Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(49)

Time and fate was not on our side today.

“Run!” I screamed before I had even reached them, my feet moving faster as the disease I had plagued on the earth continued to move, chasing after my friends and threatening to destroy them, as well.

I only hoped they ran fast enough that it didn’t reach them.

That they hadn’t seen what I had done.

That they wouldn’t find out that, this time … This time, I had enjoyed it.





OVAILIA





Twelve


I followed the toe-headed man, my heels unstable against the charred earth we walked over. I fought for stable footing with each step, but I wasn’t going to let that show. I kept my head high, my jaw set as my hair swung behind me, glowering at the golden highlights in the man’s hair as if they had somehow offended me. Of course, I guessed in a way they had.

I knew he was a distant cousin—only the direct bloodline of my grandmother had blonde hair—but I didn’t care anymore. Not with what he was leading me toward, anyway.

Ilyan’s perfectly planned attack had begun moments before Edmund had arrived. I hadn’t had a chance to speak to Edmund before the battle had begun. Before Ilyan and his whore had destroyed the work we had spent almost a year putting together. What was worse, we had failed.

It was that failure that I was on my way to answer for.

I passed the pained and writhing bodies of those who had already faced his wrath, the waste of perfectly good soldiers disgusting me. They screamed as whatever Edmund had done to them raged inside of them, the weaker ones already succumbing to death, their bodies heating and burning as whatever magic had scorched the earth moved in to destroy them to.

I wrinkled my nose at the smell, at the sound, and flipped my hair behind me, staring straight ahead as I blocked the sounds from my ears. If they were going to be weak under my father’s discipline, they could at least do it quietly.

I could already see him, standing on the top of a high outcropping, more than a dozen of his body guards cowering near him as they both tried to do his bidding and feared his wrath. It was a bad place to be, especially now that Timothy and Cail were gone. There was no one left to challenge him. No one to hold him back, not like either of them had.

Now it was only him and I, something I both relished and feared. To be trusted to be so close to him, to his greatness, yet to be close enough to receive the brunt of his frustrations.

My teeth ground together as I began to climb the hill, burning embers of what had once been a forest glowing brightly underneath the thunderheads that still plagued us, their roar incessant as the earth mourned.

I wish it would just shut up.

“Sir,” the man I followed began, his voice shaking as he went down on one knee, ready to announce his arrival and a job well done.

I didn’t even give him the chance. I breezed by him, knocking his unstable figure to the ground with the heel of my shoe, moving right up to where my father stood, his focus scanning over the still smoldering earth.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Ovailia?” He glowered, the depth of his voice filled with more awe than I had heard in all my life. I expected some new woman, a new prize to be standing before him with how he spoke.

It was only devastation, the bright red flames of magic still devouring the tree line far ahead of us.

Of course he would be referring to destruction.

“If you enjoy death.”

My heels sunk into the charcoal below me as I came to stand behind him, the sky igniting with forks of lightning. Bolt after bolt hit the earth as though it was trying to put out the flames; instead, they only grew.

“I am not speaking of the fire,” he soured, his voice trailing over my spine like ice.

I flinched at the sound, almost expecting what was coming, and glared into the space before me.

“I am speaking of the fire magic. I am speaking of the destruction our dear Wyn has caused.”

He might as well have been looking at a woman. It wasn’t the destruction he admired as I had assumed. It was the power. Or, more specifically, the power that laid inside of a woman. A woman I had already known him to lust after for far longer than would have been deemed appropriate.

I rolled my eyes as my chest tensed, my irritation growing as I turned toward my father. The dark curls that had loosened themselves from the slicked-back style he normally had fell over the piercing blue eyes that looked into me the moment I turned.

I flinched at the emotion and hatred behind them. The jolt of my fear was subtle, but still apparent enough he had noticed, a reaction that only caused him to smile more.

“I must have it.” The greed dripped off him as he took a step closer, his bulky frame coming level with mine.

I could not stop the eyebrow from rising or the twitch of my lip as I smiled at him. That was it? After everything, after failing to kill or capture any of them, after losing track of them and losing more than two hundred of the vile bats he had spent centuries creating, he wanted me to capture Wyn, to bring him her heart.

There had to be more. There always was.

My back tensed as I waited, watching him for some sign of what was coming. He only stood in the darkness of his greed. The vile emotion colored his face until, looking into him, I felt like I was looking into my own death.

“I suppose you want me to get it for you.” My tone was harsh, expectant even. I was treading carefully, waiting for the ice of his lies to crack, leaving the painful shards to press against me.