Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(99)

“Stay still and quiet, and I might let you live,” I said to them all, my voice loud as I competed with the noise of battle. “You are lucky enough to guard me,” I said with a smile, and each of them looked back at me with varying levels of fear and disgust. The looks fueled my magic more.

They were a sorry lot, and their magic was woefully subpar, but they would do, if only as a physical shield. They were disposable and better than that dratted Damek would have been, if he would live through this.

If he did I would make sure he would find death soon.

He and Ovailia. Just the thought of their blood running over my hands ignited my magic. The power rumbled over the air in a flash of white that fell on those closest to me, their bodies flung away from the force of the blast.

“Whoops.” I chortled, enjoying the show as a few stumbled back to their feet, many of them unable to.

“You deserve to die,” a tall Chosen woman spat, her words more comical than venom.

“Do I?” I asked, coming up behind her and running my hand over the small of her back. “Or do you deserve to die for me?”

Her eyes widened for a second before I threw her away from me, right into the line of another attack coming my way. I heard her scream and saw wetness spread over her pants in fear. The smell of urine hit me as I blocked the attack. My power evaporated the magic a second before it would have hit. The attack was so close her ripped and torn sweatshirt was singed from the power, black char covering her belly. A shadow of pain ran over her, the narrow miss making her heave as she stared in panic.

“We’ll have to do better next time, won’t we?” I sneered, forcing her and the others to move closer to me, shielding me as I pulled up the recall of my sight, only to freeze in place as a small, wrinkled body fell from the sky, landing at my feet in what looked like little more than a paper bag. But I knew at once what it was and what it meant.

The calm of sight vanished, leaving my heart twisting and pulling against me, desperate to get out. Desperate to run.

It couldn’t be.

Kicking it with my toe, the poisoned Vil? flopped over. His eyes were dead as he stared at the sky that he had come from. The sky, I realized with one look, was full of many more of his kind.

Thousands of them.

A swarm was right over our heads.

A swarm was descending on us.

And it could have only come from one place: Prague.

“No,” I gasped, watching the Vil?s join the fray, falling on the Trpaslíks and the Chosen, ripping flesh from bone before anyone had a chance to stop them.

A new assailant to the battle, one that no one could stop.

This couldn’t be. I hadn’t seen this. I hadn’t seen any of this. I was never wrong!

Anger blurred my vision as the coup fell apart. The screams of battle deteriorated into fear as more and more of the wicked things descended on us and helicopters began to soar overhead.

“This can’t be.”

My anger was so deep I could barely move. I could barely control the Chosen. I just stared at the sky, my magic ready to explode out of me.

“This can’t be!”

But it was. The barrier was down.

Prague was free.

And that meant Joclyn was on her way to me. She was on her way to kill me. And here, among my enemies, she would win.

I needed to get out of here. I needed to use my sight and find out what she had changed. What Ovailia had done. What Joclyn had done. They had done something!

“I am never wrong!”

Joclyn must have changed something. Blocking her from my sights had blocked the real future. It had blocked me from what was true.

I had only seen the future without her in it.

She had done something to change it, something I couldn’t see. I would destroy her. She had ruined this, and she would pay for her mistake.

Releasing the Chosen from my magic, I vanished from the arena with a tiny pop. The sound was unheard over the battle as they fought the Vil?s, dying under their claws.

In a flash of color, the space under time sped by me. Ribbons of red and gold wrapping around as I moved past them and back into the caves of Imdalind, back into the throne room and my high seat.

The slight pop of my return was the only sound in the silence of the cave. The battle was far behind now … with my enemies.

I would return to it once I knew what had happened. Once I found out where she was.

Once I destroyed her. She was my first priority.

“Foolish child, I should have never given you life!” I cursed to the emptiness.

Breathing deeply, I absorbed the silence, savoring the smell of blood and water that lived in the walls of this sacred space, the fire and smoke of the battle left far behind.

It smelled like home.

Breathing it in, I savored the silence before dashing to my throne, desperate to jump into sight, to plunge into a future that was now ahead of me and find her before she found me.

Settling onto the rigid throne, I placed a hand over Edmund’s skull and sighed as I let my magic flood into me. My eyes drifted to black as a sight took me.

I braced myself, expecting the usual flash of images, expecting the barrage of what had been kept from me thanks to the Zámek. Instead, I stared into the vast white nothing I had seen in the barrage of sight Joclyn had pulled me into before, staring at the same girl, the freckled, green-eyed child I knew too well.

“Hello, Sain,” she said, her voice tugging at my heart as my memories pulled me somewhere I did not want to go. “It’s been a while.”