Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(56)

The fear in me increased as the deep Drak magic screamed inside, as it pulled and begged and warned me of something that frightened me more than the double reality I was trapped in.

The Soul’s Blade.

I had heard of it. I knew what it could do. I didn’t want to believe the dark magic it held. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing since so much of what my prescience had shown me had been broken.

The sight shifted with a snap, my chest tensing from the abruptness of it. Now there was an image of her with the blade, kneeling over a bloodied body, the jagged thing protruding from her hand. Another snap, another jolt and now she was in a foreign forest, hunting something I was certain was also hunting her.

Sight after sight came, raging through me as the warning flowed heavier.

“Give me,” I gasped, unaware if the words had actually broken through the sight and made it out of my throat. “Give it to me…” I looked toward her, gasping from the pull of the magic, knowing she had the blade on her.

“Stop her!” The same unfamiliar voice that had haunted my sights came again. Its meaning was clear, the warning obvious.

I had to change this.

My mouth opened in a wide, panicked scream as my sight shifted to the image of Wyn, her short frame standing tall before me in the middle of the cathedral, just as she had a moment ago—before the fire, before the sights. She stood there, yet her image was distorted, shrouded in the shadow of sight. The reality of my friend before me was overlaid with that of precognition. Bright flashes of her with the blade, her fighting, and Edmund smothered the image of the real world as if the magic of the Drak was projecting itself over reality.

“Wyn,” I said, my voice distorted as it moved through the sight, the depth of it similar to the voice I had heard within my sights so many times before. “You need to give me the blade. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

I reached toward her again, reaching through the sight of a bridge crumbling into a river, the image swirling through the air like smoke. My fingers clawed at her, desperate for her to see, desperate to stop her from doing this, from going down that path. I couldn’t.

“No!” she screamed at me as she stepped away, her magic flaring in a tangible wave of warning.

I gasped, the magic feeling like a wave of water smashing against me, the power of it sucking the air out of my chest. I tried to regain my strength, to regain my breath, but neither came while my heart pounded with more urgency, more desperation. I needed to stop this.

“Wyn, please.”

I barely got the words out before I watched her jerk again, the movement twisted as she jumped, a dark cloud moving over her eyes with a hatred and animosity I didn’t think I had ever seen before.

I saw her mouth move, but no words came out. The shadowed overlay of sight pulled her in and out of focus, her anger blended with the image of Ilyan’s death, the same haunting vision that had been stalking me coming to full force.

Blood flowing over rocks, away from his lifeless hand, his eyes lost and forgotten. I stared at it, wishing I could look anywhere else, wishing I could see anything else. However, it was death or the blade. It was all connected.

“Wyn,” I gasped, a heavy desperation leaking through me as the sight that was bleeding through reality shifted. The image of my best friend spread and fluctuated before me, as if there were two of them—one who raised her hand toward me before the other one did.

I felt my magic flare in fear, my heart racing as I looked into the face of what Wyn used to be, who she was raised to be. For the first time, I saw the eyes of a killer and instantly knew what she was going to do.

What she wanted to do.

“No!” she screamed, the sound ringing over the cathedral as I tried to scoot away from the attack that spread from her hand.

I watched as the distorted mirrors attacked me in turn, one after another: first my sight then my reality.

My sight gave me a perfect warning of what was coming.

I should have been awed. I should have been amazed at what was happening. However, I couldn’t think past the terror gripping me. The fright was a debilitating force as I struggled to move my weak body away from an attack I was positive would kill me.

Ilyan! I screamed his name, trying to focus on the broken world before me, trying to dodge my friend as she attacked again, the powerful blast hitting against the stone I had been sitting on moments before.

“Wyn!” I tried again. “You must give it to me … You can’t—”

“No!” she screamed, another blast rumbling around me. This one was so close I could feel its heat against my leg, could smell the singed jeans.

I could barely focus on what was going on in front of me. The overlay of sight became confusing at it altered even further, her motions moving forward and back in quick succession.

“You can’t have it!” she yelled, another attack moving toward me.

My joints seized in agonizing strain as they tried to fight the weight that sight always gave me.

“You can’t have my daughter!”

Joclyn! Ilyan’s fear filled me as his voice did.

My sight shifted yet again, pulling away the superimposed image of my friend and taking me right to where my mate was, his terrified face clear as he stood still in what looked to be an abandoned department store.

Ilyan! I called again as another attack sped from my friend. Without the warning, there was no way I could move fast enough, no way I could have dodged.