Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(38)

“An hour ago, a few minutes ago.” Joclyn stopped for breath. “All this morning? Where were you?”

My daughter emphasized each syllable, yet I wasn’t sure if it was in anger or in exhaustion. It very easily could have been either.

“I was here…” I spoke slowly, condescendingly, hoping to increase her anger, knowing I was close. I could already feel the strong light-headedness that usually preceded a sight. I could already feel the heavy power of her Drak magic trying to join and fuel my own. “I was helping some of the new Chosen children understand what the future held for them.”

She knew I was lying. Risha probably did, too, but Risha was more concerned with what was happening to Joclyn at that moment to care about whatever lie I had sprouted.

So was I; except, my concern and help came in a different packaging.

Joclyn exhaled in a low, painful moan, her eyes snapping shut in an excruciating grimace, to open again with the bright ember glow of sight, her eyes dark and deep, the contrast stunning against the blank canvas of her face as she saw into past and future simultaneously. It was beautiful to watch her magic work the way it was intended. Nevertheless, it was a beauty I would not allow.

Not even with her.

Especially not with her.

I didn’t even care if Risha noticed the smile spreading over my lips. I let the grin grow at the orange glow in her eyes, the anger in my gut howling in success as I reached my hand forward and wrapped it around her wrist. My magic plunged into her as my sight connected with hers, as my magic connected with her soul.

It was easy to do as long as I was connected to her. She was my child, after all.

The snow-filled world outside the wall blossomed in recall. The dead corn fields, the barren trees, they all stretched before me as the bitter wind tugged at the two figures huddled in the middle of the wasteland, a small army of guards surrounding them.

I recognized the moment. Ovailia standing before me, my tall frame shrouded in the black cloak I had been haunting Joclyn with.

This was more than a sight, more than recognition; it was remembering.

I had stood before Ovailia hours before and felt the power of prescience, but not in the way that I was the one who saw, rather in the way that sight was being taken from me. And now I understood why.

It had been.

Joclyn’s sight had taken her right to us.

Joclyn had pulled true sight from me.

She had tapped into a sight I had so carefully concealed I was sure no one would ever find it.

Yet, she had.

I watched the perfect recall of those moments play again: Edmund and Joclyn beside the wells of Imdalind, Joclyn fighting, the blood, the screaming. I watched in horror before I began to act, letting my magic take control and infect the sight, to change it, as I had so many times before.

The image of her and Edmund standing beside Imdalind was now Edmund drowning her inside the muddy waters. The boy fighting was now the boy dying. Some little girl I did not recognize running to Joclyn in help was now the child running to her with a knife.

One after another, I changed them, intertwining them with the image of Ovailia standing in the snow, her caped companion changing from one person after another—from Wyn to Ryland to Risha to Ilyan.

A sight that was so perfectly clear before was now nothing more than the maze she had learned to fear.

I could already feel her alarm as the sight crippled her, the image becoming more twisted as her magic tried to rebel against the changes, rebel against the ironclad lock I was placing on it.

“Here is where it starts again.”

I twitched, jumping away from her as though I had been burned.

I had heard that voice before when I had pulled Dramin from the mud, when the sight had crippled us both, and he had started crying for the first time.

You have done the wrong. The same words echoed again as Joclyn collapsed in an unconscious dead weight right into Risha. The woman held onto Joclyn’s tiny frame for dear life, afraid she would fall to the ground, and by the way she held her, I could tell it was a real possibility.

“What is it?” she exclaimed, obviously concerned. “What happened?”

It took me a moment to realize the question was directed at me and not Joclyn.

“She had a sight,” I said, my fear still running through me in a numb reality I didn’t want to accept.

“What was it?” Risha asked, the panic in her voice pulling me out of my own and right to the powerful woman before me and the realization I might be able to get more information out of Risha with Joclyn out of commission.

“Is she okay?” Risha asked when I didn’t answer, her hands pressing against her skin in an obvious desire to heal her or to figure out what was wrong before they flew off again.

At first, I thought she was hurt, but in reality, she was only concerned about “touching” her precious queen in such a way.

It was kind of disturbing. The level of regality the girl had obtained was such that even Ilyan’s second was afraid to touch her.

Who knew, maybe she was afraid of her.

Perhaps she was.

Perhaps it was something else I could use to my advantage.

“Yes, she’s going to be fine,” I lied, knowing my plans would deter that. “Sometimes, this happens after an especially intense sight.”

“She’s been having them an awfully lot lately—”

“I know.” I have been helping that along. “They seem to be doing her some damage.”