tried to posture to us, tried to scare us. Neither worked.

Joclyn rolled her eyes, while I met him with a stare that I had used for centuries. My lips curled as my magic reverberated under my skin, hot and violent in preparation for what was coming.

I knew Joclyn could feel the power. The small sidestep away from me was not enough to protect her from the heat I was emanating.

“I am beginning to think I misinterpreted the sight,” he sneered, rising from his throne. An ugly, dirty robe fell from his shoulders and unfurled behind him like a child’s cape. “From what I have seen, I know now that in order to succeed in what the sight would have me do, I am the one who is supposed to kill you.”

His magic sparked as he moved to attack, thrusting his hand in front of him as a wave of deathly gray sped toward us. The sticky magic was meant to infect us with a slow torture. Too bad I was faster.

Just as he attacked, so did I. A needle of flame sped from my good hand, soaring through the air with a pace his couldn’t hope to match. Only a bullet of fire was visible thanks to the smoke that followed, a trail that gave me away.

A trail Sain stared at with wide eyes.

His attack moved past his barrier, my knife of fire hitting against it simultaneously. A razor point of flame pricked against the powerful wall, intersecting right where his magic had created an opening to attack us. The fire blade used the same opening to move past it.

It hit against his magic with a blast of flame, an explosion that pushed beyond the protective wall Sain hid behind, burning it to the ground in heavy drops of molten glass that spread over the stone floor in rivers of muck.

“That was easier than I thought,” I jeered, making sure to keep my magic strong and hot under my skin. “Here I was, thinking you were going to destroy us.”

“At least with that wall gone, he can try,” Joclyn added with a sidelong glance, not quite willing to let her father out of her sights. “No more hiding, Sain. It’s time to end this.”

Sain’s focus snapped to us, his anger clearly boiling in his eyes. The warning in the dark of his glare thrilled me.

“You want to end this, child?” he hissed, his fingers continuing to spark and smoke. “Are you prepared to fight me? To fight true power? Or would you rather die by it?”

“Stop being so melodramatic,” Joclyn groaned, stepping in front of me to face her father. The muscles in her neck tensed and pulsed. “We don’t need your monologue. We just want to stop you.”

“Or kill you,” I amended, jumping around Jos like a Jack-in-the-box, my attack already speeding toward him. Color exploded from my hand in an array of lights, speeding across the air toward the irritating little man.

His eyes widened in surprise before he countered, his own attack exploding through the dark. The shards of light soared past mine, sending them spinning against the wall. Another assault followed a bright stream of yellow that snapped and hissed before it was intercepted by Joclyn. Her hands moved fast as her counterattack gobbled up his. Her magic devoured it into nothing but a puff of smoke.

“Nice,” I commended her, attacking again as I sidestepped another blast from his arsenal. The powerful discharge hit a wall, leaving a crater in its wake.

He was a much more aggressive fighter than I had assumed. This was going to be fun.

Maybe I would even get another scar.

Continuing to watch his movements, I tried to find a weakness big enough that I could take him down … or at least capture him.

Jos might want a quick and clean death, but that was not what I had in mind. Sain didn’t deserve an easy death. I was going to make certain it was slow and painful. I needed the truth about his part in Rosy’s death from his blood-soaked lips.

The imagery of that moment, of gaining that absolution, fueled me. It ignited my power into a greater wave that sped from me, mixing with Joclyn’s attacks in color and fire that danced around the air together, smothering the large hall in a fog of black smoke. It covered us, sticking in my eyes and nose as it pressed against me.

“No,” I heard Joclyn gasp from beside me.

The sudden blindness tensed my muscles. My mind moved into hyperactivity due to the unfamiliar vulnerability. I suddenly felt very weak. I never felt weak.

“Watch out!” Joclyn tackled me from the side, throwing us both down to the ground as a wide attack sparked overhead … right where I had been.

My shoulder impacted the hard stone with a jolt. The contact of skin against stone sent my magic through the earth in lines of fire that cut across the floor, melting the stone into rivers of lava.

Joclyn hissed as she scuttled off me, holding her hand where my skin had burned her, where my magic had tried to attack her.

“Dude! Are you okay?” I asked, pulling my fire from the earth, attempting to control it again, to keep it tucked inside of me and away from the girl who would make me go off like a bomb. Better safe than buried under a mountain of molten rock.

“Probably not the right question to ask right now,” Joclyn hissed, glancing around the room like a lion waiting for a kill. “But I’m okay.”

“Fine. What is the right question?” I amended, sitting up as she was. There was nothing around us but smoke. “Who won the battle of Serenity Valley? Because if this ends anything like that, I’m out of here.”

Unsurprisingly, she ignored me.

The fog pressed against us, blocking everything from view. Even Joclyn was shadowed a mere two feet away.

Everything was too similar to a horror story for my liking. All we needed was a blood-curdling scream from somewhere in the room.

“I can’t find him, Wyn,” Joclyn hissed from beside me.

Or that. I thought that might have been worse than a shriek.

Ice ran down my spine in a slow drip as I placed my hand against the ground, letting my magic stream away from me, through the stone in search of him. It flowed over the massive room, peeking through the smoke in ways I could not. She was right; there was nothing.

“Do you think he left?” I couldn’t dare hope.

“No, he’s still here.”

I looked at Joclyn. Her green eyes were wide as they faded to black, staring at me while she looked into something beyond us.

I shivered. I had seen that look before. It didn’t make it any less creepy.

“Oh, my gosh. He can’t!” she hissed, pressing her hand against the torn sleeve of my T-shirt in an attempt to shove me back down to the ground, a move that I resisted. “Stay in the smoke as much as you can. You cannot fight this one, Wyn.”

I was about to retort, to give some loud explanation of why she couldn’t keep me away, when she turned, and Sain appeared behind her with a sudden pop, an attack already forming in the palm of his hand.

She had obviously seen his arrival before he came, because her attack was already speeding toward him. It never made contact, though. It sped through the air where he used to be, slamming against the far wall with a force that made the whole cave rumble and shake.

“Hide,” she told me, disappearing as she stuttered, appearing across the hall with a pop right before Sain did.

Her attack hit him in the back with a thud, and he cried out in pain, shuffling over the floor as he turned to face her. She was already gone, her attack meaningless as he, too, vanished.

The two reappeared again, fighting in a flurry of spells. They appeared and reappeared, spells and attacks flying through the air as they fought, moving past the large hall in a confusing mass. Everything moved so fast I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t know where to look. Jos was right; this was a battle I could not face.

Once again, Sain disappeared, and Joclyn popped out of existence behind him. But not before she sent an attack toward me, the red electricity crackling above my head.

Watching it with wide eyes, I tensed, expecting it to hit me. Instead, it hit Sain as the man appeared over me with a smile. His eyes flashed from black to green as he held a red knife above my heart.

I saw the image, the glint of the knife clear in my eyes before his yell overtook me.

The man stumbled before he disappeared again, and then the sound of the battle continued as the two of them danced through those terrible stutters, their precognition anticipating everything.

The blur of noise and color continued, but I didn’t see it. I stared straight ahead, the red knife clear in my mind. The sharp point of my daughter’s soul glinted in the light right before me. I could reach out and grab it.

It was the other piece. I needed to get it.

Shuffling to my feet, I spun around, my magic ready as I attempted to find some pattern, to find a place to attack. There was nothing but the flashes of bodies and sparks of magic. Everything was a blur.

Sain would have to attack me again if I wanted to get a good hold on him.

I wished he would.

Perhaps I could make him.

Forcing out a shout, I sent a line of fire directly into the ceiling just as they appeared again. The room lit up with the bang, but they didn’t seem to notice.

Their fight continued with magic and fire, knives, and who knew what else speeding through the air.

Then, with a bang, they halted. Sain stopped in place, a smile on his face.

I didn’t care that he had stopped, that he was smiling. All I could see was the knife.

I took my chance, an attack speeding through the air, ready to immobilize him, ready to destroy him.

He didn’t even seem to see it coming, but he stepped out of the way, anyway. His focus was intent on the smoke in front of him as he began to laugh, slow and demonic.

The nefarious sound plunged into my heart, ice moving beyond the fire of my soul and extinguishing it as I saw what he was so focused on. My best friend on her knees, hand over her chest, blood pouring from between her fingers.

“No!” I yelled, this one real, agonizing.

Sain heard this one. The sound had broken through the spell that had been over him, and his focus snapped to me.

His eyes glinted as he once again vanished. This time, however, with the anger that had taken control of me, with the power of my magic that was roaring inside of me, I was ready for him.

As fast as he had disappeared, I extended the fire magic into the ground, letting it ignite the earth I stood on.

With a pop, Sain reappeared before me, unaware of the landmine I had set in the ground beneath him.

His feet had barely made contact with the stone floor of the cavern when it went off like a bomb, rock and fire exploding around us, sending Sain into the air. His blood sprayed over my face in a line of damp that sizzled against my skin, boiling from the heat there.

Watching him soar, I let the smoke swallow him before I ran past the fire that still burned against the stone. The heat licked against my skin, comfortable and soothing. The feeling did not last. It vanished in a splash of cold water against my skin, the scene on the other side smacking me in the face.

Joclyn knelt, ash falling over her like the snow we had left. Gasping for air, she stared at the blood that dripped from her chest, the same bright red color that drizzled from her lips.

“Jos!” I ran toward her as Ilyan appeared between us, his body snapping into place with a pop as he ran toward his mate, his scream ripping my heart in two.

“No!” he yelled, the pain in his voice making it clear he knew something I did not.

“Ilyan,” she gasped as she looked up at him. Her blood-soaked hand extended toward him before she collapsed, Ilyan barely catching her.

“No! No, no, no!” Ilyan cried, his panic cut apart by a dark laugh that I had been expecting before.

The haunting sound whispered over the last of the smoke as it finally cleared, revealing Sain sitting upon his throne.

He had survived my attack, although not very well. Blood seeped from his hairline and a large gash that ran down his arm, so deep I could see the bone. The bone was a stark white contrast against the dark horrors he sat on, the burned and bloodied bones that surrounded him.

I could tell he was weak. It was only his pride that kept him laughing, his pride that kept him here.

He was a fool. I would have run and hidden from the monster he had unveiled in me.

I was going to kill him for what he had done.

Ilyan didn’t even look at the monster as he unveiled himself. His focus was on Joclyn as he held her, pressing his hand against her cheek as he sang to her, rocking her in his arms.