Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(35)

I didn’t have to be privy to their code to know what I was looking at.

Their final attack was laid out step by step in intricate detail.

It was beautiful and brilliant. In fact, if it weren’t for their general underestimation of my ability, it might work.

The new information swelled into a pleasurable warmth in my chest before the vision began to shift and change. A heat moved past me as the room was devoured by the smoke once again, a plume overpowering me, only to be replaced by the red burn of my sight.

Tensing, I expected to open my eyes to Ovailia’s charred body, to the entirety of the tent village in flames. However, it was smoke.

The long, wispy tendrils of graying clouds flew past, leaving me above the red-tinted world of Prague, hovering above the dilapidated buildings and blood-soaked streets.

Everything tightened. A fear I hadn’t expected sprung forth as the worry of returning back to reality left me. Who cared if Ovailia burned to death? Who cared if I lost all the Chosen? What I was seeing wasn’t supposed to be visible to me, not with the Zámek in place.

I could still feel the magic inside of me. I knew it was strong. But the city … Was she strong enough to break past the barrier without me knowing?

Was I strong enough to see her reality, even if she couldn’t see mine?

The latter seemed more probable. Joclyn might be capable, but even she didn’t possess an ability of that caliber.

Pushing the fear of Joclyn’s ability away, I gritted my teeth and let my sight take me down into the middle of the city, into the cathedral that had been home until a few weeks ago.

Tents of every color filled the courtyard, sitting haphazardly, Sk?íteks and Chosen whispering and fighting amongst the temporary housing.

Perfect.

I had hoped the little seeds I had planted would take hold, and it appeared they had done more than that. Weeds were ripping everything apart, ravishing Ilyan’s perfect little garden.

My sight continued to move beyond them right into the heart of Ilyan’s sanctuary, right into the burned and battered cathedral that was ready to come down and the two children who sat in the middle of the rubble.

Jaromir and Míra.

Míra.

She shouldn’t be there with him. She should have never made it inside of Ilyan’s compound. I had seen her die. I had seen her burn with all the others I had hidden her amongst. I had watched Ilyan kill her, unknowing that a child was stowed away within the dozens of corpses.

“No!” I gasped, the single word a shout as the reality of what I was seeing hit me. “I can’t be wrong. I am never wrong.”

“And yet, Wyn is alive, as well,” the haunting voice of the woman from the white sight hit me full in the chest as the children talked and laughed amongst the rubble, throwing rocks at each other in some kind of game.

“Not for long. Wyn will die just as this one will,” I growled as the child-like laugh of the voice ripped into me. “Just as you will.”

Gritting my teeth, I pushed the anger from me, banishing the taunts from my mind, knowing how much more of an issue this truly was.

She had been sent to do that which no one else had been able, and by the looks of it, she was still intent on that task. Her resolve was driven by a magic that was still lodged deep inside of her heart, a magic that would not have died, although I had shed the blood of its master. The magic was now a threat to me in more ways than the tiny child could ever have realized.

Edmund wasn’t dead yet.

They sat amongst the dirt and ash of the rubble-strewn hall, marble and stone piled around them in heaps of gray, a smile on her face and not a speck of char on her skin.

“I like it here,” Míra whispered.

The smile on Jaromir’s face broadened like she had confessed some dirty little secret.

“Good,” he whispered, his voice a grating squeak that twisted inside of me. “Then you should stay.”

I tensed as Míra did. Her shoulders pulled up to her ears as her eyes hardened. A heavy glance was thrown at the boy with the weight of iron bars. He flinched as my heart rate accelerated, the true meaning of that smile not lost on us.

“You know I can’t, Jaromir.” The calm of her voice was gone. The hard edge was so reminiscent of Edmund’s that my sight pulled away in recoil, ready to show me the ghost of the man standing beside her. Nothing was there except the two children.

However, the two children were quickly fading as my vision did, their voices overlapping each other as the two visions blended together. My sight muddled everything together as it faded into the red ember glow of nothing.

“I have to go, Jaromir. I have a job, and it’s important.”

“I say we act tomorrow. If we do as we have discussed, then even his sight cannot stop us,” Alojz’s voice overran the rubble of the cathedral, burning through me as the imagery of the children shifted and faded into oblivion.

I tensed as I gazed into the nothing, knowing what to expect and hating the fear it had impregnated me with.

“We have to kill him,” the child and Alojz spoke together as I jerked, the movement rooted in reality as my heart rate began to pick up into a gallop.

“All I see is death with you, Sain,” the same woman’s voice boomed in my mind, tainting me as I jerked back to reality, to the smoldering tent, the fire long extinguished, the scent of smoke and death heavy in the air.