Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(54)

Easy.

I had done it before. Anytime I needed an escape, anytime I couldn’t look at Thom’s slowly deteriorating face, I left. And considering the way Joclyn’s cries had somehow disappeared, Ilyan was very much preoccupied.

I needed to get to the tear in Ilyan’s barrier before anyone saw me.

So, I ran.

I darted through unsuspecting Sk?íteks, their faces full of horror as they looked toward the cries, their focus on whatever might be going on over there. As I darted through them, the questions started flowing, the shouts of fear loud as they asked me for information, begged to know if we were under attack, what was going on. Drawing attention to me, to the person who should be running toward her best friend instead of running away.

The more they yelled, the more they looked, the more I ran.

“Wyn!” I recognized that voice the second I heard it.

Risha always sounded like an elementary school teacher, and if I thought it had ground on my nerves before, it was nothing compared to right then. Nothing compared to the one quick glance I gave her, my toe pressing against the hole in my shoe, against the bare ground and sending magic right to her.

I didn’t even see her fall.

But I heard the screams.

I heard the terror and the waves of magic that soared toward me.

Sain had said not to let anyone stop me, and I wouldn’t.

Risha was the start of that.

With one swift movement, I put up a shield, my body disappearing from view as a dozen or more attacks collided with it. The bangs and explosions of colliding magic ignited the courtyard in waves of color.

I barely saw them. I just focused on my destination.

At my freedom.

As I raced down a corridor, the sound of my incessant pace broke apart as I climbed the stairs of the old bell tower, taking them two at a time in my desperation to escape those I was confident were following me.

Old brick and open casements flashed by me as I kept my pace up, moving faster as the cries in my ears increased.

Mommy! Don’t let him hurt me! Daddy! No!

The top of the bell tower opened like a fan, the tightly wound staircase expanding into the small, cylindrical room that led to the red sky, to the small crease in Ilyan’s barrier that would let me escape without his help.

I had used it a hundred times before, and I would use it again … for the last time.

A slight shimmer in the barrier hung right over my head, the glistening patch of white so faint I probably would have never seen it if I hadn’t been hiding up here, staring blankly out into the city as often as I had. But I had seen it. And it hadn’t taken me long to figure out what it was.

A tear, a rip, a ripple.

It was a way out, a way to escape my own pain as I had so many times before, venting my own pain and frustration with Ilyan’s permission.

In a way, I had resorted to mass murder to deal with this stress. While I had killed off the Draks before, it was the Vil?s this time. I didn’t really want to be responsible for the extermination of several different races of magic, but in this instance, I was more putting them out of their misery.

A win-win.

Right then, however, it was an escape route.

With one leap, I soared off the old bell tower and into the air, letting the wind catch me as my magic supported me, throwing me toward the shimmering line of color. I braced for the impact, for the way Ilyan’s shield would grip against my body and try to trap me inside of it.

With one strong push, I shot through it, feeling the heat and weight crowd against me before it released me to the other side, my wind disappearing with the weight, sending me into a free fall. Hot air and an endless nothing soared past me as I tumbled to the ground below.

I should have been frightened, and perhaps I would have been if it had been the first time I had journeyed beyond Ilyan’s barrier. However, I was ready.

With a snap, my magic moved just fast enough to stop me from hitting the hard ground on the other side—well, hitting it hard enough to do some damage. I still hit too hard, my knees slamming into stone, hands barely able to stop me from face planting into the loose gravel.

That wouldn’t have been a good look.

Heaving, I froze, staring at the old, filthy asphalt as I waited for some scream, for some shout, for some clue someone had seen me.

There was nothing except silence on this side of the invisible barrier, the stillness of a world that had been ripped and devoured by the creatures that would now hunt me.

That I would now hunt.

I might have been safe from Ilyan, but I was far from safe.

Moving myself to standing, I pressed my hand against my jeans, making sure the hard ridge of the blade was still in place before I took off into the dark alley I was facing, knowing there were darker things before me.

A city—no, a battlefield—that, for the first time, I didn’t know if I would come back to if I even could.

I took one look back at the place that had become both a prison and a sanctuary, the image of Thom on that bed a stab in my heart. Longingly, I tore my focus away from the cathedral before I let the alley swallow me, silently praying he would be okay and that somehow we would all get through this okay.

Our daughter included.





“Wyn?” The single syllable sounded all distorted and wobbly as it reverberated around the cathedral, the fear in my voice causing it to tremble even more.

My heart rate picked up into a violent tattoo as the sight burned in my mind, pulling to the forefront of my recall, to her awed face, her hands covered in blood, an incapacitated Ryland below her.