Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(11)

“So, you can protect me?”

“Yes, we can,” I answered, careful to stay standing. Even though I wanted to sit beside her, I knew I wasn’t there yet. I still needed to gain her trust. “We protect everyone in here from the dangers outside. We even protect Ryland, and he helps to protect us. Although, I’ll tell you a secret.”

Her eyes enlarged as she leaned toward me. Even Jaromir tried to get closer, which was saying something because he had always been pretty much terrified of me.

Trust gained, I sat down on the bed next to her, leaning toward her in an obvious show of secrecy, one I could tell they wanted in on. Magic reverberated over them pleasantly as I watched for any sign of danger, of that magic I hoped I would not find.

One mischievous look at Ryland, and I giggled. The poor boy looked concerned about whatever I was going to lay on them. I had a library of secrets about him, after all.

“I could never beat him in a Nerf gun battle.” I jerked my head toward Ry, the two children looking confused before they dissolved into a fit of giggles.

Jaromir leaned even closer to me. “I love Nerf guns,” he whispered, playing into the vein of secrecy with perfect accuracy.

“So do I.” I leaned in even closer, aware of the burly man who was standing not too far away, magic bristling. “We should get some and gang up on him sometime. I think we could take him together.”

“I heard that!” Ryland interrupted loudly, the false frustration clear.

The kids, however, missed it, erupting into loud fits of giggles that I gladly joined in on, knowing at once what I had to do.

“It’s a plan,” I whispered to Jaromir, leaning into them in joint conspiracy, something they both lapped up.

“How about you, Míra?”

With the focus drifting to the girl, she nodded her head once as a wide, pure smile donned her face.

I extended my hand toward her, palm flat, ready for a handshake. She looked at it in awe.

A queen’s hand.

Purposefully, I hadn’t shaken her hand when I had met her, and now I was offering it to her … like an equal.

She looked at it, hesitating, that same darkness penetrating her eyes.

Tension coiled in my body, the same sensation I felt seeping from Ryland. I was convinced by the silence that surrounded us that he wasn’t even breathing.

“Want to be part of my team?” I asked.

The darkness grew as she looked at me, her jaw tightening, taking away the innocence of the child and replacing it with the madness of a different king.

Ilyan!

I said nothing more before she placed her hand in mine. My magic reacted at once to hers, pushing me into sight.

A gasp so loud it echoed in my ears seeped past my teeth. My eyes turned black as the ember burn filled my vision before pulling me into her reality, into her past, into her future … and right into Edmund’s palm.

The taste of blood filled my mouth as, within my sight, Míra fought child after child in cruel battles, adults circling around her, money changing hands as she felled child after child. Sweetmeats were handed to her from would be masters as she killed more, as she conquered more.

She was happy, stuffing her face with the candies, but then the image shifted, moving in a shadowed tent and Míra as she lay, crying in a disheveled bunk, hundreds of identical cots surrounding her. The Chosen that Edmund had created, many dirty and misshapen, writhed and cried as they fought impossible illnesses. They wallowed in dark and filth, left on their own as they recovered from the bites that had infected them thanks to Edmund’s Vil?s.

The darkness around the bunks overwhelmed me, the smell of feces and the hollow sounds of inescapable death smothering the air. I gasped underneath the pressure, desperate for fresh air, only for the scene to change to the bright sun of a stadium, to the cool chill of the winter that was on the other side of the barrier. Sounds of cheers replaced the cries. The same money-hungry men filled a stadium, and in the center, smeared with blood and mud, Míra fought with hatred clear on her face as she ended the life of a boy her age with a well-placed kick.

Heart stampeding in my chest, I watched her approach Edmund, watched him place the ?tít. Then with his magic infecting her, he left Míra to train, to hurt my father, to rip the spine from someone’s back, the amount of blood that seeped from the wound covering everything.

Evil filled the girl before me, an evil so deep I could feel my magic bristle with a need to snuff it out.

“Ilyan, I need you to come with me.”

The panic in me increased with those three words, spoken by the girl whose hand I still held, her face shifting into view as the sight changed.

Míra yelled at him as explosions sounded around her, rattling the cave as she screamed at him to follow. She screamed again before running down a hall deep within Imdalind, opening a door as everything continued to shake around her.

“I know where he is,” Míra gasped out as she burst into the room. “You have to hurry.”

She stood in a room I had seen a million times before, the door closing with a thud, leaving her standing in the large open stone space that Ilyan always died in.

Over and over again.

This time, it was different.

Míra stood, facing someone I hadn’t expected. Not in this moment.

Ovailia.

“Are you sure he didn’t follow you?” She asked with that acidic voice of hers.