Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(115)

The two woman continued smiling at me while Rinax stared at me in expectation as my magic swelled, the pain that had been slowly deserting my head returning with a roar.

I yelled in pain as I slapped my hand against my head, hoping desperately that the pressure would disperse the pain. However, it grew as my vision left again, plunging me into the golden glow of sight.

I saw myself with the same children I had pulled from the dark water of Imdalind. The blue child transformed into the Vil? who had been fluttering before us. I watched the five of us laugh as I taught them how to use their magic, as Chyline transformed a rock into liquid gold, a young Sain screaming in terror.

That image faded and another replaced it, the same cave surrounding me as Sain approached, his eyes sad with each step forward.

“I’m tired of waiting, Siln?,” he said as he fell down at my feet. “All of my siblings have found their love, and I am alone.”

I looked at him before turning toward the pool, my eyes sad as I led him toward it, as I showed him how to drop a single droplet of blood below the surface, to let it blend with my magic and create a new life.

Dramin.

The sight shifted to the four as they ruled, to cities as they were built, to the large pools of sight that Sain and Dramin built.

Sight after sight came of a life I didn’t know before it stopped on the cave surrounding me as I lay in the pool of dark water, floating there before Sain entered. He was the same Sain I had seen in premonition moments ago when I had been flushed down the river and into the center of the earth.

With a gasp, I pulled myself from the sight, the other three coming back into focus as my heart thundered heavily in my chest. The vision I had seen became a nightmare.

“This is not your first life, child,” Frain continued as Chyline patted my knee sympathetically, both women oblivious to the real reason for my panic.

I wished her touch could bring relief. I only had confusion.

My eyes were wide as I looked between one and the other.

“What did you see?” Rinax asked, his irritation finally fading. He folded his arms, pursing his lips as he waited for an answer. “I can see it on your face. You saw something.”

“She saw our birth, Rinax,” Chyline whispered, her voice sounding far away as my sight pulled at me once again, a single flash of Sain’s face as he laughed from below the dark water.

No, not below.

I was below.

It was the same sight I had seen as the water pulled me under, and now I knew why.

“I saw more than that,” I said as I pushed the sight away, looking at the three again, the fear of the admission pulling at my heart. “I saw Sain.”

My shoulders pulled in as the sight came again, shifting and moving to that same version of me I had seen before. This time, I was held under the water as Sain wrapped his hands around my neck.

“He drowned me, didn’t he?” I couldn’t even look at them as I said it. “Before … when he killed—” I still couldn’t make myself say it. “He drowned me.”

The three stared at me, their eyes becoming very sad as Frain nodded. My heart fell to my toes in a devastated confusion.

“In Imdalind. He drowned you in the well,” Frain said, her calm voice seeming very far away. “Your body was lost. It’s why you didn’t linger like we do. It’s why you had to come back and why you don’t remember anything.”

“But why would he do that?” I asked. “If I really did create everything—”

“He did it for the same reason he has tried to destroy your life.” Chyline’s voice was soft as she shifted closer to me, as though she was suddenly worried someone else would overhear. “The same obsession has haunted him for centuries. After Edmund was kissed and the Chosen Children were discovered, you decreed that the four of us were no longer to rule. Ruling is all he desires.”

“That retribution has consumed him,” Frain continued, the timbre of her voice continuing the haunting quality of the story. “The emotion, the need, was so strong that, even after his passing, after his death, he thought of nothing else. His focus was so singular even your existence was lost to him.”

Whatever beating my tense heart was able to muster was forced to a stop, the ironclad evil pressing against my chest in a painful weight. “Sain …? What do you mean by after his passing?”

I really didn’t want to know, but I had no choice.

“He has passed from this earth, just as we have, child.”

“But he’s my father. He walks around and performs magic and …” I gasped, staring between them, desperate for an answer, desperate for some explanation of what they were talking about, for some calm.

All I got, however, was the overly calm blue-eyed stare from Frain, the look so sympathetic it almost made it worse. My stomach sunk to my toes as I tried to swallow the panic away, but it only mounted, drowning me.

“As we could have if we had chosen to,” Frain explained, the words seeming hollow. “But that was not to be, not after what Sain has done.”

“What has he done?” This time, I wanted to know.

My blood boiled in anger at the possibility of what else he could have done, at what secrets these three could hold. The anger seemed to be reciprocated for the first time, however. Rinax’s skin sprouted into tiny spikes in his irritation.