Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(129)

When I clapped my hands, my magic sped out, forcing the weapon off balance and away from me. The sharp point spun through the air. With a powerful blast, the long spear embedded itself a foot into the stone. The rock around it melted as it began to pour from the wall in a river of gold, the heat mutating the stone.

“Helped who?” I asked, my voice hard as my desperation fell away and my irritation came on full force. I tapped my heel against the stone as I popped my hip out, the movement usually enough to disguise the surge of magic before an attack.

My brother, however, saw right through it. His nostrils flared as he screamed, a blast of air knocking me backward, a wall of green following right behind.

I barely caught it, letting my magic absorb the wave, dispelling it into harmless energy that fell from the air. The counter spell twisted my gut uncomfortably, making it hard to stand and face him, my energy depleted.

Ilyan smiled at my exhaustion, his hysteria growing as I prepared for the attack that would come next, knowing it would.

“Who did I help?” I spat, not bothering to hide my irritation. He was really getting on my nerves.

“Take your pick!” he screamed as he attacked again, my counterattack scarcely able to deflect his assault, sending it into the high ceiling where it smashed against the stone, littering us with small stones from the already weakened structure.

I would have to be careful. He could crush me under the stone if I wasn’t careful, if it didn’t come down on its own.

“Our father, you mean?” I barked, feeling my own anger rise dangerously, everything boiling inside of me painfully. “Or are you speaking of Timothy? Or Sain?”

Ilyan glowered deeper, his eyes shaking with the madness that had already taken control of him.

“That’s who you should be fighting, Ilyan!” I screamed as the cave heaved around us once again. “That’s whose heart you should be plunging spikes into.”

Ilyan said nothing in reply beyond a growl. He only attacked with a ripple of magic that I sent aside with a wave of my hand, the powerful spell twisting away from me, through the dark and into the stone near the dungeons.

The cave around us heaved more. Sending his attacks into the cave was quickly turning dangerous. I was going to have to find another way to deal with his temper tantrum.

“Oh, I didn’t plan on stopping with you!” Ilyan roared, the words hitting me in the chest as he put the force of his magic behind them. The wall of energy shoved me back, slamming me into the uneven wall behind me. “You all have to pay.”

Rocks continued to fall from the ceiling as Ilyan attacked again, one assault after another raining down on me. Eruptions of light and fire filled the room, his magic mutating into sharp points and violent ends.

With a scream, I pushed myself from the wall, magic working fast to dodge him, sending his attacks away as I fired back. My useless assaults were only meant to immobilize him if any of them could reach him.

“Ilyan!” I pleaded as I realized what I had walked into, realized the true danger of what I was facing.

All signs of my loyal and compassionate brother were gone. All of his control was gone. He was gone, as gone as Joclyn was. His humanity had left as she had. There was only a monster left behind.

For the first time in my life, I truly feared my brother. I feared for my life.

“Ilyan, I need you to listen to me. I am trying to help you!” I yelled angrily, dodging another of his attacks as my face began to burn. Tears I hadn’t felt in centuries threatened to pour over, to stream down my face in a million lines of broken life.

The life I had created for me.

It truly was too late to fix anything.

“You are trying to help me?” he screamed, the vein in his neck popping out in warning as he sent one last attack toward me. This one was captured by a simple spell, the orbs of black spinning through the air between us in a dangerous globe, lightning and thunder spitting from its surface. “Help me how? Betraying me? Killing Thom? Ripping our sister Gielle’s head from her shoulders? Spying on all of us? Torturing Ryland? How! How did you help us!”

I cringed with each accusation, my shoulders pulling into my ears as the truth of each charge stabbed into me.

I glowered at him as the reason I was here, the reason I had sought his help, became a further memory. A memory that didn’t matter anymore.

“You helped Edmund, Ovailia. You bowed down to Sain. You are as much the enemy as they are! I don’t know why I tried to save you, why I tried to help you. You are no better than any of them. You are my biggest regret!”

It was then I attacked.

I didn’t hold back.

Magic shot from my fingers in sharp points of energy that ripped through the air as Ilyan began to laugh, the sound the same broken mania our father had made his own.

Ilyan blocked the attack easily, fixing me with a look of pure madness as he returned fire. The stream of color shifted into fire as I dodged it, my own attack zooming back toward him, only to intersect his magic with a blast that showered us in sparks of color and flame.

Ilyan laughed again and stuttered, dodging with the seamless movement of his magic, his body disappearing from before me and appearing right beside me. His laugh echoed through me the second before his attack hit. The powerful blast met with my hip and sent me right into the open stairwell to the dungeon.

Landing with a smack, I hit the stairs, falling down them in a tumble of hair and limbs. Unsuccessfully, I tried to stop myself, my magic frantically attempting to heal the quick muscle deterioration that Ilyan had hit me with.