Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(126)

“You think I wanted to kill them?” she suddenly yelled, the intensity of the spell she held against me increasing with the anger. I screamed, several bones in my chest and arms cracking under the pressure. “You think I wanted to kill my brother? You think I want to carry around this poisoned magic in me? You’re an idiot, Ryland! I don’t know why my brother ever looked up to you. You didn’t deserve him.”

Her words caught me off guard, my eyes widening as I tried to control my breathing, the pain and shock making the action difficult.

“I know you wanted to.” I forced the words out, determined to slap them against her despite the pain. “You split his skull in two. He died in my arms, gasping for his mother. Your mother.”

“Stop!” she yelled again, throwing the blade away as her magic snapped.

Another scream ripped from me as yet more bones began to splinter and crack.

My magic rushed to heal them, but even that was restrained under her hold, leaving me heaving in pain as the broken bones pushed against tendons, skin, and muscles in ways they were not meant to. Given the pain and the way my forearm seemed to be arching unnaturally, I was sure that one broken fragment was about to break through. I screamed in agony, but Míra only looked at me, her jaw tight and eyes wide as she, too, slowly lost control.

“I had to kill Thom to save all of you … to stop Edmund.”

“Some good it did you,” I interrupted, my words strained and broken through the pain. “You saved no one. And now Edmund is dead.”

“Am I?”

Míra’s eyes widened as mine did. Her magic fell away as her own fear gripped her, the identical emotion wringing my heart.

Slowly, Míra turned toward the man I was now looking at, the man I had never hoped to see again.

“Father?” I could scarcely get the word out.

Edmund stood in the middle of the room behind Míra, his normally slicked hair disheveled and out of place. The curls that were so much like mine fell over his blood-ringed eyes. He glared, his eyes red and swollen, jaw slightly knocked out of place as he stood, wearing a bloodstained robe. A crimson stain spread over his chest and dripped from the hem of his shirt.

“Edmund!” Míra shouted, her anger redirected to the man who stood before us so blood-soaked I was sure he was an apparition, although he seemed so solid I didn’t see how that was possible.

“Oh, look,” Edmund hissed, his voice so clear I almost expected it to be inside of me rather than out. “My failure of a son and my failure of a slave. Perfect. If my last act is to dispose of the two of you, then so be it. And all it took was the destruction of the blade to bring me back, to give me one last chance.”

“No!” Míra screamed just as Edmund attacked, his palm twitching as a wide, glowing orb of white appeared on his fingertips. The ball sped toward us with one flick of his wrist as fast and as accurate as a well-aimed baseball.

It did not make it far, for as Míra screamed, she also countered, an attack of almost identical weight and speed moving toward him, perfectly intersecting with my father’s in a shower of sparks that exploded across the room, catching the bed on fire.

Feathers showered us with the impact, the white blossoms smoking and burning as they fell around the room. I looked at them for a moment before Edmund began to laugh, the sound the same I had been haunted with for so long, the laugh that had been ripping through my head until a moment ago. Now it was before me, separated by only a few feet and some burning feathers.

Now I could destroy it.

I could be free.

“Planning on fighting until the end, are we?” Edmund said with a laugh, cracking his knuckles as the fire began to spread, catching a pile of what seemed to be sheets on fire.

The room was trapped in a crackle of light and dark, the smell of smoke becoming overwhelming as the bright flames threatened to swallow us whole.

“Good. That will make things more entertaining.” Edmund stepped toward us as Míra began to move.

Any hope of a quick escape was dashed as Edmund snapped his fingers, the still burning mattress soaring through the air and slamming into the only exit. A shower of sparks and fire covered the room as it flew, bits of paper and fabric that were littered over the ground catching aflame.

I hissed and shuffled away from where I leaned against the wall, my body screaming from the simple movement. I attempted to kick a burning ember back toward my father, but my leg was barely able to move with the broken bones that were still crippling me. Not that it mattered. The fire that engulfed the mattress had already spread to a chair and a davenport that were both now smoking and flickering with flames on either side of the room.

The smoke in the air was smothering, making it impossible to breathe and leaving a weight on my chest.

Coughing, I grit my teeth against the pain and attempted to stand, but nothing responded. Even though my magic could now heal me, it wasn’t fast enough. I would have to fight from here.

“I don’t know what your idea of entertaining is, Father,” I hissed as I carefully shimmied my weight, freeing my limp hand from where my leg had trapped it. “But it’s your definition of end that I am more interested in.”

Edmund raised his eyebrow in derision as his lip twitched, the laugh a second from breaking back into my nightmares. That was before Míra attacked, her magic strong as it hit him square in the chest, catching him totally off guard. The two of us began to work together in an unexpected partnership.