Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(114)

She could see me.

“Do you understand now?” she asked as she lifted her head to look at me, everything freezing around her as she stepped toward me. My own feet moved back with terrified confusion. “Do you understand what you are?”

I stepped back again, my breath caught in my chest as I was backed into a wall.

“I am Drak,” I was finally able to answer, forcing the words out through my panic. “That is what you said before.”

“It’s true. You are. You are the first of the Drak. The first of the Sk?ítek. The first of the Vil?. The first of the Trpaslík. You are the first and the last of magic. I am. We are all.” She smiled, the grin a wide span across her face in an odd wickedness.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Why are we here, you mean,” she corrected, her smile widening. “You see yourself in this life that you assume is not yours, but it is yours. It is your life, a life before this one, a life that was taken from you.”

“Wh-what are you talking about?” I stuttered, my heart beating faster as my magic ignited, pulsing and pulling at me, trying to show me something. But I couldn’t let it. I was stuck looking at this other me who merely smiled.

“You will see,” she answered, her voice dark and frightening as my sight vanished, leaving me staring at black. Black faded back into the cave and the two woman who sat before me in awe, the adult counterparts to the sight I had just had.

They stared in amazement, obviously having not missed the black sheen of my eyes. I, on the other hand, could only look back at them in horror, my heart beating too fast and my muscles too tight.

“What did you see?” Chyline asked, the hunger in her voice further igniting the panic and confusion I already felt.

“I saw myself,” I spat, barely able to control my emotions. “I saw myself … in the water. I saw you coming out … out of Imdalind. But … But you were children.” My panic had increased far too much.

I jerked away from them just as I had in sight, my gaze flickering in desperation to find some kind of escape from whatever hell I had wandered into.

“So you know, then,” Frain said, her calm smile out of place.

“Know what!” I yelled, my resolve snapping as I jerked toward them.

The two woman hardly flinched, and Frain’s smile still remained firmly in place.

“You know what you are.” The voice was different, but the words were the same, Chyline echoing exactly what I had said to myself.

“Don’t give me that. That’s what she … what I …” I stuttered to a stop, my frustration continuing to boil over. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what I saw!”

“You saw the beginning of magic,” Chyline finished for me, her smile so wide any hope of falsehood in the sight was forgotten. “You saw your true self begin it.”

“You saw yourself as you brought us from the mud,” Frain finished for her, the few simple words twisting inside my gut.

“I don’t …” I gasped, desperate to refute it yet knowing I could not. “But that is not me. It can’t be. Don’t you see?”

“I do,” Chyline interrupted. “I see the same woman who raised me. I feel your magic. I know it is a jumble to you. But that life is your life, just as this life is your life. They are one in the same.”

“Does anyone speak English around here?” I mumbled under my breath, hardly able to control another outburst.

“Calm down, Siln?,” Frain said, her hand soft against my arm. I still flinched.

I knew what I had seen. I knew what it meant.

I knew it was true.

I didn’t want to admit it.

“You said I wasn’t dead.”

“Not in this life,” Chyline answered. “You are the same as us. No, even above us. The magic of the earth is tied to you. Even when Sain thought he had killed you after Edmund’s ascension, you came back. And, I must say, coming back as Sain’s daughter was quite the trick. I would expect nothing less from you.”

If I was confused before, it was nothing compared to now. The cave around us moaned, shaking the floor I still sat on, sending the pool splashing over the bank. But I didn’t even turn. I scarcely registered it.

“Sain killed me?” I asked, my voice quivering as I watched Chyline. Her Cheshire smile was all that was visible as she moved into the depths of the cave we sat in.

“In a past life,” she answered.

“It’s not possible.”

“It is,” she said from the dark.

“You are the Siln?,” Frain added, the words I heard so many times before causing a fresh wave of panic to cascade against my soul.

“Powerful.” I tried not to sound frustrated, but it sneaked out, anyway.

“It means so much more than powerful, so much more than what was shown in sight. It means you are the first—the very first,” she continued, her voice echoing hauntingly as sight pulled at me, a single flash of myself reviving the blue-tinted boy breaking through.

“It is me, then,” I said as my magic roared a bit, flashes of sight still fueling my confusion.

“She is not stupid, this one,” Frain said with a wide smile, her eyes shining just as Ilyan’s did.

“She never was.” Chyline smiled as Rinax came back, landing beside her, a smile still devoid from his face.