Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(102)

His magic sparked as he moved to attack, thrusting his hand in front of him as a wave of deathly gray sped toward us. The sticky magic was meant to infect us with a slow torture. Too bad I was faster.

Just as he attacked, so did I. A needle of flame sped from my good hand, soaring through the air with a pace his couldn’t hope to match. Only a bullet of fire was visible thanks to the smoke that followed, a trail that gave me away.

A trail Sain stared at with wide eyes.

His attack moved past his barrier, my knife of fire hitting against it simultaneously. A razor point of flame pricked against the powerful wall, intersecting right where his magic had created an opening to attack us. The fire blade used the same opening to move past it.

It hit against his magic with a blast of flame, an explosion that pushed beyond the protective wall Sain hid behind, burning it to the ground in heavy drops of molten glass that spread over the stone floor in rivers of muck.

“That was easier than I thought,” I jeered, making sure to keep my magic strong and hot under my skin. “Here I was, thinking you were going to destroy us.”

“At least with that wall gone, he can try,” Joclyn added with a sidelong glance, not quite willing to let her father out of her sights. “No more hiding, Sain. It’s time to end this.”

Sain’s focus snapped to us, his anger clearly boiling in his eyes. The warning in the dark of his glare thrilled me.

“You want to end this, child?” he hissed, his fingers continuing to spark and smoke. “Are you prepared to fight me? To fight true power? Or would you rather die by it?”

“Stop being so melodramatic,” Joclyn groaned, stepping in front of me to face her father. The muscles in her neck tensed and pulsed. “We don’t need your monologue. We just want to stop you.”

“Or kill you,” I amended, jumping around Jos like a Jack-in-the-box, my attack already speeding toward him. Color exploded from my hand in an array of lights, speeding across the air toward the irritating little man.

His eyes widened in surprise before he countered, his own attack exploding through the dark. The shards of light soared past mine, sending them spinning against the wall. Another assault followed a bright stream of yellow that snapped and hissed before it was intercepted by Joclyn. Her hands moved fast as her counterattack gobbled up his. Her magic devoured it into nothing but a puff of smoke.

“Nice,” I commended her, attacking again as I sidestepped another blast from his arsenal. The powerful discharge hit a wall, leaving a crater in its wake.

He was a much more aggressive fighter than I had assumed. This was going to be fun.

Maybe I would even get another scar.

Continuing to watch his movements, I tried to find a weakness big enough that I could take him down … or at least capture him.

Jos might want a quick and clean death, but that was not what I had in mind. Sain didn’t deserve an easy death. I was going to make certain it was slow and painful. I needed the truth about his part in Rosy’s death from his blood-soaked lips.

The imagery of that moment, of gaining that absolution, fueled me. It ignited my power into a greater wave that sped from me, mixing with Joclyn’s attacks in color and fire that danced around the air together, smothering the large hall in a fog of black smoke. It covered us, sticking in my eyes and nose as it pressed against me.

“No,” I heard Joclyn gasp from beside me.

The sudden blindness tensed my muscles. My mind moved into hyperactivity due to the unfamiliar vulnerability. I suddenly felt very weak. I never felt weak.

“Watch out!” Joclyn tackled me from the side, throwing us both down to the ground as a wide attack sparked overhead … right where I had been.

My shoulder impacted the hard stone with a jolt. The contact of skin against stone sent my magic through the earth in lines of fire that cut across the floor, melting the stone into rivers of lava.

Joclyn hissed as she scuttled off me, holding her hand where my skin had burned her, where my magic had tried to attack her.

“Dude! Are you okay?” I asked, pulling my fire from the earth, attempting to control it again, to keep it tucked inside of me and away from the girl who would make me go off like a bomb. Better safe than buried under a mountain of molten rock.

“Probably not the right question to ask right now,” Joclyn hissed, glancing around the room like a lion waiting for a kill. “But I’m okay.”

“Fine. What is the right question?” I amended, sitting up as she was. There was nothing around us but smoke. “Who won the battle of Serenity Valley? Because if this ends anything like that, I’m out of here.”

Unsurprisingly, she ignored me.

The fog pressed against us, blocking everything from view. Even Joclyn was shadowed a mere two feet away.

Everything was too similar to a horror story for my liking. All we needed was a blood-curdling scream from somewhere in the room.

“I can’t find him, Wyn,” Joclyn hissed from beside me.

Or that. I thought that might have been worse than a shriek.

Ice ran down my spine in a slow drip as I placed my hand against the ground, letting my magic stream away from me, through the stone in search of him. It flowed over the massive room, peeking through the smoke in ways I could not. She was right; there was nothing.

“Do you think he left?” I couldn’t dare hope.

“No, he’s still here.”