Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(21)

I had shown him joy. I had shown him light. I had shown him possibility.

But I had also shown him death that had not existed.

I had also turned the precious girl who was meant to be the liberator of our people into a martyr.

Even though I had seen her sent from the mud to restart the realm of magic, I had not seen her as queen.

I could not let such power be free in the world. I couldn’t. Therefore, I changed it.

I changed it and created a war that would end in her death. I set brother against brother and father against son. I took the image I had seen of Joclyn beside the well, of her magic restarting all of the magic. I took the other, of her alongside her father-in-law in peace. I took the battle that ended in life. I took it all away and showed him death and destruction, instead. I showed him her dead body as he held her, as he screamed. I took his future away.

I took any possibility Joclyn had to use the Drak magic that she was not worthy of holding. I took it all away and gave them something different… because I could.

After all, they had taken my future away, and I would stop at nothing to get it back.

Besides, it was easy. Before the false words had even left the mouths of the Draks who had surrounded me, it was done, and it would be that way because I had “seen” it.

Oh, how suggestive everyone was.

I could say I “saw” a three-legged medusa come forth from the mud, and they would all sit around and wait for it to happen.

It was ridiculous.

“She is disposable.” I finished the thought with a snap, watching Ovailia’s eyes widen as her shock wound through her spine, the look gone before I had even fully registered it.

“To more than us, it would seem,” she whispered.

I smiled, and so did she.

For the first time, I had let her see a sliver of who I really was, and although the glimpse into my reality didn’t scare her, it was definitely a surprise to see it so well received. To see that, despite everything she had seen of me and all the falsehoods, she liked it. She liked me.

Just as, in that moment, I liked her.

For the first time in my life, I actually wanted to kiss her.

What an odd feeling.





Screams echoed through the frigid air as I made a beeline toward my father. The haunted sounds carried on the back of the wind as though they were nothing more than remnants of lives long gone.

In a way, it was true.

The sounds were the ghosts of people who had been pulled out of the once vibrant city, their bodies mutilated and destroyed by my father’s beautiful creations. Fragments of souls battling through a powerful poison, battling against a magic that would either devour them or become them.

The weak ones would let it destroy them.

A worthwhile sacrifice.

It was the strong ones we wanted. Those were the ones whose screams resonated day in and day out. The sound of their suffering turned into power, turned into something we could use.

The agonizing bellows increased as the large field of burlap tents drifted into view, wavering in the cold like a mirage. Broken and stained canvas, surrounded by a sea of brown and red snow, slowly came into focus. The dirty city was nestled between the wall and the forest, the forgotten farmland the perfect hiding place. A hidden army, shielded from the mortals who flew overhead, from Ilyan who couldn’t see beyond the barrier even if he tried.

The crisp snow crunched under foot as I continued on, the guards who had surrounded Sain and me dropping their shields as we approached the first tent, a large, broken mess of fabric housing the weakest of the filth the Vil?s had infected. If they survived the first few weeks there, then they would be moved to another tent, one with marginally better conditions. First, they had to get through week one on their own. Sympathy was not a treasured trait. No one was going to help them. If they couldn’t make it, we didn’t want them, and having the tent on the outskirts made for easier clean up in those cases.

“Someone needs to take a hose to that,” I growled as we passed, the smell of blood and human excrement overwhelming as the tent walls rippled in the violent wind.

One of the guards laughed from behind me, the sound deep and callous as the men planned a spectacle of much-needed entertainment.

The vile smell grew heavier the farther into the camp we moved, but this time, it did not come from the tents. It came from the people who had begun to flow out of them. Their dirty faces were eager as they sped through the broken city toward me, their eyes wide, bright, desperate.

“My lady,” an old woman—or rather, what looked like an old woman—mumbled as she bowed beside me, the tattered sheets she used as a coat slipping off her bare and bloodied shoulders.

I looked away in disgust, fully aware they were coming faster now, drawn to me like a moth to a flame. Mumbled greetings, pleas, and tears of desperation were repeated as the guards closed ranks, their massive, burly figures serving as a protective barrier as they kicked and shoved the slowly intruding garbage.

I kept my eyes diverted ahead as I glowered, my heart thundering proudly at the beautiful mass of serfs my father had created.

“Please, my lady. I have fought twice. Food … It’s all I ask.” One voice rose above the rest as a muscular man attempted to break through the guards, only to be shoved backward into an already collapsing tent, the burlap folding around him like paper.

I watched him fall, laughing at his foolery, at them all. It was always the same: food, safety, loyalty. All those things must be earned, and they knew it. It was why they bowed, why they cowered. It was why they threw tattered coats down for me to walk on, muttering long forgotten Czech prayers.