Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(63)

“Yes.” My voice was soft as I replied, knowing I needed to say something, even though I could already hear the conversation in Ilyan’s mind. It was as though I was doing nothing more than reading the cliffs notes of what had happened over the last few minutes and what he wanted of me.

Suddenly, all the random corks and buttons that were littered all over the table made sense. Buttons for other refugees, corks for pockets of Edmund’s men that he had hidden all over the city.

“You need to know if there are any more corks?” I asked, knowing the phrasing sounded odd, something that didn’t go unnoticed.

Ilyan laughed, while that wide-eyed stare came back to Risha’s face far too quickly. However, if it was the comment or if I had made it obvious that I was pulling thoughts from Ilyan’s mind was yet to be discerned.

I closed my eyes without prompting, grateful to get Risha’s worshipful expression out of my mind and let my magic stream away from me in a force of power. I tried to keep it restrained, to keep the intensity at bay and not cause a whirl wind like I had in Rioseco, but it didn’t seem to work.

The power came anyway, moving out in a rush as it streamed away from me, a powerful gust that moved through the room, lifting the ribbon and loose pieces of my hair as paper and loose bits of fluff swirled around me.

The room filled with cries of alarm as the whirlwind grew, only to have Risha speak in what I supposed was a request for calm. I knew it was more based in amazement, much the same as the chatter that had erupted around me in an awe-stricken hush.

I heard it all, felt the ripple of embarrassment move up my spine, but like last time, it was all a million miles away. Another world that I was somehow attached to while I moved through this one. One filled with darkness and blood. One filled with fear. They were two very different realities with me trapped between them.

My magic sped through the city, my mind following along with it as I moved through streets, through alleys, streams, sewage systems. It all should have been beautiful. It had been before, when I stood behind that door, but now everything was dark.

Walls were splattered with thick blood, bodies lay haphazard and forgotten in the streets, and through it all, the Vil?s flew, looking for more victims. Except, these ones were different than the ones who had rampaged through the city, biting anyone they came in contact with. They didn’t have the same blood red tint in their eyes. They didn’t gnash and snarl as they flew through the air. Their movements were too organized, their eyes too clear.

I realized with a heavy weight lodging itself in the pit of my stomach that the difference was for a reason. They were still the same creatures—Vil? that had been poisoned, manipulated for Edmunds use—but their purpose was different. The way they had been mutated was different.

They were different.

They were patrolling, I realized, my heart tensing with understanding of what Edmund had done. What he had really done.

He had created a police state. More than just using the Vil?s to create an army, he had created guards to keep everything in line. As perfectly planned as his attack had been, he had done it all knowing he would draw us here, knowing he would trap us inside.

Where are the boundaries of the city? My voice was panicked as it plunged into Ilyan’s mind, the conversation in quick Czech that he had been having stopping abruptly.

Follow the river in either direction; his voice was a rumble as he followed alongside me on my path. His magic grew within me as he watched my progress, as his mind moved through the city right alongside mine. There is a freeway that circles the city…

He saw it as I did, the rubble of what once had been a roadway and was now a ruin. Cement, trees, portions of buildings—they were piled high in a barricade that towered far into the sky, blocking everything on the other side from the destruction that Edmund had wrought through the center of the city. It was more than a barricade. It was a fall, and from the top, a wide shield of glittering red spread over us, dimming the sky beyond and casting the blood red sheen over the city.

Everything was covered in the blood of what Edmund had done, trapped behind walls and a shield that I knew at once I would never be able to penetrate, not on my own.

I felt Ilyan’s anger grow within me, his emotions strong as mine raged right beside them. It was more than dread. It was a panic that took over every part of my body, every part of my mind, and tensed through me in a painful rage that ignited my magic further. I wanted to reach toward Ilyan, to grab his hand and comfort him, to bring him close to me. However, all I saw was the wall, all I heard were the screams of those who had tried to flee the city, only to be blocked by not only the wall, but the army Edmund had placed beside it.

It was more than the camps he had surrounded the abbey with. It was a line of angry Trpaslík. It was the short men and woman of a race who, as Wyn had said so poignantly stated almost a year before, specialized in destruction.

I guess we now knew where the rumble of the first explosion had come from.

Edmund had closed off the city, trapping us all inside.

People had tried. They had run in their panic as everything had started. They had raced from the Vil?s. Some had even been able to drive their cars away in an attempt to escape. But it had all been pointless.

Bodies were piled before the barricades, the cars crashed and crumpled against each other. It was the same scene of war that I had been shown in history classes for years. Pictures of a past I had never really understood to be real until that very moment.