Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(55)

Frozen in fear from the sight, from what was going to happen, I gaped at her, trying to figure out how to stop her. But no, this wasn’t something I could stop, because this was something that had already happened, something she had already done.

“What did you take out of Ryland?”

She stiffened as I did, my joints becoming a rigid mess as the lies she had been spewing for the last few minutes came to a head.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Wyn? What did you do?”

She still wouldn’t look at me, her lies pulling at me and making the painful reality of what I had seen even harder to swallow.

The pulse of her magic washed over me, the reaction increasing my anxiety even further. She felt dangerous. I had never felt anything quite so out of control before: the strength of her power, the fury behind it. It scared me.

I couldn’t help it; I brought my magic to the tips of my fingers, ready for what was to come, the violent sound of my heart beat reverberating in my ears.

“Wyn?” I asked slowly, my hand extended toward her as I tried to get her attention, eager to bring her back down to earth. My hand wrapped around her wrist in a move I hoped would calm her, no matter how much the contact scared me.

I should have stayed scared. I should have stayed away.

With that one touch, her magic answered, the same flame and fire as minutes before ripping through me.

My body writhed as darkness smothered me in a stifling heaviness, the weight making my heart race and muscles tense. I couldn’t think beyond it.

Attempting to fight it, attempting to fight her, I took a frantic gasp of air, fire erupting in the dark of my eyes. Sight blazed through my mind in a pillar of light that broke through the black, my magic catching fire as it showed me bright red flames engulfing the city, licking the red roofs and engulfing the decimated buildings.

I had seen this vision before. It was familiar. Except, this time, it wasn’t. This time, Edmund’s red barrier was gone, and the peaceful yellow sun hovered over the city as if it wasn’t being eaten by ash and flame.

Watching in fearful awe, I pulled out the differences, watching the city die as my heart raced. The speed increased as the sight shifted to that of an army thousands strong, marching into the streets of Prague as it burned. The sound of their march echoed through my sight, reverberating off my panic, the heavy pace divergent to the gentle snow falling over where Ilyan and I stood on top of a distant mount, surrounded by a dozen tattered people.

Huddled together in the chill of the snow, we stood, watching the army, waiting for an attack we knew we could not win.

Then, with a painful ache, with a rip that spread through my chest in agony, I saw what I had missed before: the mound of dirt behind where we stood, the single red rose resting upon a fresh grave.

It was then I noticed who was missing from our ragged army.

With my heart breaking, my sight accelerated, spinning as everything reversed. Again, I saw the death of my beloved brother, the handkerchief placed on his face, and the bright red blood that spread over it. I saw his body placed in that grave behind were everyone stood.

Shovelfuls of dirt fell over him, one after another. It was then that the snow that fell over us shifted and changed, the delicate white flakes mutating to heavy wet drops of the deepest crimson. The color cascaded over us all, staining our faces, our skin, our clothes. It asphyxiated us in the smell of iron, each drop mirroring the emotional agony of my heart that I could never hope to explain.

No one moved; they just let it cover them until everything was red and white.

I waited for the sight to continue, desperate for it to end. Instead, I remained trapped in the blood-soaked brilliance as a voice broke through the vision like shattered glass, my heart seizing at the proximity.

“Oh, Ilyan is going to kill me.”

Wyn’s voice was clear, the Czech vibrant, but it wasn’t part of the prediction. It wasn’t something within the vision that my magic was giving me. It was real. It was reality.

The two had never mixed so clearly before.

I knew she was next to me, but I couldn’t see her. I saw nothing except the sight that stormed through the fire in my eyes.

Images flashed in a quick and vibrant succession, moving faster as my horror amplified. My confusion as to what was happening was so heavy I couldn’t focus on the future playing before me.

With a jolt, her hand pulled against my arm as the hot air of the cathedral ran over my skin, and I could smell the familiar aroma of smoke from a magical explosion taking the place of the iron and blood.

I was aware.

I could feel it all.

And yet, I couldn’t see. I was still within the sight.

For the first time, I was in two places—fully aware of the world yet still trapped in the paralyzing sights that continued to move faster. The images were more violent than anything I had seen before.

“Joclyn?” Wyn’s voice broke through the divination as something shifted, as the sight began to change and slow.

Just as before, when Wyn’s magic had burned through me, I saw her covered in blood as she knelt beside Ryland. This time, however, I saw clearly what was lying in the pool of blood in her palm.

It looked like rock, the jagged fragment a little larger than the size of a thumb, the deep red color vibrant even against the sheen of Ryland’s blood.

The whispers of my magic screamed in horror as I watched the heavy fluid drip over her fingertips like a leaky faucet. With wide eyes, she stared at it, the greed on her face growing into a type of awe I had never seen in her.