Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(12)
My heart picked up into a panic at the sight of her there, horror drowning me as the scene began to shift, changing and mutating as everything stuttered and shifted. Ovailia stood in the middle of the room as Míra shifted; disappearing, only to be replaced by Ilyan, only to have everything shift again and both Míra and Ilyan stood before her.
The two of them continued to dance around the sight as everything flickered, the screams of all the players rotating as everything continued flash and change.
Ovailia screaming.
Míra crying.
Ilyan dead.
Míra dead.
Míra was there one minute and gone the next. Ilyan was there, standing by Míra, then he was spread out in blood soaked horror the same as before.
“Watch!” Ilyan yelled outside of the sight, the one word breaking through as everything stuttered.
My heart clenched as he fell to the ground, blood spurting out of a wound in his neck before it rewound to him standing, Míra behind him, her eyes nervously watching him and Ovailia.
“Death!” Ovailia screamed, the word out of place as the child vanished again, Ilyan spluttering through an injury.
Again and again, it shifted. The images rolled around as I tried to make sense of them.
I had seen this vision a million times, manipulated by my father as he changed the murderer, changed the death. This time, however, everything felt more real.
With my heart stampeding, the shifting room faded into a snow-clad forest, fading again into an unfamiliar alley. Words and images ran over each other as everything altered, a heavy wave of red flowing over the image, drowning it all in blood.
Míra fought Sain, desperately trying to defeat him before she fell to the ground, bleeding from her chest and her mouth.
Blood covered the child as Sain threw her in with the bodies he had destroyed, assuming her for dead. But he was wrong, as we were.
For, as the sight shifted again, she was now running down a hallway within the cathedral, Jaromir at her side. Then a door opened as Thom came into view, a single shot of magic speeding toward him from her hand.
A scream ripped from my throat. The sound emerged in the real world as the sight’s ember burn drowned the blood, fading into black as reality greeted me home.
My heavy breathing was the solitary sound in my ears as the ember left my eyes, leaving me staring at the child, everything painfully tight inside of me.
“You’re the Drak,” she gasped, all pretense of innocence gone now. The child was smothered with the evil and hatred I had sensed in her before.
“And you’re Cail’s replacement. You are here to kill Thom.”
Ryland stiffened behind me, but I stayed still, my hand a vice around hers.
My magic held her in place as I searched within her, looking for any sign of Edmund’s magic, feeling the ?tít for any sign of the dratted man.
“Wrong.” She smiled, deep and dark. “I am here to kill you all.” Her magic surged from the hollow space within her, the strength elevating with the hope of attack.
Smothering it, I let my magic wind around hers, freezing it in place as I searched for some sign of the man I despised almost as much as my own father, searching for some sign of Edmund’s control.
His rancid magic was there, wrapped deeply within her, but it was a faint residue, almost like a weaker memory of what the man currently was. No, what he had been.
That couldn’t be right.
Her magic surged again in an attempt to break past my barrier, but I overpowered it, taking control before she could get any farther, locking her in place.
Her eyes clouded with fear at the restraint, my smile spreading as hers died, drowning in the shadow of my fire.
The doors far behind us slammed open as Ilyan, Risha, and Wyn ran into the hall. The girl’s fear increased, her hand shaking in mine as Jaromir began to cry in confusion; Ryland’s gentle hold around him was neither comforting or wanted.
“I have bad news, little girl. You are all alone here. Besides, if what I saw is true, you will save us all.”
SAIN
3
Loud buzzing, like a hive of angry bees, bled past the heavy walls of the tiny room I had closeted myself in. Thousands of Trpaslíks’ voices drifted from the old hall in shades of worry, concern, and excitement. The emotions mixed together in a dangerous harmony as beautiful as the sweet and salty fragrance of blood that flowed up from the twisted corpse at my feet in low, smoky tones. The scent of charred flesh followed like a delicate afterthought. It was a perfume that could have been made by a French master in the dark ages. Seamlessly blended, impeccably intoxicating.
A smile, long and terrifying, stretched my lips, pulling at the sticky hairs of my beard uncomfortably as I looked over the tangle of flesh, at the blackened skin and bone, the crimson blood. The same color that covered my arms in cracked patches, the same color that blossomed over the robe I still wore like a talisman over my shoulders. Watercolor roses against white and black. The bloodstains were as intricate as the embroidery you would find on a king’s cloak.
And that was exactly what this was.
The cloak for the blood-soaked king.
And soon, everyone would know.
Eyes wide to the pitch dark of the room I stood in, long greasy strands falling over my face, I stared, my heart pounding against bones in eager anticipation of what was about to happen.