Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(89)

Quick. Seamless. He would never suspect.

Standing here at the top of the stairs, however, I didn’t care. I didn’t care if he found out. I didn’t care if he knew.

I wanted to kill Sain.

It was all there was: Sain’s death and my freedom. I didn’t know what would be waiting for me without a master to serve, but this master was not the one I thought I had chosen.

As I stepped back, the single beat of my shoe reverberated, sparking along the cement floors in a bolt of lightning that stretched out from me in a spider’s web. It burned the cement in charred design that someone else would have to admire.

I had already turned. I was already running, my heels clacking, breath heaving. I bolted back down the hall, past the outcropping where Sain was nestled against his blood-soaked robe and pillows, past the entry hall that was nothing more than shredded canvas and broken sconces, and into the icy air of the Chosen’s camp.

The biting wind smacked against my face and sucked the air from my lungs with the first step outside the warm confines of the tents. It hit against the bare skin of my arms and past the thin fabric of my dress. I gasped, my skin breaking into gooseflesh as I plunged myself into it, dreaming of the heavy fur that still hung on the wall where Damek stood by the door, staring at Sain.

Staring at our target.

I didn’t have much time.

Judging by the still quiet of the camp, everyone was in the stadium, and without a peep hissing from the massive structure, nothing had started.

No battle. No bloodshed.

If I was lucky, he wouldn’t know of my plot yet. He wouldn’t know of my betrayal. It was moments away. I had only moments.

Ice and snow swirled in the air around me as I ran through the tent village. Tiny specks of wetness hit against my already frigid skin and deepened the cold that was now seeping into my bones.

With one flare of my magic, I could warm myself, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Once he knew what I had done, he would search for me. He would find my magic. He would find me, but even worse, he would find the girl. I couldn’t risk that, not until she got me back into the dome then to Ilyan.

Picking up my pace, I ran faster, dodging between tents, running past them. Canvas rippled behind me as I emerged from another one, stopping in place as shouts of fear lifted from the stadium. I turned toward it, my hair fanning out as it was tossed in the wind. I stared at the stadium, my heart pulsing as more screams joined the first.

He knew.

It had started.

Without waiting, I turned, running faster. My heels sunk into the soft earth, the sharp points of the heels collapsing so fast that, with each step, my legs wobbled and shifted awkwardly beneath me. With a groan, I ditched the heels, bidding a silent good-bye to the bright red beauties. Then I turned another corner, dodging into a large tent.

The icy air evaporated as the canvas fell closed behind me, trapping me inside the hot air that smelled of feces and blood. The aroma twisted my stomach, threatening to boil it over.

Clenching my teeth together, I clapped my hand over my mouth, determined to keep the bile down, desperate to smell the perfume I had spritzed myself with this morning and not the vile aroma I was trapped in.

Suddenly wishing I hadn’t been so hasty to leave my shoes, I stepped over the cluttered mess, stepping in something far too moist and far too soft. While I tried not to think of what filth had defiled me, I pursed my lips and continued toward the back corner, toward the moving blankets covering the only living creature in this tent.

Nests of blankets and sleeping bags were spread over the floor. The pattern was so uneven I skipped and jumped in an attempt to get to where I was going. A wide step over a brown and gray blanket, a hop over a pile of blood-colored clothes. Another step and the canvas of the massive tent shifted, the sound a jolt that jerked through me, sending me leaping over a sleeping bag and turning toward the door, my magic flaring between my fingers in expectation of someone being there.

Of Sain having found me.

There was nothing except the canvas of the tent as it shifted in the wind and the piles of who knew what that I had already danced past.

“You’re mighty jumpy,” a little voice tittered from behind me.

I jumped even farther, twisting in the air to face the little girl I had come to find. The girl who was the key to making this plan work.

Míra.

She stood not far from me, emerged from her blankets in a rat’s nest of clothing and hair. Her long locks were cut short and darkened, her eyes bloodshot and desperate. She looked like her brother, or so she had told me, something she wasn’t very happy about.

She didn’t smile; she glowered at me with that same dead gaze she’d had since the moment she had woken up. Her face was the same except for a long scar that ran from her right eye and down to her neck. The nasty looking thing was still pink and healing.

“I was coming to get you,” I retorted, popping my hip as I took a step closer, narrowing my eyes at her.

I hadn’t liked this little girl’s defiance when Edmund had chosen her, and I didn’t like it now. If we didn’t need her so much, I would have disposed of her as Sain had asked.

He was the one who had left the task up to me and Damek. Maybe he was too trusting.

“I know. I remember the plan,” she said, obviously irritated. “You seem to be here earlier than I was expecting. Has the coup already started?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern,” I snapped, my irritation bubbling up. I already barely had enough time to get in and out of Prague and to do that before Sain tracked us down.