Dawn of Ash (Imdalind, #6)(90)
“Mommy.” The child’s voice cut through me, her eyes haunting as they turned toward me, pulling me out of the sight with a start, my chest heaving.
“Rosaline.”
I jumped as the heavy confirmation seeped from Ilyan’s mouth, his hands feeling like a dead weight against mine.
“Did you see?” I asked him.
“Yes. The blade is made from her soul,” Ilyan said with a nod, my question lingering unanswered between us. “She must think she can free her daughter somehow.”
“She is a fool,” Ryland hissed from beside us. “My father used that blade to control me, to torture Joclyn, to kill her brother. What does she think is going to happen to her? That Edmund somehow won’t take control? The second he knows she has it…” Ryland’s voice faded away, his eyes bright as they snapped right to his brother. The anger that rose up in him was so powerful I could feel it infect me like a virus before I was able to help him calm. “They spoke about getting her back to Edmund. He knows,” Ryland whispered, his eyes wide, the fearfulness in them growing deeper by the second.
“If Edmund has her, he also has her magic.” Ilyan straightened his shoulders as he rose up to his full height, the power in his eyes emanating around us. “I have no way of knowing if they aren’t all outside of our reach. Chances are, the three of them are gone, beyond the barrier, but we must let the guards know. We may still have a chance to find Wyn. We have to find her, some clue of where she is. Ryland, you are my second now.”
Ilyan placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder, and Ryland straightened under the weight, his eyes wide in shock. “Take control of this situation. Get people looking. Let everyone know the change in Sain, what has happened, and get as many people searching for Wynifred as possible. Let them know she is dangerous and not to approach either her or Sain on their own. They need to come right to me.”
“Dangerous,” I repeated the word, knowing it wasn’t that far off, not after what happened in the cathedral.
I looked toward my hand, expecting my flesh to be falling off the bone again.
“Normally, I wouldn’t consider her as such, but given the situation…” Ilyan paused, his focus shifting between Ryland and I. “I can’t discount that she is either working for Edmund or being controlled by him until we find her.”
“It better be the second,” I growled, wishing my sight would pull me in and show me what was up. No such luck.
“Yes, my lord,” Ryland gasped, his voice seeming to be stuck in his throat.
“Ry,” Ilyan sighed, his tone clipped in agitation as he pinched the bridge of his nose again. “I am still your brother, and if you call me ‘my lord’ one more time, I will beat you up like the mortals do—boxing or whatever they call it. Heaven knows you need more of that in your life.”
Ryland nodded before moving away, winding his way through the few Sk?íteks who remained, beckoning them away, his hands moving fast as he began issuing orders.
As one, everyone exited the room, each one to their new tasks, Ryland trying his best to appear strong, while Ilyan and I walked hand in hand.
Nerves on the rise from what had been revealed, from everything Ilyan had said, from everything I had remembered, I continued on, barely paying attention to where Ilyan was leading me. Only to slip, my foot sliding to the side as the sound of breaking glass echoed somewhere from below me.
“What the …!” I said, barely catching myself as Ilyan clung to my hand for dear life, his heart rate accelerating in a panic deeper than what I would expect from a little fall. I wasn’t being attacked by one hundred forty Trpaslíks, after all, so the boy needed to calm down.
I would have chastised him, but I was already moving away from him, moving toward whatever I had stepped on. My magic pulled me as the power inside of me increased, the Drak power screaming.
It was a vial, a tiny glass thing filled with swirling green fluid that was dangerously close to leaking out thanks to a large crack along the side.
“Ilyan,” I called, my voice strangely hollow as my magic pulled. My fingers were inches away from picking up the thing when sight pulled into me. One simple image of Ovailia dropping the same green fluid onto Thom’s skin was all I needed to see.
“Mi lasko?” Ilyan’s voice pulled me out of the sight with the force of a gun, his fear escalating as I looked up to him, my eyes wide before I pointed down to the vial below us where the green was now spreading out and over the floor like syrup.
“Don’t touch it,” I instructed, my voice shaking with what I was about to say. “It’s what Ovailia used to hurt Thom. It’s what she was going to use on all of them.”
His eyes grew wider as I looked at him.
My sight pulled me forward, flashes of images I could barely make out, before Ilyan came back into focus.
My lips spread into a wide smile. “I think I can use it to save him.”
Sain’s ragged breathing echoed through the stone hallway we walked through, hitting against my back and grating on my nerves. I recoiled at the sound, at the way his feet dragged against the stone, the way they always had when he walked.
His left leg was slightly turned, dragging like he couldn’t quite lift it off the ground. This time, however, the scrape seemed to be a little bit more pronounced, the drag a little bit longer. He had always claimed it was from an injury. Right then, I wasn’t so certain. I no longer thought any of him was real.