Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(20)

I had been playing this game for centuries before she was even conceived. Her birth and our bonding had played perfectly into my web as everything else had.

She leaned into me, her breath hot on my lips as the depth of her blue eyes attempted to swallow me whole, and my gut twisted at the whispers of the connection I was still fighting.

“Give me more.” Her request was a whisper, a flutter of heat over my lips, a twist of pleasure against my heart. I was sure anyone else would have caved.

I knew that was what she wanted.

I wasn’t as weak-willed as she assumed me to be. She didn’t know me well enough to recognize the difference.

She knew what I let her see, and what I let her see now was the reaction she had expected of the person she thought she knew: the buckle, the giving in, the whimpering plaything she could mold. But it wasn’t who I was, not really.

“Anything.” The word was more a moan than an agreement as it leaked from me.

She smiled, and thankfully, I was able to keep mine restrained this time.

“We need to know more of Joclyn’s magic, specifically her sight: how it works, how it connects to Ilyan, or even if it does.” The honey slipped from her voice as Edmund’s instructions rattled through the air.

The warmth that had settled in my stomach disappeared into vapor as the air became lead.

Of course it had to be Joclyn’s power.

It was no secret Joclyn was insanely powerful, and I knew from the beginning that Edmund would want her power for himself. I had hoped he would see more use for her dead—as I had intended—but that was obviously not the case.

But this information, this tiny bit of knowledge, was mine. I needed it. The way their magic worked, the way their souls had connected was a key piece to how I was going to destroy Ilyan’s regality. It didn’t take much to know that, if Edmund knew how their magic connected, he would use it in the same way I intended. I couldn’t let that happen.

My lips pressed into a tight line as my mind immediately moved around the demand, around the information I had, trying hastily to find the smallest bit of information I could give him.

“Do we have a problem?”

The harshness of Ovailia’s voice pulled me right out of contemplation and back to the beautiful woman before me, the graceful dance of her hair in the wind the only movement amongst the frozen and dead world.

I didn’t have a choice. I had to give them something. I would just have to figure out what I could sacrifice that didn’t give them too much of an upper hand in this delicate game.

“Sain.”

My magic reacted to the sound of my name on her lips, to the touch of her fingers against my cheek as she brought me back under her spell.

“Please don’t forget. I hold the cards. I always have. I can control your magic.”

No, you can’t.



“I can control your sight.” But you couldn’t see what I truly saw.

“I hold the key to Thom’s life in my hands.”

Thom.

The word, the reality that was clenched behind it, was a knife twisting into my spine, the bones straightening as I righted to my full height, the fearful, broken man I always played gone for a moment.

“Yes, I thought as much,” she soothed, her smile spreading.

Whether it had been done on purpose or not, Ovailia had played her cards right with that one. She needed a way to control me, and thus, she chose the person everyone perceived as my best friend. I guessed, in a way, it was true; except, I didn’t believe in friends.

I believed in using the right people in the right way, and she had taken out one of my most valuable assets right when I needed him the most.

I had told Wyn I had made a mistake moments after it had happened. Only, she had no idea how truly damaging that mistake had been. For all she knew, I had left the oven on.

In reality, I had let the man I had been grooming for centuries to play as bait be incapacitated beyond all hope. All my work with Rosaline was rendered useless in that one moment.

I had needed him. I still did. I hadn’t found a suitable replacement yet.

I had tried to use Ryland, but while he still remained loyal to me, he had risen above his father’s control before I had expected him to. That raw power and anger he’d had before was gone. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to mold him in the way I needed.

Wyn was too headstrong, and no one else was emotionally broken enough for me to manipulate in time. Therefore, I had to keep playing into Ovailia in the hopes she would give Thom back to me, awaken the dead so he in turn could kill her.

I ground my teeth together at her threat, my heart racing angrily in a display of emotion she did not miss.

“Strange you care more for the life of one whose blood is as distant from yours as can be, while you would willingly feed your own progeny to the wolves.”

“She was not bred for life. She is nothing more than a pawn.” The words came without thinking, my head spinning with power, with the deep Drak magic and imagery of that first sight. The truth I had concealed flashed before my eyes in a recall so powerful that, for a fleeting moment, I wasn’t certain if I was the one who had summoned it.

When Ilyan had come to me that day, all those centuries before, he had been a weak boy searching for a mate. I had looked into the water to see what he sought. While I had seen it, while I had seen his future with Joclyn, a future with this powerful urchin with unrestrained magic I instantly recognized as Drak, it was not the future I had shown him.