Scorched Treachery (Imdalind, #3)(3)
“You promise?” I asked, not needing to hear the answer. I asked because I knew that he needed to know that I had heard him, that I had understood.
“I will protect you above all else.”
“Even Ilyan?” I asked, unable to help the question and the accompanying laugh from seeping out of my lips.
“Even Ilyan. I took a vow to protect him the day he was born, but that vow was broken the day I sealed myself to you. It is the vow I made with you that is the most important bond to me. I will honor and protect that before all else.” His voice was serious, his tone so true and honest. I felt it melt into me, and our magic surged with the feeling of love.
As our magic intertwined and seeped into our souls, everything inside of me caught fire. I felt a dulled version of this connection outside the T?uha, but here, inside the T?uha, everything was heightened. It was a feeling we could only get here.
I was not sure how long we spent in the shadow of the castle, but before either of us was ready, we were pulled away, only to find ourselves in each other’s arms in the flesh, the door already being banged off its hinges. I sighed as Talon left me, his dal?í v p?íkazu responsibilities already in full force, just as I assumed they would be.
He was gone most of the day, leaving me alone to attempt to clean the huge mess I had made when I had attempted to make dinner the night before, something I never do.
Talk about a nightmare. I had cut my finger off when trying to chop carrots. Yes, off. Luckily, I was magical, or I would have forever been walking around reverse flipping people off. As it was, I just reattached it. But, after the soup became inedible and more solid than it should have been, and I had burned the Galder – I remembered why I never heated food. It was better cold anyway.
The whole experience was a great reminder as to why I hated human food. It’s gross, and the texture is so off. I don’t know how or why, but humans can take a simple tomato and turn it into a slime-covered bit of goo. I mean, just leave it alone. Don’t touch it. Just put it in your mouth and eat it.
Humans eat weird food.
After I had cleaned the house, it became quickly evident that I needed to wash the lace tablecloth. After the finger-loss induced bloodletting, it was clearly required. Unfortunately, the dratted thing was bearing the label ‘hand wash only’.
Hand wash only!
Whoever had created such stupid fabric needed to be shown a washing machine. There was a reason that washing machines were created, and that was so hand wash only items need no longer exist. But some fool decided to make an un-natural fabric that needed to be hand washed only. Then another silly fool (ah-hem, Talon) decided to buy a bright white tablecloth for his lovely wife (that would be me) made out of said abhorrence of natural fabric.
I took the tablecloth down to the old guards’ chamber, the closest place that the freezing cold water of the underground spring ran. The dark grey stone of the cavern was jagged, unlike the rest of the tunnels we called home. The roughly hewn walls arched high above my head, the only light source a small collection of magical orbs that floated and bobbed amongst the shallow cavities of the stone ceiling. The green light that blossomed from above gave the room a dark glow that cast hundreds of eerie shadows around me.
The underground spring ran through the lowest level of the tunnels below Prague, well the lowest level that anyone dared to go to anyway.
This room and the ancient dungeon below were old relics of when Edmund had first declared war on all magic. In the beginning, the dungeons were used to house traitors, and Edmund’s men that Ilyan had captured but refused to kill. There had been at least ten of the Sk?ítek army in here at any time, guarding the prisoners in the rooms below.
That is what the Sk?íteks were after all, an army. An army with the sole purpose of guarding the wells that sat in the lowest points of these caves.
The wells of Imdalind, the center of magic.
Ilyan and Edmund were the last ones alive who knew the way through the labyrinth of tunnels that led down to the muddy wells. Which is why it was so scary that someone could be letting Edmund’s people in here. If Edmund got in, he could stroll right down to the source of pure magic as if he were walking into a Denny’s.
Now, however, the dungeons were bare, the rooms below and the guard chamber I now stood in only a reminder of how the war had started and how many magical beings there had once been.
Putting the tablecloth into the water, I scrubbed the fabric before letting the majority of it trail away with the flow of the water. I held onto the corner, letting the white lace swirl through the freezing water. In only a few minutes, my hands had become a lovely red color, although I couldn’t feel the burning tingle of the cold. If my skin was threatening hypothermia, I had no idea.
Everything inside me had heated when my skin touched the stone of the floor I kneeled on. I had always reacted to the stone of these caves this way. It was as if my magic sensed the deep magic of the world that was hidden somewhere far below me and grew in response. As far as I knew, I was the only one who did that, but there weren’t many Trpaslíks around to ask. It could be perfectly normal, and I would never know. Besides, it definitely had its benefits. My personal explosion factor increased by ten when my skin was in contact with the stone. Not like there were many things to explode around here, but it was still cool.
“NO!”
I jumped – like, full on jumped – at the disembodied voice that bounced into the air around me. The high-pitched scream shot through my body with electricity that perked every hair on my arms to full attention, my heart rate jumping with the speed of a twenty thousand volt reaction.