Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(94)
A ball of fire erupted from between the two buildings with the impact, causing one of the few tall buildings in the city to collapse with a crash that rumbled the ground underneath us.
“They need to get away from them if they are going to do anything,” Ryland said from somewhere to my left. He stared over the city as the rest of us did. “Those rats are going to kill them all.”
“Those rats are going to kill them no matter what they do,” Ilyan’s voice was hard as he stood, his hair blowing in the wind, his gaze jumping from location to location. I could already hear him planning our battle inside his head. “We barely survived those things the first time. How do you think the rest of the world is going to do?”
“They’ll be fine,” Wyn snapped, her lips turning up into a smile. “They need to nuke the crap out of them. They thought it was a good idea to use it on the city before. Obviously, it’s going to work without a giant barrier to absorb the impact.”
“Yeah, I’m sure we will be fine. Nukes always end well,” Thom egged her on, the joke clear in his voice, although neither of them smiled.
None of us could.
“We cannot worry about them now. We need to move,” Ilyan announced, his voice the hard edge of regality I had come to expect in these situations. “My shield cannot last for long, not against the Vil?’s. Now is our time to strike. Joclyn has seen that Sain killed Edmund as we had assumed. He has taken control of the Chosen, and we need to act now.”
The other Sk?íteks on the hill began to gather around us, the power of his voice pulling them in.
“The city is in ruins, and the camp of Edmund’s Chosen is in battle. From what Joclyn could see, they are attempting to dethrone Sain. If we go in under the cover of this disaster, we will be able to find the man and destroy him.”
“If the Trpaslíks haven’t already,” Wyn said with a smile. An out of place pride for her race was smeared over her face, the light in her eyes far more frightening than I had ever seen. I didn’t think I had ever seen her quite so quick to claim her heritage before. It would have been awesome if she didn’t look so dangerous.
I fought the need to step away from her, to step away from the power that was radiating off her. Ry and Thom’s exchanged glances pulled me right back into the battle that was steps away.
“There,” Ilyan continued as he turned, pointing his long finger toward a camp on the other side of Prague.
The large plot of Edmund’s tent city lay beyond where the barrier had been, just as I had seen in sight so many months before. The tents were as destroyed as the city, smoke rising up from flames that were quickly spreading. And in the middle, there was a large ring of canvas and metal. The structure was so large I couldn’t understand how Edmund had hidden it.
“The stadium,” I gasped. The image from my sight flashed again and again as I stared at the massive structure, watching a swarm of Vil?s move into it.
“What is it?” Wyn asked, coming up beside us as she looked over the city, her jaw dropping as mine had.
“It’s where Sain is,” I said, knowing it wasn’t nearly enough of an answer, but she didn’t seem to care in that moment.
She kept her eyes forward, glowering at the offending building alongside the rest of us, glaring at the city that was covered in a sea of brown.
“Maybe a nuke isn’t such a bad idea,” Ryland whispered, standing on the other side of Ilyan, his face as angry and upset as both of his brothers’.
This time, Wyn laughed, the sound a devilish growl that cut through me. “I think I know where I can get one.”
“Our battle begins today,” I announced, cutting Wyn off before she got any more ideas and then turning toward the other three. My golden ribbon spun through the wild snow with the snap of my movement. “Sain will be dead by nightfall. I don’t care who does it or how, but we need to work together. We need to save as many lives as possible.”
Wyn was silent as she stood in the snow, wearing nothing except her worn jeans and a band T-shirt I had seen way too much of since we had been trapped here. The heavy fur she had covered herself with lay in a drift of white by her feet. The snow that landed on her skin evaporated back into the air with a hiss, the sound barely heard over the wind.
“Our queen is right,” Ilyan said with a nod, moving between us all as he began to issue orders.
The few Sk?íteks who were still with us broke away as he ordered them into the city, into the Vil?s in an attempt to save as many mortal lives as possible.
His words washed over me as my focus was already pulling back into the recall of the sight once again, the blue light hovering above the pool just out of reach. I needed to get there; I could feel it. The need to get there was ripped away from me as the recall shifted, taking me right back to that night in the forest and to Sain who had seemed more than willing to watch me die. To fight beside me. Now I had a disgusting feeling that he might have enjoyed that moment. He might have enjoyed watching Cail slit my throat.
The thought twisted my stomach into angry, little knots.
Two years ago, I wanted nothing more than to have my father back. Now I wanted nothing more than to have him dead. I didn’t know what kind of person that made me—to think of killing my own father so callously.
If he was a good father and a decent man, then I might say you are evil. But he is not this man, and removing what he is from our kind will save us, not harm us, Ilyan said, his voice a calm warmth as he turned from the last of the Sk?íteks, a man and woman who took off into the sky on an unknown task.