Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(40)
Joclyn had come to my room hours before, half carried by Risha as she dropped her on the foot of my bed. I would have been more concerned for her well-being if she hadn’t been fuming about “stupid sights” and “stupid fathers.” Even though she had been weak, she had recovered quickly enough. That was probably more thanks to her stubborn temper than actual well-being. We should probably be glad she was merely agitated now.
Then again, without that stubborn temper, I wouldn’t be alive to witness this conversation, something I was still torn over. After all, we had seen my death in the very first sight she received, and yet, there I sat. Despite everything Tatínek had taught me about the infallibility of our gift, despite everything I had thought I knew about our magic, I was here.
“Can we just say this mysterious, cloaked person got caught in some other dimension?” Wyn mused acidly before Ryland had a chance to retort, leaning her head against Thom’s headboard with a thud. “If only to get Ryland to stop asking the same thing again and again?”
“I’m not asking the same question again and again,” Ryland snapped, his voice hard as his focus jolted to Wyn, who raised her eyebrows in some kind of challenge I didn’t understand.
The two glared daggers at each other, fueled by the tension in the room, and I seized, my muscles clenching painfully throughout my back.
“He’s asking questions as a good leader should,” Risha interrupted.
“As we all should.” Ilyan’s loud, commanding voice took over the conversation with a snap, causing Ryland to collapse back against the wall with one look from Ilyan, his focus drifting back down to his shoes.
It was as if the whole room took one, big sigh with the end of the standoff, the tension releasing ever so slightly. Thankfully, my body didn’t feel so much like it was smothered by a pile of rocks.
Ilyan’s shoes snapped against stone in the suddenly silent space, the ribbons of light dimming as he moved back to the center of the room, the place he always occupied during these meetings. I only wished this meeting had been like all the others, not an emergency council held in secret, or rather, held without Sain.
We were holed up in this tiny room, one of our usual numbers conspicuously missing. Even without sight, I already had an idea where this was going.
“So this man,” I began, my hands wrapping tightly around the old, earthen mug I held, “you are sure he works for your father?”
“I don’t see any other reason for someone to avoid us except to move through the barrier,” Ilyan answered in Czech, his voice growing deeper as he switched to his native tongue. “I don’t see how they could know how to move through the barrier unless they were.”
I nodded, knowing he was right. I heard Wyn ask some question about motive, but I stared into the dry and cracked bottom of the mug, silently wishing I had the ability to fill it myself, that the next question would never come.
“—and he’s one of us,” Wyn finished her thought, her voice drifting away as she avoided the obvious.
Too bad I wouldn’t.
“You believe this cloaked man to be Sain.” It wasn’t even really a question.
I didn’t often get nervous, or I hadn’t for all my life until a few months ago. Right then, as I sat with a dozen eyes on me, the solitary sound in the room that of Wyn’s heavy breathing and Ryland uncomfortably shifting his weight, I was positive my heart was going to explode out of my chest and do some sort of twisted tap number for them all to see. Nerves and anxiety were a new addition to a life without sight, it seemed. Much like Black Water.
Luckily, Joclyn understood my need for the latter. Her hand extended toward me in a silent request for the mug. Her face was torn between sympathy and anger that I had already made the connection about why our father wasn’t here, not that it was hard to miss. Sain had never missed a war meeting before; I was just the first one to put voice to it.
“In some ways, having our culprit be Sain would be the lesser of two evils,” Ilyan announced, his voice cutting through me and awakening an anger I hadn’t felt in quite a while.
I didn’t like the idea that my father would somehow be a lesser evil than something else or, worse yet, the greatest evil of all.
“Being double-crossed by your own man is the lesser of two evils?” Wyn asked, her voice rising to its haunting history, each word so reminiscent of our connected past that I couldn’t help shivering. “If that’s the case, then I think I want a do-over. Let someone else take the fall for my ‘lesser.’ “
“Being double-crossed by a condescending, old man would be much better than having Edmund’s entire army knowing how to move through the barrier.” Joclyn handed my now full mug back to me as Risha gasped, the sound so loud I jerked, almost missing the mug and spilling the liquid gold over the blankets that covered me, something that probably would have been quite painful judging by the way the delicious fluid had started to burn inside of me.
“Edmund’s entire army able to move through the barrier at will, attacking us in a cage?” Risha’s normally sweet voice had dropped, the heavy strain accompanying that side of her increasing. “As if they don’t attack us enough on our normal raids. We lost three people this morning.”
“Okay, yeah,” Wyn conceded before leaning against the headboard of the bed opposite mine, obviously ready to watch the show from where she sat, squished against Thom’s endlessly sleeping frame. “That would be worse.”