Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)
Rebecca Ethington
You gave this book a page.
So, I created a world.
May you get lost in its pages.
Love you, always.
SAIN
1
“I have a job for you. Do it well, and I won’t kill you. Fail and your life will end in a much more painful way than poor Edmund finally found.”
The man Ovailia had spared cowered on the ground below me as I spoke, blood still dripping from my fingers, forming little pools of red by my feet. It was the red the man couldn’t look away from.
The red matched the fluid seeping from the corpse behind me.
“Stand.”
He didn’t hesitate. He moved quickly, his eyes still on the pools of blood, unwilling to look at me.
“I want you to go and tell everyone what you saw here. Tell everyone of what Sain, the first of the Drak, really is. Can you do that?”
“Y-ye-yes …”
Ovailia laughed as the man stuttered and wet himself in fear.
I smiled, my lips pulling away from my teeth as my eyes gleamed.
“Good. Then, when you are done, come back to me, and I’ll have another little job for you. You have a new master now. Do you understand?”
A nod and then the man tore from the room, stumbling over his own feet in his attempt to escape me.
“Do you think he will do it?” Ovailia asked, coming so close behind me I could feel my magic roar in an attempt to reach her.
“Yes, I do. Now is when things really start to get interesting.” Pulling Ovailia to me, I let my magic swell, moving it to reach her, realizing it wasn’t her it wanted.
It wasn’t her it craved.
It was sight. It was the world that was yet to be.
“Now is when everything gets real.” With two strong hands against her collarbone, I pushed her away from me, watching her stumble on her heels in an attempt to find her balance.
I didn’t care.
Allowing my magic to swell into sight, I saw the whispers of what was to come, shadows of what was about to happen. What needed to happen. I couldn’t let that man go.
“Wait,” I said to the man who was now down the hall, still trying to make his escape. My magic stretched out to him, wrapping around him and pulling him right back into the room.
I could hear his panicked screams due to the movement, could hear Ovailia’s disgruntled complaints from being thrown around. But all I saw was black, the fear and anger of my two companions fading into the screams of another sort.
Of sight.
“See what I have done!” My own voice echoed inside my mind as the images solidified.
I watched the crowd of horrified Trpaslíks appear in the hall of council, a large stone room that hadn’t been used in decades if not centuries. They looked at the corpse of the man I had destroyed, anger and fear clear on their face. One man yelled then another then another, and the sight began to shift to the same room. This time, it was full of bloodied bodies and bowed heads, Edmund’s loyalists cleared from the wheat like the chaff they were.
Useless garbage.
My heart rate accelerated at the sight of that, at the knowledge of what had happened—what could have happened if I had sent Damek out into the hordes with news of my accomplishments.
A revolt.
I had to stomp it.
The sight began to shift again, fire moving within the hall of Imdalind as a child laughed and cried in the background. It was a clear image, but one I waved away. I didn’t need to see more. I already understood the path my sight wished me to take. I already understood what it wanted me to see.
The fire-drenched hallway faded to the dim room before me as the black left my eyes, some prophecy half-formed on my lips before I pushed it away, too.
Ovailia stood before me, still irate at my hasty banishment, her arms folded over her waist like a stubborn child.
“What is it?” she snapped, her head high as she watched me, making it clear she hadn’t missed a moment of the sight. Knowing her, she had even tried to tap into it.
Luckily, the Black Water had been removed from her spine. I didn’t need her knowing too much about what I was planning, about what was coming.
“Something wonderful,” I said with a smile, taunting her as I stepped toward Edmund’s last remaining guard, leaving bloody footprints behind me.
The silence of the room pressed against my chest as the sight’s magic still reverberated inside me, loud and abrasive, the same image of the ignited hallway breaking through.
Just a flash of fire and smoke, and my heart stopped.
While I didn’t know what I was seeing, I knew someone else who might.
Someone who shouldn’t see any of this.
Edmund’s dead eyes looked at me as my heart picked up, a sudden fear gripping me, the disgusting emotion far too real.
I hoped I wasn’t too late.
I needed to stop her from seeing any of this.
Stop her from knowing what had happened.
I needed to put a block around my sight, a block around everything concerning me.
A Zámek.
The same magic had cursed Wyn. The same magic had been taught to Timothy by me in an attempt to kill her centuries before. This time, I would use it the way it was meant to be—to block a Drak’s sight, to stop them from peeking into someone’s life, into their fate.