Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(108)

Even Ilyan’s magic wasn’t enough to stop it, to heal me, but I could hardly feel that, anyway. The warmth of his magic was leaving, seeping from me as our connection began to close.

I looked toward him, toward where I thought he was, as if seeing him would force the bond to return. Yet I couldn’t see anything other than the smears of color that swam in the blue ocean of the room I was trapped within.

Smudges whirled in slow spirals as a battle raged before me, wobbly bodies moving slowly, sparks of color blasting through the waves in bubbles of sound.

Rough rock pushed painfully into my head as I tried to shift my weight in an attempt to reach Ilyan. Nothing happened other than me falling forward, my body giving way as my face impacted with the hard stone of the ocean floor.

The broken gasps of my breaths echoed against the stone I was awkwardly pressed into, the sound louder than the blasts, louder than the painful stutter of my heart.

Neither were working right.

My heart faltered and started again, the sound slamming against my bones. My breaths were desperate puffs, my lungs unable to fill with air. I was left gasping, my head swimming.

My vision was blurred and broken as I tried to make sense of the slow moving ocean that I was drowning in, grateful for the reprieve as my sight kept blinding me in waves of black, the same image playing over and over.

The pool of black water and comforting blue light flitted through the dark. I needed to go there. My sight wanted me to go there.

Ilyan knew where it was, but every time he tried to tell me, I couldn’t hear. His mind was cut off from mine, everything but his fear.

I could feel it rushing through me, crippling me, although that emotion might be my own.

I couldn’t tell anymore.

“Ilyan,” I gasped into the stone as more distorted colors erupted around me, one blast rumbling through the stone. “Ilyan,” I said again, trying to force the word out with the limited air in my chest.

I wasn’t sure it worked. He didn’t seem to hear me.

The battle continued to explode, pops of color fading to the silvery blue light of the ocean and then again to the cave, to the solitary orb of blue that floated above the black waves.

The light shimmered in my mind, pulling me toward it before a spark of yellow pulled me back to the battle. The wall rattled, a blast exploding above my head with a low, shallow beat, the deep sound stretched out.

Sparks of color fell over me like feathers, soft and hot against my skin. I knew they should hurt. I could feel them burn, but it was only another pain. Another pain didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that blue light and that pool. I could see it now, just in front of me. I needed to get there.

With a slow blink, Ilyan’s face appeared before me, his hands hot against my shoulders as he placed me back against the wall. Everything was fuzzy as I stared at him, at his mouth moving in some desperate message I couldn’t hear.

I couldn’t hear anything.

Only the running of water, water so fast and so cold.

I wondered where it was coming from. Maybe I could use it to wash off all this blood.

Ilyan faded from my sight as the ache in my chest grew. I gasped for air, more blood pouring over my fingers, everything aching as Sain’s magic devoured me.

My vision faded again into the black of the pool and that comforting blue light. The clear, undistorted image faded in an out with the slow beat of my heart, the blue light growing brighter and brighter each time I saw it.

“I am waiting,” a deep, familiar voice said, the sound rattling inside my head as it faded again, leaving me staring at the Vaseline smear of the battle, colors popping and sticking in the air like paint.

“It’s time,” my own voice echoed within me, pulling my focus from the colors as they dripped to the woman I had seen before, myself, but from years before.

The older me stood as clear as day near an outcropping of the hallway, wearing the same clothes I did, the bloodstain wide across her chest.

“It’s time for what?” I asked, amazed I could get my own voice to work with the amount of pain I was in.

“It’s time for the end,” she said, a coy smile crossing her face as she took a step closer to me, her hand outstretched.

“No end.” The words were distorted as I tried to push them out with so little air, my chest aching again as I took another breath. “I have to save Ilyan.”

I turned toward him then, toward the battle that was still echoing in my head with blasts and bangs, but everything was color now, drips of it everywhere.

“You will,” the other me said, pulling my focus so fast my head hurt. Her image began to fade and spin just like everything else. “But you must come with me.”

She stood there, her hand outstretched, her eyes desperate as she looked from me to the battle.

I stared at her, struggling to take a breath, blood pouring from my hand as my vision began to fade, the same pool coming into focus, the same blue light calling to me.

“I need to get to the pool.” I wasn’t even sure the words came out the right way.

“I can take you there. Let’s go,” she said, her voice hard as her hand wrapped around my blood-soaked one, pulling it away from my chest and toward her.

Her hand was warm, comforting, and familiar. And not just because it was my own, but there was something else there, something I had felt before. It was her magic; it wasn’t mine.