Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(101)

Everything ached, each step getting harder to think through, each step draining me. Worse still, all I could really see was red and black as the sun hovered above me, weird shadows moving over the street before me, and the steady drip of my blood as it fell against the street was loud in my ears. The rhythm of each drop perfectly matched the frantic pace of my heart.

I supposed I should calm down. It would ease the blood flow a bit, but it was an impossibility. It was all I could do to keep my brain focused on my destination, something that was becoming harder, my brain slowly shutting down with each step.

With each drop of blood I lost.

“Who needs blood?” I asked aloud, the words slurred as I turned a corner, the wide foyer of the cathedral opening up before me. The cathedral beyond the massive space was broken and smoldering as though it had been destroyed, as though they had been attacked. Staring at it, I struggled to get my mind to focus on what I was seeing, trying again to recall what had happened. I knew Ilyan’s barrier made everything look abandoned from this side, but that level of destruction was a little excessive.

Leaving the safety of the wall, I moved into the open space before the barrier, the same stretch I had run through before seeming as though it was as long as football field, the golden gate broken and looming before me, the dark stone looking more like a gateway to Hell than to safety.

With all I had done in this life, I would certainly deserve that.

“Ilyan,” I gasped, my voice broken as I took another step, my stomach spinning as much as my head was. Everything before me fell apart, black looming in and making it hard to see. “Ilyan,” I gasped again, my broken legs twisting underneath me as I spun on the spot, collapsing as the world continued to twirl.

Stars of black and red all mixed together in what my brain was trying desperately to interpret as a smoothie.

Oh, geez, I was losing it.

“Ilyan.”

My head made contact with the heavy cobbles of the courtyard with a slap, the plea reverberating in the cave of my mind, the simple word mixing with a scream that flooded the air.

I wanted to tell whoever was screaming to shut up. They were just going to attract the Vil?s, attract Edmund’s men. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get the words out.

While I stared ahead, his shoes moved toward me, voices pulling through the screams in a weird echo I didn’t understand.

“Wyn?” The voice resonated through my head like a bass drum, the same word coming again and again as the fear in the name increased. Maybe they could get whoever was screaming to shut up. “Wyn!”

“Help,” I said, my desperate pleas barely above a whisper. “My hand. Help. Heal it.” I wasn’t confident they had heard me above the scream that wouldn’t stop or even if they were really there. I couldn’t focus enough to know anymore.

Pain throbbed through my head as I felt wide hands lift me. Then bouncy black curls came into view, the familiarity of them seizing through me in a wave of dread.

Edmund.

No. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t be.

It was then the screaming stopped, the terror taking its place as my weak body began to fight. Blood sprayed everywhere as I flailed, nonsense spewing out of my mouth as I tried to get away from him, to fight. Except, I couldn’t find the energy above a gasp and a flail. It didn’t matter; I would die trying to escape him if I had to. I would rather die than go through what Edmund had planned for me.

“No!” I screamed, “I won’t marry you! Let me go! No!” The words came one right after another, the panic mounting as his magic moved into me.

The calm heat of a power I didn’t recognize flooded me, moving right to my hand, right to my heart as it calmed me, as it cauterized the wound in an obviously desperate attempt to stop the bleeding.

I stopped fighting as the magic took control, my body relaxing, my heart rate slowing, even while I could still feel the fear, still feel the pain. I didn’t seem to care quite so much anymore.

“Geez, Wyn,” Ryland gasped, his voice breaking through my horror in that same weird echo I had heard before. “I didn’t know you thought of me that way. I’m flattered, but I’m not interested.”

“Ryland?” I gasped, turning to face the boy who carried me, but he didn’t even look at me. He held me against him, his jaw tight, eyes focused ahead.

“At your service.” His voice was chipper all things considered, but even I could tell he was putting it on, something dark edging beneath him, like he was trying to hide something. “We’ve been looking for you.”

I didn’t know what to say. My body felt very heavy and foreign as I lay in his arms, my magic slowly coming back to life as his filled me. Something, considering the way his brow furrowed, he noticed and, strangely, was not happy about.

“Ryland?” I asked, confusion and fear rising up in me, barely able to get the one word out.

“Ilyan says I am to treat you like an enemy, Wyn.” His voice had taken on that deep, gravely quality I had heard before. The underlying tension made sense, and I froze, the calm I had felt at being found melting away in a tense anxiety.

I swallowed, looking away from the boy to the cathedral, to the barrier we were quickly approaching. My mind panicked over whether or not it would even let us through.

“You attacked Joclyn, Wyn. You attacked Risha.” His muscles constricted at the mention of the last name, and the dread I was feeling dipped into me painfully. “And last anyone heard, you were going to be marrying Edmund, which seems to be hauntingly accurate given what you were yelling at me … I mean … I do look awfully similar to my father—”