Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(59)

A car zoomed past us, at least twenty of the little things clawing at the metal in an attempt to get inside just as a roar of anger and madness broke through the air beside me. Ilyan’s magic flared in a violent surge that shifted through me, igniting my own power as the two forces blended together in a wave of the same fairy lights I had seen so many times before. Except now, they were not wrought in love and passion. Now, they were bred from the flame of Ilyan’s anger, an anger I had only seen once before. However, then it had been nothing compared to the power I felt move through me, nothing compared to the rolling force of his power that emanated from him.

Now, the lights were dangerous.

Now, he was dangerous.

But he wasn’t the only one.

I was dangerous, too, and I was going to stop this.

We moved from our frozen shock as one, our shields dropping from our bodies as we met the new battle head on, as we ran into the tangled mess of blood and carnage.

Hands moved, magic and light and power surged from our bodies as the Vil?s left the bloodied and battered people they had dug into writhing on the ground. They flew to attack us, to attack the danger we represented.

The mortals were easy pickings. Even the ones who tried to fight back were felled in seconds.

But Ilyan and I?

It was as if they sensed that we could stop it.

A swarm of heavy leather wings charged at us in a wall of teeth and blood, and my hands moved as my magic flared, erupting around me in an orb of white light that sent the cluster to the ground. It seemed like a good tactic until the light alerted the hundreds of other creatures that still attacked the innocents. As one, the monsters froze to face us, their ugly, deformed, sphinx faces turning into a grin of malice that ran through my body like ice.

I couldn’t have run if I had tried. They moved too fast as they encompassed us, the dimly lit world disappearing, swallowed by the hot wind against my face, the smell of excrement and blood that filled my nostrils.

My head swam at the smell, swam at the feeling of their rancid magic, so heavy in the air that it seeped into me, infecting me the same way it had in the forest outside of Rioseco, heavy and thick. The claustrophobic pressure was unrelenting against me, against my magic. It was a fight to stay upright, to not fall to my knees in pain then let the Drak magic take me like it was trying so hard to do.

It took all my focus to keep the sight at bay, my ability sagging in energy as my vision continually blacked in and out. The world around me and the fight I was trying so desperately to win felt more like a strobe-filled nightmare I should be escaping.

My skin grew warm as tiny claws dug into me, flashes of fire and light rippling over us from where Wyn now fought not far away. I couldn’t even focus on that. All I felt was what I was sure was my own blood pouring over my skin.

I knew at once I was in trouble. We had attacked the Vil?s in the forest like cowards, burning the tent they were held in to the ground. However, now—facing them as an enemy that was able to fight, feeling their rotten magic press against my skin and swim in my mind—I knew there was no way we could win this fight.

Not against the rancid power, not against the sheer amount of them that Edmund had unleashed on the city.

I wanted to save the city. I wanted to save the people it held. And I would gladly fight to the death. But I was born to defeat Edmund, and I couldn’t do that like this. Not if we were dead. There had to be another way.

Ilyan, I didn’t even need to call for help. He was already there, ripping the creatures from my body, throwing them into the rough stone buildings around us. Their screams echoed in my ears alongside the mortals, the echo only growing as the world dipped into the ember red color of sight again.

Let it come, mi lasko. His voice was loud in my mind as the red flared through me in heat and power. I will protect you.

Without another word, I let the vision fill me, let the ember-filled light seep into the same city streets we were trapped in. The Vil?s were running rampant as they moved from human to human, devouring them, marking them, destroying them. Bodies lay battered in the streets as the Vil?s tried to pry open windows and claw their way under doors. The screams of the humans was all but replaced by the high-pitched squeal of the monsters who had destroyed them.

The sight moved through the streets as if at a run, only to stop at an old, wood-slab door that was covered with the long scratches of the Vil?s’ claws, splattered with the blood of some poor soul who hadn’t made it past the entry and into safety again.

I stared at the door as I waited for it to open, my magic flaring in recognition of the dread that I had felt plague the earth below, that sadness and fear that had been hidden in the city. It was the same, and it was hidden behind that door.

For some reason, I didn’t see it as the terrifying enemy I had before. Now, it was safety. My magic promised that it was.

The vision ended with a snap as a crumpled Vil?s body slammed into the cobbles before my folded body, the thing twitching once before it sagged into nothing.

I stared at it, but I still only saw the door, my mind and magic spreading before me as I searched the city for it, only to find nothing.

Although I knew I needed to find it, we needed to get out of here more. I had to trust that we would find it on the way.

My magic surged alongside Ilyan’s powerful torrent as I stood. The Vil?s that surrounded us fell to the ground with yet another surge of light, the pulse of the power giving us enough reprieve to catch our breath.