Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(89)
A jolt moved up my spine as his smile widened, as he wiped a blood-soaked hand against his brow, the laugh still ringing around me. I watched the vision, tension moving through me over what would come next. Instead, it faded, leaving me staring at the red of foresight before Ryland and Ilyan snapped back into focus.
Ryland stood in shocked silence before me.
“You won’t find her here,” I told him. “She’s already outside the city.”
Ryland’s jaw tightened with a snap, anger clouding his eyes in a dangerous warning that I felt the need to move away from. “They all got away.”
“Who got away?” I asked, my voice tentative as my sight pulled at me, heavy whispers telling me we were talking about more than the deceitful pair.
“Ovailia and Sain. But there is more. They were talking about Wyn, talking about needing to meet up with her before they left, needing to find her in time for a bonding—” He stopped mid-sentence, and I didn’t blame him. I felt like I had been punched in the gut, my lungs constricting so painfully I wasn’t convinced I would be able to force the air in.
“No.” As it was, I could barely get the single word out.
“You are telling me that Wynifred is working for my father, as well?” Ilyan’s voice was a rumble of feral warning from where I leaned against him. I felt his muscles tense as his magic quivered with an anger I wasn’t positive I had ever felt before.
I went rigid beside him, the intensity of his emotions frightening me.
“From what we are hearing.” Ryland shuffled his feet a bit, a tick I had seen so often in my life I knew what was coming. I could feel his discomfort rolling off him.
“What is it, Ry?” I asked.
His eyes met mine directly, his jaw so tight I was worried it was glued together. “We still can’t find Wynifred, and Etma has informed me that she was seen in the courtyard a few hours ago before the cathedral collapsed. A few people saw her attack Risha—”
“Risha!” Ilyan yelled, his distress understandable. “What happened?”
“Etma says she is unresponsive but stable. She thinks Risha was knocked out.” Ryland’s voice cracked and broke as he spoke, his worry seeping through in waves of apprehension.
Wyn and I had joked for months about his supposed crush on Ilyan’s second, but I didn’t think I had realized until that moment exactly how deep his emotions were.
That it was more than a crush.
“Do you need to go to her?” Ilyan asked, his voice caught between worry for his brother and worry for his people, his thoughts for them moving just as fast.
I reached my hand toward him, my heart longing to comfort him, something that was not missed by either of the brothers I stood before.
“No,” Ryland said, his curls bouncing as he shook his head. I had a feeling he was trying to put on a brave face. “There is nothing I can do for her now. I will be more help here. We need to find Wyn, or at least try, before she attacks someone else.”
“She attacked me, too,” I announced. The memory of those moments before the sight had taken me pulled at my soul uncomfortably. Those vivid pieces of sight I was granted twisted inside of me. “I was trying to take that blade from her.”
“What blade?” Ryland asked, the worry from before lost in the hardness of his voice. The intensity of it made me wonder if he already knew what I was about to say.
“She has a piece of the Soul’s Blade.”
If I had thought Ilyan was teetering close to destruction before, it was nothing to now, nothing to the explosive way his magic roared through him, through me. Nothing to the feral growl that escaped his chest.
“The Soul’s Blade? How did she get that?” Ilyan’s voice was tense as he took a step away, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to dispel the anger. His feet snapped quietly against the dust as he paced.
“I saw it in a sight. I saw her remove it…” I stopped, my eyes flashing to Ryland, my memory pushing everything together in one, big clump.
Ryland met my gaze, expectant, almost fearful. I could tell by the way he looked at me that he expected me to fade into a sight, to give them some magical revelation. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t going to happen, not now, anyway.
It already had.
“She got it from inside of you,” I gasped, my eyes not deviating so much as a millimeter from where Ryland stared into me.
Ilyan turned toward us as if he had lost his footing, his hair fanning out, eyes wide, jaw tight. If I wasn’t as connected to the man as I was, I probably would have stepped away. As it was, I held still, facing the two brothers as differing levels of anger and confusion overtook them.
“She removed it from inside of me?”
“When?” Ilyan snapped, his anger rising.
Ryland winced at the tone, and a raw fear ripped down my spine. Pushing the emotion away, I stepped toward my mate, letting my magic flood him as I wrapped my hand around his. The soothing balm of my magic wound through him with a need to calm him, something I could already tell would be harder than it ever had been before.
“It was the room above the clock … before we came here.”
With those few words, my Drak magic flared, pulling me into a vision I had seen hours before, the colors and emotions of the space suffocating as everything shifted and changed: Wyn kneeling before Ryland’s unconscious body, a voice erupting around her, the pained sobs of a child that caused her to flinch the same way she had before. Her whole body rocked violently as the sight fluctuated, a child taking her place. The same little girl I had seen in the alley sitting right where she had, the same blade resting in her hands, the same blood covering them.