Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(37)

“Ugh,” I grumbled, doubting whether it was from being caught in my attempt to stay in the game or at being laughed at by my sister.

I sat back, folding my arms over my chest, sticking my bottom lip out, wiggling in place, my skin crawling to get out of there, something that irritated Míra for the first time in, like, ever.

Momma used to say we looked like a mouse crawled up our backside when she needed us to sit still. Neither of us could. We would sit and wiggle and giggle until Momma would finally get fed up and “zip up” our mouse.

Now, there wasn’t a mouse. Just my sister, all zipped-up.

And me alone, wiggling in irritation.

I had been the best at magic. At least, that’s what Ryland had said before Míra showed up. And now Míra was here, and I was having a hard time keeping up. I had to beat her at something!

“Chin up, skunk,” Risha said as she leaned toward me. “You can win the next game.”

I liked Risha, even if she did have the gross habit of ruffling my hair like a dog when she was proud of me. Even my mom had never done that. It made me feel like I was five or something, which I obviously wasn’t.

Wrinkling my nose until the ugly mark on my cheek stopped pulling, I clenched my fists. My magic was hot and angry under my skin. At least I knew my magic could still do something, even if it was merely getting hot and uncomfortable.

“Go ahead, Míra,” Risha prompted.

My sister looked at her like she was going to eat her. Gnaw on her bones or something. Like she had on an especially chewy steak Momma had made once. She had sat for twenty minutes, trying to get all the meat off.

The images smacked me in the face with a flash, and I laughed, a snicker seeping out before Míra slapped me with another deep glare.

“Good-bye, marble,” she said with a smile before waving her hand over the circle.

The twelve marbles that were left began to wiggle and pulse under the weight of her magic. The dust on the floor lifted into the dark, refracting Risha’s light into odd stripes of color. The wind she conjured moved around as she began to roll her marble toward mine. The tiny thing left a trail on the floor as it beelined right toward the yellow swirl of glass, my last piece in the game.

“No, no, no,” I groaned, moving my hands to my face as I leaned forward, wishing there were a way to stop its progress. But I already knew her magic was too strong, too accurate.

Ryland had trained me well. I could do some crazy things. But “move your marble and no one else’s using just wind” was so freakin’ hard!

I kept moving other people’s marbles or rolling mine too far. I even hit a sleeping patient in the head. I had laughed, while he hadn’t found it very funny. I wouldn’t, either, being woken up. I was kind of happy for getting to stay up so late.

This had never happened before Míra had shown up. So I guessed it was good, even if I kept losing marbles.

Míra laughed beside me as her marble hit against mine with enough force that it rolled outside of the circle, across the stone floor, and hit one of the many bed legs we were surrounded by.

“I win!”

“No fair.” I was grumpy. I didn’t like losing. And I really didn’t like not getting a chance to figure something out perfectly. Both had been taken away. Grumpy. “We need to go again. I will win next time.”

I would, too. Now that I knew what the game was, they couldn’t stop me. Just wait until I got back in the game.

“No,” Míra spat, her voice harder than was normal for her. “This game is boring. All your games are boring.”

In a flash, she changed, the little slivers of the sister I knew disappearing behind the hateful girl I really didn’t like. The one who made me wonder if she had been taken over by aliens or something.

With how she acted, it was a real possibility.

She’s your sister. I knew it was true, but she had changed enough that it was freaking me out.

“I thought it was fun,” I replied, hating how nervous I was to counter her.

She had yelled at me enough lately, and I was pretty irritated at losing. It was making me feel all volatile and stuff. I didn’t know how to fight with magic, but I was convinced I could figure it out pretty fast with how angry I felt.

Momma used to say she was lucky. Having twins at the end of six kids was hard enough. But we were like two perfect little angels, obedient best friends. We never fought; we got along. We understood each other on some deep level.

I guessed that was over.

“It’s supposed to fine-tune your magic. The precision we master here can be the difference between life or death in the real world,” Risha said as she began to gather all the marbles back up, already placing them in piles, ready for the next game.

“No wonder I am so good at it. I’m pretty good at the real world, which is nothing like this, BTW.”

I jerked. Míra had sounded exactly like our older sister, KasMíra. I hadn’t thought about her since the day everything had changed. Hadn’t thought of the way she would get so mad. The way she and Momma would yell.

As I glanced between the two of them in a panic, the hatred that zapped between them made my insides squirm, little electric sparks that hit against iron beds and marbles in a little thunderstorm.

“Oh, really?” Risha scoffed, not looking at Míra, her focus still on the marbles. “That doesn’t surprise me, given Edmund. He probably had you training with the Trpaslíks … They are a very violent people. And irritating.”