Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(111)

I didn’t want to.

The screams continued to rip from inside of me, rattling in the air. I screamed my anger at the milky foam of the river, the last haunted echo of her voice rippling through the room.

I love you, Ilyan.





JOCLYN





29





“Oh, yes, hit her harder because that worked so well last time.”

A sharp pain moved over my cheek as a slap reverberated in my ears. The impact pulled me out of the dark bubbles that had surrounded me and right back to the pain that splintered my bones and twisted my chest. Except, now the pain was full of a cold so penetrating it burned my skin. Every inch of me was covered in the burn of frost from the icy water I had thrown myself into.

Long icicles were frozen in my hair, the fragile points cracking as I gasped for breath. My chest arched in desperation. I writhed, blossoms of color and sight sparking through the black behind my eyes. My lungs burned with the inhale, the taste of blood strong against my tongue as I coughed and heaved, water gushing from my air-starved lungs as it was expelled along with other vile things.

Lungs and throat burning, I was rolled onto my side by strong hands, giving the water and vomit somewhere else to go besides all over me. A flash of a hundred swords cracked within the black of my sight as I hurled, each one strapped to the hip of an army. I watched them march, each fall of their feet ripping through my body, tensing my chest as the agonizing pain from Sain’s attack ripped me from the sight and back to the blurred swirls of stomach acid over rocks.

“See? Told you it would work,” a tiny, high-pitched voice answered the other one.

Cold air moved over my face as someone moved my hair out of the way of the mess that kept coming, the acid making my throat burn more.

“Hitting someone back to consciousness does not qualify as working,” the first voice, a woman, said in irritation.

“And yet she is awake,” the tiny voice snapped from somewhere in the dark above me.

I attempted to turn, to see who was there, but there was nothing but black as my sight took me somewhere far away, to Ilyan as he sat, sobbing in the dark cave I had just left. Heart tensing, I watched the image, the moment gone a second later and replaced by Wyn. A mania in her I hadn’t seen before took over as she screamed into the dark.

The moment with Wyn was just as important, but it was Ilyan who stayed with me. It was only Ilyan I saw.

Ilyan, I gasped in desperation, unable to make the words come. I just kept throwing up, knowing someone was around me yet not caring who they were or what they were talking about.

Ilyan! I’m here!

I needed to get back to Ilyan and save him. There was still time. I knew it.

He was all that mattered.

Ilyan.

Attempting to focus past the oppressive darkness, I screamed for him, but there was only silence. No response, no whisper of him, of his magic, of our bond.

It was all gone. He was gone.

No.

Ilyan! I screamed, attempting to push myself up and find a way out of the dark I was trapped in. However, I barely moved. What little movement I could muster was immediately squashed by the hands that seemed to be everywhere. Hands that pushed and prodded and shoved me back down to the stone.

Head rattling against the impact, I gasped, pain flowering from my mark in a spider web that cracked across my skull, breaking into smacks of color and flashes of sight, everything blending together in a deeper pain that pressed against my skull.

I tried to scream, but no sound came other than a splutter of water and a gasp. The sights continued to flash, an image I had never seen but remembered very clearly coming into focus: Me dancing on my back porch, my parents hanging the decorations for my party, and a bright blue Vil? fluttering right behind me.

The image was pristine before pain wiped it away, sending me back into the icy chill of black. One thing was very clear. I had felt this pain before.

I waited for the scream to rip from me as I shook and writhed. One of the warm hands pressed against my neck, the slight pressure numbing the fire.

“Shhh, child,” a calm female voice whispered. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Ilyan. Desperate to hear from him, I pled, the single word on repeat as I was rolled onto my back with a groan. The cold of the stone was welcome against the racking pain of my body as it attempted to turn itself inside out. Where are you?

“Where …?” I forced out through the burn, desperation churning in my gut as my panic mounted.

I needed to know where I was, where Ilyan was, what had happened. My plea was an unheard gasp of air, however; the single word question fell to nothing.

“We have been waiting for this moment for centuries, Rinax. Be kind,” another woman said, different from the first. This one’s voice was an odd gruff of irritation.

Soft hands continued to move over my face, a comforting heat sinking into me with each touch. It filled me, flowing over my muscles and bones as pain leached from my skin with each stroke, with each pulse of the stranger’s magic that coursed through me.

Groaning, I focused on the calm, letting it fill me as the confusing flashes of sight left. A haunting blue glow pulled me past the black. It floated above me, hovering in the air the same as it had in my sights.

“Imdalind,” I gasped, my throat burning in agony.

My sight flashed back and forth between the glow above me and the orb I had seen beside the wide black pool of water.