Crown of Cinders (Imdalind Series Book 7) (39 page)

“On, no,” I groaned, the words clearly heard by Ryland, who only laughed more loudly.

“Hey, mopey loner,” he said with a smile, his curls bouncing as he stepped up to us.

“Don’t you dare start,” I warned.

He didn’t seem to care. He just smiled more brightly, pulling me into him as he held me.

“Hey, Jos,” he whispered inside the cave he had created with our bodies.

“Hey, Ry,” I said back as I pulled away. “Or, should I say,
Your Majesty
.”

His face wrinkled while Thom began to laugh hysterically, folding over as his laughter crippled him.

“It’s been years, Thom, years,” Ryland grumbled, running his hands through his hair as he glared at his brother. “Is this ever going to stop?”

“You are obviously underestimating your brother,” Wyn said, her own laugh finally joining in.

“Even I know better, Ry.”

“This is unfair—”

“Because you are king?” Thom interrupted Ryland.

Ry’s chest puffed out in irritation as Thom smacked his brother on the forearm.

“I am beginning to regret being related to you,” Ryland said with a laugh.

Thom pretended to look affronted before he stepped away, replacing the farce with his signature scowl. “Sorry, bud. You are stuck with me.”

The four of us burst out into laughter, Wyn’s ending with a gasp as her hands went to her abdomen. All eyes went to her as Thom became all business, rushing to his mate, his hands on her belly.

I watched them, a calm moving over the room as I felt their magic swell between them. I was sure Ryland could also feel it with the way he smiled and looked toward the door, knowing Míra was there.

“Do I need to ask if you have a date set yet?” I asked him, pulling his focus from the door and to me, his eyes instantly plunging into guilt.

“Ask what?” He couldn’t make the words sound guiltier if he tried.

The failure of forced innocence made me laugh more, but it was a sound that was silenced when the large entry doors opened with a snap, pulling us from the conversation as Míra rushed into the entry hall, fear on her face.

All four of us turned toward her, the joy sapping from the room due to the urgency that she brought with her.

“Sir,” Míra said directly to Ryland, her voice rattling, “there is a reporter here—”

“A reporter!” Wyn shrieked excitedly, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Oooo … We can have some fun with this one. Come on, Thom!”

Thom eagerly followed his bride toward the door, only to be stopped by one uplifted hand from Míra, her eyes still focused on Ryland in some desperate, silent conversation.

The man himself stepped right up to his guard, leaning toward her as she whispered some instruction that sent his eyes into a wide-eyed shock. Then the shock stayed as he turned back toward us, his wide blue eyes focused right on me.

I stared at him, my heart thundering in my chest as I waited for him to say something, for him to end the stress-filled knot that had suddenly taken control of my gut.

“What?” I asked when I couldn’t take it any longer, finally drifting my eyes from Ryland to Míra, who was grinning like a loon.

That was a bad combo.

“It must be something really traumatizing if Míra is smiling like that,” I continued, hoping to prod Ryland out of his stupor.

His expression remained, and I really started to freak out.

“Come on, Ry; don’t do this to me.”

“How’s your French?” he asked before he turned, opening the door to welcome a lanky man in whose chin was covered with greying stubble, wearing a shabby suit and carrying a very large leather satchel slung over his shoulder. The man was the epitome of a reporter.

“Bonjour!” Ryland announced, guiding the man in as he rattled off in the language I hadn’t quite mastered yet. I supposed, if they spoke slowly, I would be okay. “… This is her,” was all I caught, possibly because he said it while pointing at me.

My stomach sunk more.

The man’s eyes widened as he looked at me as if he recognized me. The look was unnerving.

Without thinking, I took a step back.

“Madame,” he said politely as he nodded once, something I hadn’t seen since I had walked away from Imdalind and left Ryland to rule in my stead almost fifteen years ago now. “You are Joclyn Krul, formerly Despain, of the United States?” he finished in broken English.

“Yes.” I was understandably wary, especially when his face lit up in excitement.

“I can’t believe it,” he began in French as rummaged through the large satchel he carried. “Everyone said I was crazy. No one at the office is going to believe me …”

The rambling continued until the rummaging stopped. A piece of computer paper clutched in his shaking hand, he held it out to me, his eyes wide as he stared.

In one step, Ryland moved beside me, his hand light on my back as if he were trying to support me.

I tried to wiggle away from him, only to freeze at the sight of the paper that was now waving before me. What I had mistaken for a plain white piece of paper was actually a picture. A picture of a man in a hospital bed, his blond hair cut short, blue eyes oddly vacant.

“Ilyan!” I gasped, my legs shifting under me in shock.

Ryland held me in place as I heard Wyn and Thom’s gasp somewhere in the distance. I couldn’t look away from the photo, away from the man I had spent more than a decade mourning.

“It can’t …” I began, all words lost as I stepped toward the man and ripped the photo from his hands in desperation to know for sure if it was him.

“He says his name is Ilyan Krul,” the reporter began, his voice as distanced as Wyn’s soft sobs. “He was first admitted to Hospital Isidia in the Ukraine about fifteen years ago. He was in a coma for over thirteen years. It’s only been recently that he has awoken, and he speaks of nothing but a woman by the name of Joclyn Krul and this house. I have never met the man before; I only heard of him because of the oddities in the story.”

“What oddities?” Wyn asked as she wrapped her arm around the other side of me, looking at the picture. The protective best friend vibe was coming on strong.

I knew what she was thinking.

That it was a trick.

A trap.

Something.

That this couldn’t be.

But it had to be.

It just
had
to be.

“His heart, for one,” the man continued. “It is not his own. It had been transplanted when he arrived at the hospital, although we know not how because he had no scar. For the other, he does not age.”

I could barely stand now. Luckily, Ryland and Thom held me up as the picture drifted from my fingers, falling to the floor where Ilyan’s face continued to stare up at me.

“Where is he?” I asked the reporter, my voice hard as I narrowed my eyes at him. “Do you have a map?”

The man looked at me in shock before he turned once again to his satchel, rummaging through papers.

“Jos, you can’t,” Ryland said in Czech, obviously intent on keeping his voice low.

“Can’t what?” I returned as I turned back to the man, who now held out a map to me with shaking hands. “I’m going. You can come if you like.”

“The hospital is there,” the reporter said as I took the map, his finger pointing to a large intersection of roads in Kiev.

“Can you clean up the mess?” I asked Wyn, who was already giggling in excitement as I felt her magic surge.

“Tell Ilyan I say hi,” she answered, smiling at the reporter who was now looking between us all in differing stages of confusion and horror.

“Ryland?” I asked, holding out my hand.

Ry sighed, knowing he couldn’t stop me, and ran his hands through his hair, taking one glance at Míra before he picked up the picture of Ilyan and gripped my hand. One nod was all the answer I needed.

With a surge of my magic, I pulled both of us through the world beneath ours and right to the hospital in Kiev, a shield already wrapped around us.

The lobby of the massive building was a flurry of activity, shoulders already running into us, confused faces glancing back as they tried to understand what they had hit. Normally, I would care. Right now, I ignored them, grabbing Ryland’s hand and pulling him into an alcove, leaving a line of confused people behind us, many beginning to snap at each other over their clumsiness.

“Jos,” Ry hissed in a panic as I dropped the shield, “have you thought this through?”

“Do I think anything through?” I asked, my heart thundering in my chest as I walked away from him and right toward the large information desk. Well, I hoped that was what it was. The language written below it was kind of similar to Czech.

“Jos,” Ryland moaned as he caught up to me, grabbing my arm and pulling me to a stop, “slow down.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said sarcastically, turning myself back toward the desk and trying to pull Ry with me. He was too muscular for that to happen, though.

“Do you even speak Ukrainian?” he asked, causing the eager thunder of my heart to drop.

He smiled smugly at my obvious answer and, with a deep breath, pulled me toward the desk, sliding his hand down to wrap around my own.

Normally, I would pull away, but I couldn’t. I was too jittery, too scared, too nervous, and having that hand to hold on to was calming me down somehow. Well, it was at least making it feel like I wasn’t going to suddenly explode.

“Is there a language you don’t know?” I asked caustically, my nerves making me snappy.

“No,” he retorted, his jaw hard, “because I don’t spend all my time on a beach, dreaming of—”

“Someone who might be alive.” The words felt oddly foreign.

My heart thundered as we finally reached the desk. Ryland held the photo out to the kind-looking lady, and she said something in a deep, smooth voice. The woman took the picture and looked from me to the image, her eyes growing wider with each pass.

I looked at Ryland, desperate for some update, but his focus was only on the woman before us, his lips pressed into a tight line.

Silence passed. So much silence. And with each tick of the clock and each frantic look between us, I was growing more irritated. Finally, I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Ilyan Krul,” I finally said, pointing at the picture, shaking it at the woman. “Joclyn Krul.” I pointed at me. “Ryland Krul.” To Ryland.

With each word, her eyes grew wider until she shot to her feet, saying something quickly to us before she scuttled away from the desk, taking the picture with her.

“What did she say?” I hissed desperately to Ryland, my hand shaking in his.

“To wait here.”

“Well, that’s not promising,” I grumbled, leaning over the desk and slamming my head into it, causing a few people around us to look at us in alarm.

“Just breathe, Jos,” Ryland whispered, leaning over me. “Focus on something else. Try to find his magic—”

“If he had his magic, do you think he would still be here?”

“Just do it, Jos. It’ll help to keep your mind focused,” Ryland said as the woman began to scuttle back to the counter with a large, mahogany-skinned man behind her, dressed just as nicely as Ryland.

I stretched my magic out as Ryland had commanded as he and the nice man began to chatter in the quick beats of the unfamiliar language.

I tried not to focus on it, to let my mind relax as I moved through hallways, my mind open as I watched people walking calmly, nurses running madly, and people huddled together in panicked sobs.

The busy images I was moving through mixed with the loud noises of the lobby. Everything became a buzzing lull in my head as I continued through them. One hallway after another passed by me as I searched, looking for his magic, looking for anything that would lead me to him.

It wasn’t until Ryland started yelling when I had reached the fifth floor and a heavily guarded room that I felt something. But it wasn’t at all what I would have expected.

A spark so faint I almost missed it of Ovailia’s magic.

It couldn’t be.

I pushed my magic further, past the guards and right into the room where he sat on a bed, propped up on pillows, talking to a doctor, and just as upset as Ryland was now.

Ilyan.

It was him. Even without the magic, even without his hair, it was him.

My heart almost stopped at the sight of him there. Everything in me exploded, desperate to reach him.

I pulled my magic back into me, my vision returning to the lobby just as two guards walked right up to us, their hands already on their guns.

The sight was comical, and I almost laughed at it, but I had something more important pushing into me.

“I found him,” I said to Ryland, pulling his focus from the man who was just as upset as he was.

“Good. Let’s go.”

I turned away from him, ready to run, but he just grabbed my hand, his need clear.

“We don’t have time for that, Jos,” he hissed, his magic surging alongside mine. “We have to go. Screw the repercussions.”

“Okay, boss,” I said as I stuttered, pulling us from the deteriorating situation in the lobby and right into the room I had seen Ilyan in.

I moved fast, freezing the doctor Ilyan had been talking to in place as Ryland blocked the door.

Chest heaving, I turned toward the bed, my heart thundering in my chest as I faced the man I had dreamed about every day and every night for fifteen years.

His eyes full of tears, his face broke out in a smile.

“Mi lasko.”

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