Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(34)

Ovailia looked at him with a smile that spread over her face in reprehensible greed. The smile was so opposite from her usual sneer that it made me jerk, my shoulders folding up to my ears as I fought the distress that smile gave me.

I waited, eager to hear, to find out who Ovailia faced. But before I could see, the whole vision changed, the clear sight broken up by familiar static.

The electronic noise buzzed in my ears and screamed through my head as the sight became distorted, broken images that ripped through me the same as they had for the past months.

Blood on rocks as it seeped into an already red river.

A cluster of people standing in the snow, a woman screaming over their silently moving mouths.

Wyn, just as I had seen her this morning, sleeping beside Thom. When she raised her head to me, however, it was her daughter, instead.

Children crying in corners, a little, blonde girl laughing as she tortured them.

The cloaked figure removing the heavy hood to reveal Dramin’s pained face.

Edmund standing beside me, laughing joyously as we looked into an unfamiliar, underground pond.

One after another, they came, spinning through me uncomfortably until I felt like I was trapped among them, my body fighting them, my mind breaking down inside of them.

New sights mixed with old, the old sights changing enough I wasn’t even quite sure what I was looking at.

What was true.

What was false.

What was when.

I tried to make sense of them all in order to find some clue as to what was going on, but everything came too fast and contradicted itself too much.

Before, I had been so sure the sight was true. Now, everything was back to where it had been—haunted and shattered.

Refusing to accept the broken imagery, I watched the new pieces mix with the old, my magic screaming at me to pay attention, screaming it was real and not the same as the distorted sights.

“Here is where it starts again.” The unfamiliar voice was clear in my head, ringing clearly as the sight flashed back to the pair in the snow. Ovailia now walking away from the man, a smile spreading over her face.

“Don’t fail me,” Ovailia said as another flash of blood, of red, filled my vision, Edmund’s laugh echoing inside my head before the sight was gone, leaving me staring at the red-tinted world of reality.

Gasping, head swimming, I tried to let the real world come into focus as I stared at what I was sure was regurgitated Black Water seeping through the valleys of the cobbles I kneeled on.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s going on?”

Voices ricocheted around in my head like they were coming from a tin can, the hollow sounds of what I believed were Ryland and Risha sounding far too loud and far too foreign against the confusion I was still trying to recover from.

“Z?stávat,” Ilyan growled in warning as he pulled me closer to him, the contact welcoming, even if it made it harder to breathe.

My body ached as I gasped, my throat burning with a distinct taste of blood, my fingertips raw from clawing the ground.

“I saw him … the man … cloak … with Ovailia,” I gasped as I looked up at Ilyan.

His eyes widened with each word I gave him, each image of the sight I fed into his mind.

“They are working for Edmund. You have to find him, Ilyan.”

“What’s going on?” Ryland erupted, obviously scared.

He wasn’t the only one.

Ilyan’s eyes widened farther as I pushed everything I had seen and everything I knew into his head. The despondency I was feeling travelled along with it.

I know you are worried about me, but you have to go. You have to find Sain. I pushed the words into his mind as I collapsed back to the ground, everything spinning, everything aching.

Ilyan’s thoughts froze with confliction, worry, and fear, his hand clenching against my back, his hesitancy clear.

“Go.” I could barely get the word out.

Ilyan exhaled, his mind circling with worry and reasoning. He wrapped his arm around me from behind, pulling my weak and limp body into his. I could tell he didn’t want to leave me. Heck, I didn’t want him to leave.

The heavy pull of his heart locked tightly against mine, my longing increasing, though we both knew he had no choice. He knew I was right. He had to find Sain. He had to find whoever was missing in the camp. And we were running out of time.

“We need to find Sain,” he announced as he stood. “Ryland, go check the far courtyard and the catacombs. I’ll hit the dorms and then the tombs. Risha, I need you to take Joclyn to Dramin and then do a wide perimeter sweep. We will meet at my tomb.” He spoke very quickly in Czech, and I was having a hard time keeping up, especially with the way my head was still spinning.

“Is she okay?” Ryland asked, his worried query catching me off guard.

“She will be fine,” Ilyan answered in English, leaning down to press his fingers against my back comfortingly. I focused on the contact, letting it strengthen me, letting it fill me. “We need to get moving.”

With a gasp my focus shifted toward my mate, toward his piercing, blue eyes full of so much love and concern that, for a moment, I forgot how to breathe. The intensity of his look swallowed me before he lowered his lips to mine, the soft yet fervent contact heavy against me.

I hesitated briefly, scared at what Ryland would do, but there was no sound, no peep, just the heavy pull of Ilyan’s magic, just the lights that flared and glowed around us, just the blissful pressure of his lips against mine.