Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(84)

“That is what I was hoping you would say.” She smiled as the love and magic continued to swell inside of me. Her grin was wide as if I had said something more than what was in my heart.

“Does Joclyn know of this change?” I asked with trepidation, my heart thundering inside my chest with the truth of what this revelation could mean and what I did not want Joclyn to worry over. I would always be by her side. I didn’t want to give her any reason to doubt it would ever change.

“You are true, Ilyan Krul.”

My question lingered between us as the void faded back to the black, back to the flashes of sight which moved so fast I could barely see them. One vision blended into the next as my head throbbed, my body aching as if someone was pulling me into a stutter without warning.

Gasping at what I was seeing, my mouth opened in the same wide scream of before. A deep, hollow voice echoed in my mind against the agony my scream held, against the fear that had debilitated me.

“The magic was spread too wide but has been returned,” the voice began, the scream fading to nothing as my own voice joined it, the dead, hollow tones foreign and frightening. “The son will rise, the son will fall, and all the blood will cease to flow. The time is now. It grows too late. Kill the fool before the slate. Love no longer seeks revenge. You will seek the end to end.”

I gasped as the words finished, as the black of the world and the depth of the sight faded into the room I called home where everything erupted in noise and panic.

Dramin lay on the floor, mumbling about sight and white rooms. A panicked Ryland hovered over him. Jaromir sat, crying in the corner, looking around at each of us as though we were possessed, something I was confident was very possible given what had happened.

The weight I had been missing dropped into my arms as Joclyn’s magic ebbed away, the flow of it lessening as I returned to reality, returned to her sleeping body that still lay against me.

“Joclyn?” I asked, my fears moving a million miles an hour in an attempt to understand what was going on. Everything felt like a distorted dream on this side.

She lay there, unmoving, as Dramin’s mumbling increased, the frantic shout from Ryland growing louder and louder.

“Ilyan!” he practically shouted, pulling my focus from Joclyn. Fear was etched so deeply on his face I was certain the lines would never fade. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said in a panic, hating the lack of control I had, hating that I couldn’t give him more of an answer. The truth of what I had seen and what I was now facing was a confusing mess within me.

“We need to go.” Joclyn’s voice erupted before me, the tone as deep as what I had heard in the sight moments before.

Heart racing, I looked down, part of me expecting everything to be normal, but her eyes were still as black as they had been before, her face as blank.

“We cannot wait.” she said as she sat up in my lap, her hand soft against my bare chest, her black eyes staring into me with a terror I never thought I would experience while looking at the woman I loved.

Ryland froze where he knelt on the floor.

An equally as shocked Dramin looked from me to Joclyn in terrifying wonder.

“Jos?” Ryland asked, his voice shaking as he stared at the girl who looked like she belonged in a horror movie.

“Ilyan,” Joclyn spoke to me as if no one else was in the room, no one else had spoken. “We must go … before it is too late.”

“Go where?” I could barely get the words out. “Joclyn?”

“Ilyan,” she said again, her voice bleeding into a deep panic as the black faded from her eyes, leaving me staring at the beautiful silver. “Ovailia is here. We need to stop her. We need to stop them both.”

She had barely spoke before the cathedral erupted in screams, before the pained shouts of hundreds of dying people seeped through the walls and into me.

“Get them away from the door,” she whispered, and then she was gone, vanished into the air with the tiniest of pops. The sound ricocheted in my ears as Dramin and Ryland looked at me, their faces full of the same awe and confusion I felt.

I didn’t know what else to do. I jumped from the bed, following the pulse of her magic, following the screams, and hoping now was not the end I had seen.

That now was not when I would die.

I still had a purpose, after all.





I lay, enfolded in Ilyan’s arms, facing the same vision of myself that had stood with me in the sight I had been unable to escape.

The haunted apparition stood between where Ryland paced and Dramin sat, blood dripping over her face, hands covered with ash. Her body was unseen to any of them, their reality untouched by my sights.

I didn’t dare move as I watched her, the space around me shifting in and out of sight as it had since Wyn had run away from me. Images of the future, of Edmund laughing, rippled through my mind before they were gone, leaving me staring at my own blood-drenched face.

“It is almost over,” the woman said as Ryland paced through the room, his temper increasing with each step he took.

“I know,” I whispered, the weakness that had overtaken my body making it difficult to talk too loudly. “I have seen it before.”

“Are you going to fight?” the woman asked, cocking her head to the side a bit, as if she was a curious dog surveying a snack.