Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(100)

“Joclyn.” My voice caught as I greeted her.

The tiny girl smiled so widely the bridge of freckles on her nose wrinkled together into a strip of brown, just as they had when she had been a child.

“You didn’t listen to my previous warning, I see.” She stepped toward me, the dark swing of her hair against the glaring backdrop pulling my focus. “You killed him, anyway.”

“Oh, I didn’t kill just him,” I taunted, my irritation at the way she spoke to me rising. Irritating child. “I killed as many as I could. I did it for you.”

The words ground my teeth as the apparition approached, her eyes darkening angrily with each step she took. My shoulders knit together, pulling with a white-hot rage that cut into my anger.

“You will suffer for that choice, Father.”

“Suffer?” I laughed, the sound cracking against the white. “I made the choice that was required for the sight that was given. I will suffer for nothing!” My voice rose as my fists beat against my thighs. The pain was enjoyable against my agitation.

I fought the need to rush her, knowing I wouldn’t be able to hurt her here. I had tried before. I was close to trying again.

Joclyn read my mind, smiling before she began to laugh. The sound was the same high-pitched giggle that Jeffery used to love in his child. Now it grated on me, the positive association to a life I had never wanted infuriating me.

“You will suffer for more than you know. You were warned—”

“You were warned,” I mocked, flipping my hand through the air in irritation, the lack of a magic spark obvious. “I was shown a future, and I have done all in my power to guide the world toward that beautiful bliss!”

“Is that what you think?” Joclyn asked, stopping her forward progression as she cocked her head to the side. “That you are guiding them toward what you saw? Or what you have created?”

“I know what I saw. I know what needs to be done. My people have suffered from the moment I was removed from their lead,” I hissed past clenched teeth, my jaw grinding together as I glowered at the girl. “It is only with me, a true Drak, at their head that they can be saved from the evil I have seen.”

“The evil you saw was created by you. Are you so blind you have not seen that? Father—”

“I am not your father,” I interrupted her with a growl.

She just stared at me with that knowing smile that had always irritated me.

“You say that, but that is because you do not realize what I truly am.”

“You are nothing,” I hissed, my magic attempting to bubble from me.

“I am more than the hell you claim to be. You have told many people that before. Hell does not work for others. Hell devours them for its own.” Her anger rose to meet mine, her eyes flashing red in a warning I did not heed. I did not attempt to hide the twitch of my lips, the truth of her words causing my chest to swell in glorious pride.

“Yes,” I hissed, a smile finally breaking free. “I am hell, but only because I have to be. To stop the destruction I have seen, I have to be.”

“You are foolish to think they are one in the same. You cannot lie to me, Father. I will see through it. I see everything. I am—”

“You. Are. A. Child,” I snapped, rushing toward the girl, happy when she jerked back in an attempt to escape me. The subtle movement prodded me on, anger and magic rising into a comfortable heat against my bones. “You are nothing, and you see nothing. How could you ever understand such things?”

“If I am nothing but a child to you, if Joclyn is nothing but a girl to you, then you are more foolish than I assumed,” the girl scoffed. The youthfulness of her voice faded into the terror I had seen in her before, into the maturity that had haunted my sights for so long. “How could I be here if I was nothing but a child?”

“I am the first and hold more magic than anyone below me. My magic showed me all I need to know.” I threw my hands up in the air as I stepped closer to her.

Again, the girl did not budge.

“I taught you to use your magic. The magic that showed you Edmund’s purpose, how he would unite our kind with the mortals. It showed you Ovailia’s true mate, the man who would help her bring a great ruler into the world. It showed you of—”

“Enough!” I roared, the single word soaring through the air with such force that it ripped past the white space I was trapped in. A dark line cut over us, zagging across the sky in a bolt of lightning.

The little girl didn’t even jump at the sound. She stared with that same ridiculous grin, her face squashed together awkwardly.

“Enough?” she asked in her ridiculously high voice, a giggle following. “What have you had enough of? Truth? Or have you finally grown tired of the lies you shove down your own throat?”

“Enough of you!” I shouted.

The crack above us enlarged. The dark line opened to reveal a flash of light, color and shapes moving in a strobe beyond the white space.

I stared at it, heart pulsing in confusion as eyes looked down at us, followed quickly by a hand and the white of someone’s eye.

“Not possible,” Joclyn said from beside me.

I didn’t look at her. I stared above me at the flash of a Vil? moving beyond the white that trapped us.

“When you have truly had enough of me, you will have moved on from this world.”