Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(8)

Ilyan’s fear built as mine did while the building he stood on shifted below his feet.

I closed my eyes as I focused. My magic seeped right to him in a mad attempt to discover the security of the building, despite knowing anything I could do would be worthless. We really didn’t need another one of our tall, lookout buildings to come down. The building, the Young Prince, was already becoming unstable.

In the west. He tensed, the way his magic was flowing through me making it clear he was moving to another building. Looks like there are about twenty today.

Twenty. That was almost double from the last few days. They must be getting desperate … or scared.

Silly, really. The mortals were scared of the cage Edmund had made, the cage that we were trapped in. We were terrified of what would happen if they brought it down.

I’m sure they had some idea of what was inside, but even their imaginations couldn’t predict the horrors they would be unleashing—powerful, dark magic and poisoned Vil?s that lay sleeping in the streets, their tiny, mutated faces trained to the sky as ours were, waiting, hoping, and praying the barrier would break so they could feast on a new batch of victims lying on the other side of the barrier.

We were just as trapped here with Edmund’s army—no, the war right on the other side.

Once those walls came down, everything would be unleashed. The barrier was a ticking time bomb, one the mortals were trying to detonate.

Everything shook further, the sound of broken thunder rumbling with a high groan that made it sound like we were trapped in a bass drum.

That one was big. Maybe too big.

It looked like a nuke, but it couldn’t be… Ilyan provided, and my heart sunk. It didn’t work.



They had never used one of those before. I hadn’t assumed they ever would. But when all their other weaponry had failed, I guessed they had put it on the table.

Nevertheless, even man’s most powerful weapon of destruction wasn’t enough to conquer the magic Edmund had concealed us within. The bombs held little more destructive power than a child banging pots together.

If a nuclear bomb wasn’t enough to break Edmund’s barrier, to break his magic, it made me wonder how much power was inside of me, if everything they said about me was correct. It must be more than the lightning that still flowed through me. More than flame. If I was the one to break the barrier, as the sights had said, then I would have to be pretty powerful.

The thought was both terrifying and exhilarating.

One after another, they came, lines of little, black planes dropping bombs against the barrier and erupting into spirals of color that blossomed and fanned over the surface like oil on water.

Purple, blue, gold—a rainbow of color, a mesmerizing dance of movement. It was beautiful, or at least, it would be if it wasn’t for the massive destructive power behind it.

I watched the colors blossom, my head spinning and pulsing as dust continued to fall over my head.

I could feel it tickle my neck. I could feel it fall on my nose. I barely cared. I barely even saw the colorful paroxysms anymore. I barely felt the fear.

All I could feel was the comfortable weight of my magic, the warmth as it pulsed through me in waves, as it forced the broken imagery of a recall into the black lines of my eyes.

I gasped at the image, the overlay of sight so perfect that, for a moment, I wasn’t sure if I was tapped in to my magic or not. Nonetheless, I couldn’t deny the way it felt, the way my magic moved through me with a powerful reliance, exactly like it used to.

Do you feel that? I asked Ilyan as the recall faded away, leaving me staring at a reality so similar I was momentarily lost between two worlds.

Feel what? he asked, concerned. He was so focused on the planes and the bombs they were dropping on us that he hadn’t even noticed.

Before I had a chance to explain, my eyes widened at the sight of the rings of color that rippled over us, and then my magic swelled again, the same recall returning. The same sight replayed.

Thunder rattled my bones with the powerful crash of the explosion, fire and smoke breaking free of the barrier as the dome popped like a soap bubble. The barricade of color faded away, dropping to the ground as though it had never been, the bright blue sky that had been so missed shimmering to life.

I gasped as I saw it, my eyes widening as a new terror gripped me. I had barely caught a peek of the blue of the sky before it was swarmed by hordes of black wings that took off from the ground, millions of the screaming things swirling through the now active air, leaving their cage and ready to attack, ready to create a new army.

No! I screamed, my hands a tight fist around the windowsill.

Ilyan’s dread heightened at my shout, his fear running right into me in a wave more violent than my own.

Joclyn?



The planes were above us like large, black birds with their bellies bare and open, witnessing the same thing I was and, I was sure, ready to drop another deadly weapon in order to stop whatever they had unveiled. Only, this time, it would hit. This time, it would destroy us all.

Ilyan, I gasped, knowing what came next, knowing I wasn’t fully ready. This wasn’t what I had seen before. Yet, it was. They did it. You need to get back …

What are you—

“It’s time!” I yelled over him, the words more a gasp than a command I was sure a queen was supposed to give at a time like this. “They’ve done it. We need to move!”