Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(85)

Shaking my head, another sight washed over me, this one of Wyn and Ovailia standing together near the main gate of the cathedral.

My heart stopped at the sight of them there, at the sight of them together, Wyn’s attack of moments ago still fresh and painful in my mind.

Even though she had attacked me, even though she had run, I knew it wasn’t her, not really. Stubbornly, I refused to accept what Wyn had done, that she could be working for Edmund. It couldn’t be. Yet, the two women stood together in my sight, Wyn jerking and twitching as she had before she had attacked me.

Before I saw any more, the glimpse of sight left, leaving my chest heaving with exertion, my eyes focused on the woman before me again.

“I have been fighting,” I snapped at her, continuing the conversation as though the infectious sights hadn’t pulled me away. “I’m going to keep fighting.”

“This is why we are who we are.”

I looked at her as she spoke, my frustrations leveling out at the deep lull to her voice.

Ryland ran across the room to where Dramin was, his motions panicked as he yelled toward Ilyan and me, but I barely saw. I felt my magic as it accelerated, pulling me deep inside of it, drowning me in it.

“And who are we?”

“We are Drak.” The woman’s voice was deep and hollow again, her black eyes focused somewhere far beyond me. “We are power.”

Her words faded as I was pulled back into a world that shifted and spun around me as a carrousel of images enveloped me, blocking the room and the woman from view and trapping me in a disturbing, shifting array.

Attempting to focus my magic, to harness my sight before I got lost in it, I only grew weaker, the pain in my head growing stronger.

“Now you must fight.” The woman’s voice broke through the images, broke through the pain in a confusing rumble I didn’t quite understand.

No matter how hard I fought the magic, fought the sight, it was no use. I was trapped in it, trapped in the powerful torrent that flashed and shifted, the images broken up with the familiar static that had haunted me so over the past few months. I wanted to scream as the ominous sounds controlled me. But no shout came. I was trapped in the tornado of sounds and sights, my soul sagging and breaking under the weight.

“Now we must fight.” The voice came again, deep and powerful.

As she spoke, a magic I had never felt before moved into me, moved alongside my own. The weakness that had incapacitated me seeped away, dripping from my body as though I was nothing more than an over-wrung towel.

“Fight it!” The shout was loud in my head as the sights that bombarded me slowed, as the static began to fade. The grating sound of the buzz was replaced by the shouts of a voice I knew all too well, one that seized me, my anger and agitation flaring violently.

“You can never take away what I am!” my father screamed. “I won’t allow it!”

His voice was broken by the static, the ebb and flow of it swelling as the sights continued to move into me.

“Fight him!”

I wanted to scream that I was trying, that I was fighting, but I didn’t know what I was fighting against. I didn’t know what was happening. It was all I could do to stay focused on the sights, to keep myself breathing.

“I won’t let you!” my father shouted again through the panic, another voice mixing alongside his.

Dramin’s sobs echoed against Ilyan’s pleas. It was noise as I watched the flash of fire, watched blood flow over rocks. My heart strained to keep up with the force of it. My mind and body was exhausted as I fought the weight that held me down.

And yet, the unfamiliar magic grew, the power grew. My power grew.

“Fight it.” The voice came again, my magic flexing alongside the unfamiliar strain pulsing into me with a frightening energy.

“Fight it!”

This time, I screamed. I screamed as I heaved. I screamed as the magic swelled, as it pushed against me. I screamed as others did, the sound so loud in my ears I couldn’t think beyond it. It was only me and noise, my body wrapped tightly like an infant, the weight a comforting staple against what I was surrounded by. What was infecting me.

And then it was gone.

Then it was silence.

I looked up with a snap, my eyes wide in expectation as my bedroom came into focus, but the blood-soaked woman was no longer there. I sat alone with Ryland, Ilyan, and Dramin frozen in the room I had left, as if they had been glued there, the tension of the environment infecting me.

I sat still, waiting for something to happen, but there was nothing except the foreign magic that continued to swell within me, winding through mine in a way that, at any other time, would feel uncomfortable. This felt right, however.

This felt strong and beautiful … and, somehow, recognizable.

The magic increased as the room stirred, a sight overlaying the space in a double vision I had seen consistently since Wyn’s first attack, since I had watched the barrier pop days before. But this time, I wasn’t lost in the shadow of past and future. This time, everything made sense, my mind open and free as it saw and understood everything with perfect clarity.

“The magic was spread too wide but has been returned.” A chorus of voices rumbled through me as my sight took me to the pool of Imdalind. My vision held as I watched the surface break and grow. A wave of movement spread over the top, and eight bodies emerged.