Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(66)

“So,” Ilyan began, his voice distorted through his clenched teeth, “he’s spreading rumors about her while he controlled her enough to make all those rumors seem viable. If there was a doubt he was the cloaked man before, there is no question now.” The level of anger in Ilyan’s voice matched the volatility on his face.

I looked at Ryland in a plea for help, but he wasn’t even looking at any of us. He was staring out the window at the now pitch black sky, his face as hard as Ilyan’s.

“Have you ever heard Sain talk about the theory of magic? About how it’s all connected? About the waterfall?” Ryland asked out of nowhere, the question so random the anger in Ilyan evaporated.

“You mean like the délka vedení královsk?” Ilyan asked, his anger vanishing as he spoke of the ribbon that declared his place among his kind.

“No,” Ryland sighed, his focus pulling away from the girl and to the two of us in turn, guilt riddling his face as he dragged his hand through his curls. “It’s something Sain told me about how magic is connected. He said he let Edmund think he controlled his sights when he was in prison,” he quickly clarified, as if that made it better. “He told me magic is connected through the races, through the family ties, like a waterfall, or a ribbon. Magic is really carried by one person—the first person. Like how the mud birthed your grandmother and your father and held the end of the ribbon of their magic, controlling it and all the magic of those below him, all the magic moved down through him. One after another, all tied to the first, to the top.”

“Sain told you this?” I asked, barely able to get the words out as everything clicked together in my mind.

A ladder, a connection of magic, and a man who might or might not be controlling it all.

“He said all the Drak magic flows through him, that he controls it.”

“Controls.” I looked up to Ilyan whose anger was returning with a force I could feel take over the room. “Just like the Zlomeny.”

“It’s like you said; Sain is controlling her … changing her sights.” Ilyan stopped, as though the words had caught in his throat, as though the anger had held them there.

“No,” I announced, something clicking into place. “He’s not. He can’t. He’s trying to, but he doesn’t have full access to her magic. That’s why she’s reacting this way, why her sights are doing this to her. Someone is trying to control them, and her magic is fighting it. She is fighting it.”

“What do you mean he doesn’t have full control?” Ryland asked. I was actually surprised he hadn’t put it together yet.

“It’s not a ribbon. Not for her. I’m actually surprised Father doesn’t see it,” I mused. “Or maybe he does, but after so much time, he’s too stubborn to believe otherwise.”

They both looked at me, obviously not piecing it together yet.

“Joclyn is one of the Chosen with all of the different strains of magic flowing through her. All of these different abilities are tied to a dozen different people. For her, it’s not a ribbon; it’s not even a straight line. It’s a spider web that is wound through everyone.

“Edmund is the first of the Chosen. Ilyan, the son of him, but also the eldest surviving descendant of Frain. Joclyn’s magic is connected through Edmund because she is Chosen, but also through you, Ilyan; not in binding, but in carrier, as well. The first of the four over all of the Chosen. Silky strings tying everyone together.”

“A web,” Ilyan repeated, his face blank as he put it all together. “And Sain…” He stopped short, the unspoken words clear.

It was one thing to realize how magic was connected and another to know what Sain was doing, to have Ryland confirm Sain had known it all along.

“What is he up to?”

With one look at Ilyan, I could see the questions spelled out quite plainly, his own confusion mirroring mine. I nodded, my lips drawn in a hard line before looking down to my still winding hands, wishing, once again, I had a mug I could at least pretend to drink from.

The hush was interrupted by a loud scream that ripped from the girl Ilyan held in his arms. She shook, she screamed, and her black eyes gazed into Ilyan’s as though she could see him. No, as though she was seeing him.

Just as before, when she spoke so plainly, she could see. She was here. It was something I had never seen before. To observe while seeing.

“Joclyn?” I asked aloud, unsurprised when she turned toward me.

She was here.

“Ilyan,” I gasped, my body tipped toward her so far I was convinced I was going to fall. “I think she can hear me.”

“What? How?”

I watched her, trying to find some clue that would tell me what to do. If I had my magic, I could connect with her sight, see what she saw, and guide her through it like I had done when she had seen for the first time.

Simple.

So simple.

The reality of what I had told him hit me, a small, misplaced fact falling into place like pieces of a puzzle.

“Ilyan,” I whispered hesitantly the moment Joclyn had calmed, the last note of Ilyan’s song fading into the silence. “Do you remember when I told you about the water? About how the more you put into—”

“The more I come in contact with it, the more I have in my body? Yes. Are you suggesting Sain can somehow control me, too?”