Soul of Flame (Imdalind Series #4)(71)

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly as her eyes finally shifted back to me. “It’s probably just the Drak magic, my Trpaslík blood and all that. Maybe my magic hates you.”

Her voice was light, as though she was trying to make a joke, but the sound did not reach her eyes, and I flinched a bit, waiting for whatever was going to come next to jump out and slap me in the face.

“Are you saying we are enemies now?” I asked, unable to help the way my voice cracked in the echoing hallway. I stepped away from her out of habit; that one word seeming to awaken a wild animal, the raw emotion expecting an attack. I knew she hadn’t meant it that way, but I couldn’t help the way my magic flared. Whether it was in preparation of attack or to run for my life, I wasn’t sure. My anxiety was almost too raw for me to control after my last panic attack.

“Well, aren’t we? Technically, I mean,” Wyn said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes before she turned and continued down the stone hallways. “Not like I would ever actually attack you.”

Her voice echoed back to me as she waved her hand through the air. Her actions made it clear that she hadn’t meant it at all the way I had perceived it.

“No!” I yelled as I ran to catch up with her, the loud slaps of my red shoes sounding twice as loud as they really were in the seemingly endless, stone hallway that stretched before us. The large, wooden slabs of the doors were set so perfectly that, if it weren’t for the color, I wouldn’t have been able to tell they were there at all.

“What?” she asked as she laughed at me. For some reason she obviously didn’t believe that I didn’t view us as enemies. It seemed like such a weird thought to me, though. She was my best friend. Why would I want to attack her? And yet, somehow she seemed to feel like it was expected that I would try.

“Trpaslík, Drak, Sk?ítek. Human. Chosen Child. It doesn’t mean anything to me,” I said as I fell into step next to her.

“Spoken like a true human,” she said in a ridiculous baby voice as she patted my head. I batted her hand away, fully prepared to scowl at her, but she only laughed.

“Half-human,” I corrected her, unable to stop the smile that spread over my face with the memory of Vienna sausages.

“Whatever. You are kind of everything,” she said with a smile, yet the words only wiped out my temporarily good mood.

“So I have been told.”

She was right after all. I was kind of everything. Ilyan may be half-Chosen, but he was also half Sk?ítek. He knew what he was. However, my father was a Drak, my mother a human, and my neck held that mark that had given me every other kind of magic. I was a little bit of everything.

“What’s it like?” she asked softly, her voice loud in my ear as she leaned in close and wove her arm through mine again. I only groaned at her question, fully expecting her to guilt me into a step-by-step kissing documentary. Instead she pulled me to a stop before one of the many doors that lined these hallways, this one bearing the same handprints I had seen on her door at the motel except now it looked like someone had tried to scrub off the larger handprint with a scouring brush.

My heart clenched together at the faded paint—at her heartbreak—knowing I should look away, but unable to make myself do so.

“What’s what like?” I asked, my voice dead.

“Seeing the future?”

I cringed at her question; no part of me wanted to answer it, not after what had just happened with my father. I wasn’t even sure why she wanted to know. After all, she had stood there, watching my father berate me for being a useless Drak only minutes after sharing a sight with him. I guess that didn’t really answer her question, though, unless she wanted to know what it was like not to follow sights.

Because that seemed to be all I was good for.

“I dunno; it’s fine unless you talk to my father...” I said, a little more bitterly than I had meant to, wishing she would drop the subject.

“Sain is only trying to—” Obviously not.

“Can we talk about something else?” I snapped. I really didn’t want to hear the rest of that comment.

“You mean like the day after tomorrow?”

I looked at her in alarm only to be met with a wide smile that I tried very hard to return, although it didn’t quite want to take. My face felt like it had suddenly become devoid of blood, my heart pumping madly against the lead I had been filled with. She knew what tomorrow was, and she knew that there might not be a day after.

“You’re scared about tomorrow, aren’t you?” Wyn asked, making it evident that my fear was as clear on my face as it felt. I just looked at her without knowing what to say. If I should even talk about the sight; if I even believed it.

Wyn shook her head at me like I was the most pathetic thing she had ever seen, and I guess that in some ways that’s exactly what I was. I looked away from her sheepishly, suddenly feeling that old, introverted part of me coming on strong. Wyn pushed off from the door she was leaning against, her arm reaching up to drape around my shoulders. She almost looked like she was going to impart a secret wisdom passed down for generations, but instead, she did what Wyn did best.

She pulled out the Styx.

“I know you feel these are the worst of times; I do believe it's true. When people lock their doors and hide inside. Rumor has it, it's the end of Paradise.”