Dawn of Ash

by Rebecca Ethington

  Instead of what I had always seen, however, I continued flying right through the barrier, into a world shrouded with a deep blue sky and covered with a blanket of white snow.

  My sight had never taken me beyond Edmund’s barricade before. Even when I had tried, I had never been able to penetrate its surface. My magic had been as trapped as we were.

  Now, as I flew through the bitter wind, snowflakes falling over me in wet, little specks that shook through my spine, I could see. What was more, I could feel. I could feel the cold, feel the wet. I knew they were not there, because I could still feel the hard, cobbled courtyard against my knees and hear the voices of whoever was at the church, mumbling over us like a garbled song.

  Everything was real.

  The sight was real.

  Shivering from the snow, I continued to soar over the barren wasteland. Eyes on alert, I searched for whatever I was meant to see, wondering what could be this close to the barrier.

  There was nothing other than snow, nothing other than whiteness, until the white wasn’t so white anymore. The beautiful, untouched drifts of snow were trampled with mud, the flattened earth speckled with tents I had seen scarcely a few months before outside of Rioseco when Ilyan and I had gone to destroy one of Edmund’s many camps.

  A camp that was now right below me.

  They were the same.

  My sight moved me closer as I searched through the tents, my eyes wide as I looked for whatever this vision wanted me to see, only to have everything freeze, the howling of the icy wind broken up by voices—one deep and guttural, another high and whiney, both mixed with the mumbling groans of fear and trepidation.

  I trembled at the emotion behind the sounds, something in my heart tugging at a familiarity I couldn’t place with the heavy Czech they were using.

  The heavy, Slavic accents drifted up from a small group of people directly below me. The man in the cloak stood in the middle of them, and directly before him stood Ovailia.

  Everything in me tightened in fear, my throat frantic for a scream that would not come. It was the creature who had been in so many of my sights, right below me. Not in the streets of Prague as he usually was, not inside the barrier as he had been moments before, but right below me with Ovailia.

  Ovailia looked at him with a smile that spread over her face in reprehensible greed. The smile was so opposite from her usual sneer that it made me jerk, my shoulders folding up to my ears as I fought the distress that smile gave me.

  I waited, eager to hear, to find out who Ovailia faced. But before I could see, the whole vision changed, the clear sight broken up by familiar static.

  The electronic noise buzzed in my ears and screamed through my head as the sight became distorted, broken images that ripped through me the same as they had for the past months.

  Blood on rocks as it seeped into an already red river.

  A cluster of people standing in the snow, a woman screaming over their silently moving mouths.

  Wyn, just as I had seen her this morning, sleeping beside Thom. When she raised her head to me, however, it was her daughter, instead.

  Children crying in corners, a little, blonde girl laughing as she tortured them.

  The cloaked figure removing the heavy hood to reveal Dramin’s pained face.

  Edmund standing beside me, laughing joyously as we looked into an unfamiliar, underground pond.

  One after another, they came, spinning through me uncomfortably until I felt like I was trapped among them, my body fighting them, my mind breaking down inside of them.

  New sights mixed with old, the old sights changing enough I wasn’t even quite sure what I was looking at.

  What was true.

  What was false.

  What was when.

  I tried to make sense of them all in order to find some clue as to what was going on, but everything came too fast and contradicted itself too much.

  Before, I had been so sure the sight was true. Now, everything was back to where it had been—haunted and shattered.

  Refusing to accept the broken imagery, I watched the new pieces mix with the old, my magic screaming at me to pay attention, screaming it was real and not the same as the distorted sights.

  “Here is where it starts again.” The unfamiliar voice was clear in my head, ringing clearly as the sight flashed back to the pair in the snow. Ovailia now walking away from the man, a smile spreading over her face.

  “Don’t fail me,” Ovailia said as another flash of blood, of red, filled my vision, Edmund’s laugh echoing inside my head before the sight was gone, leaving me staring at the red-tinted world of reality.

  Gasping, head swimming, I tried to let the real world come into focus as I stared at what I was sure was regurgitated Black Water seeping through the valleys of the cobbles I kneeled on.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s going on?”

  Voices ricocheted around in my head like they were coming from a tin can, the hollow sounds of what I believed were Ryland and Risha sounding far too loud and far too foreign against the confusion I was still trying to recover from.

  “Zůstávat,” Ilyan growled in warning as he pulled me closer to him, the contact welcoming, even if it made it harder to breathe.

  My body ached as I gasped, my throat burning with a distinct taste of blood, my fingertips raw from clawing the ground.

  “I saw him … the man … cloak … with Ovailia,” I gasped as I looked up at Ilyan.

  His eyes widened with each word I gave him, each image of the sight I fed into his mind.

  “They are working for Edmund. You have to find him, Ilyan.”

  “What’s going on?” Ryland erupted, obviously scared.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  Ilyan’s eyes widened farther as I pushed everything I had seen and everything I knew into his head. The despondency I was feeling travelled along with it.

  I know you are worried about me, but you have to go. You have to find Sain. I pushed the words into his mind as I collapsed back to the ground, everything spinning, everything aching.

  Ilyan’s thoughts froze with confliction, worry, and fear, his hand clenching against my back, his hesitancy clear.

  “Go.” I could barely get the word out.

  Ilyan exhaled, his mind circling with worry and reasoning. He wrapped his arm around me from behind, pulling my weak and limp body into his. I could tell he didn’t want to leave me. Heck, I didn’t want him to leave.

  The heavy pull of his heart locked tightly against mine, my longing increasing, though we both knew he had no choice. He knew I was right. He had to find Sain. He had to find whoever was missing in the camp. And we were running out of time.

  “We need to find Sain,” he announced as he stood. “Ryland, go check the far courtyard and the catacombs. I’ll hit the dorms and then the tombs. Risha, I need you to take Joclyn to Dramin and then do a wide perimeter sweep. We will meet at my tomb.” He spoke very quickly in Czech, and I was having a hard time keeping up, especially with the way my head was still spinning.

  “Is she okay?” Ryland asked, his worried query catching me off guard.

  “She will be fine,” Ilyan answered in English, leaning down to press his fingers against my back comfortingly. I focused on the contact, letting it strengthen me, letting it fill me. “We need to get moving.”

  With a gasp my focus shifted toward my mate, toward his piercing, blue eyes full of so much love and concern that, for a moment, I forgot how to breathe. The intensity of his look swallowed me before he lowered his lips to mine, the soft yet fervent contact heavy against me.

  I hesitated briefly, scared at what Ryland would do, but there was no sound, no peep, just the heavy pull of Ilyan’s magic, just the lights that flared and glowed around us, just the blissful pressure of his lips against mine.

  It was beautiful.

  I kissed him deeply, my hand reaching around to grab his neck, the soft, golden ribbon he had woven through his long braid f
alling between my fingers.

  Stay with me, he insisted as he pulled away, looking at me passionately, his meaning clear. I may need your help.

  I know.

  He was gone before I had even finished the thought, leaving me to try to pull together enough strength to lift myself off the cobbles. I would have been mad if I was a whiney little girl. However, I knew I was strong enough, just as he did.

  “Can I help you?”

  However, I had forgotten Ilyan had asked Risha to stay behind and help.

  “I’m okay,” I said stubbornly, my legs shaking as I tried to push myself up, my eyes focusing on the long, golden ribbon that fell down the side of my neck, circling elegantly around the stones below me. “I can do it.”

  Everything ached, my legs continuing their violent shake as I forced myself to stand. Part of me was secretly grateful when she caught me, her hand strong around my bicep. I hadn’t even realized I was falling.

  “Okay, I guess I do need some help,” I admitted quietly, thankful when she chuckled, the sound musical rather than condescending.

  Taking her arm, I leaned against her as she led me toward Dramin and Thom’s room, my mind running over everything that had happened.

  I hadn’t been around Risha outside of our weekly meetings and had avoided her most other times thanks to her unsuccessfully hidden crush on Ryland. The whole ex-girlfriend vibe was a little too high school given our current situation, but I couldn’t shake it. Besides, it was more than that. I really didn’t know much about her besides the whole Ryland thing. That and the fact she liked to eat meat.

  Both of those were pretty public knowledge, no matter how hard the two of them tried to hide it. Not about the meat, but about the crush. I was fairly certain everyone knew. After all, Ryland had never been very good at hiding those types of things. I should know.

  Contrary to public or Wyn’s knowledge, I was happy for him.

  Wyn had even taken a betting pool at one point to see how long they would last or how I would act when I found out. Everyone was kind of waiting to find out the results of it at this point.

  “That’s okay,” her voice was soft. “Everyone needs help from time to time.”

  “Some more than others.” It was said in mostly a growl. Considering everything I had been through over the past year, it fit.

  Sometimes, like right then, I was ashamed of the fact that I still needed help.

  I had grown so much. I had done so much. I had defeated so much.

  I was supposed to be the “most powerful.”

  I was ready for all of this growing and trials and learning stuff to be over, but I wasn’t naïve enough to think it ever would be.

  All this junk was just life.

  Even when I hit a thousand, I was sure I would still be learning new things and conquering new trials, and I would probably be messing them up from time to time, too. If anything, I was at least getting better at handling it, and that, I was going to wear like a badge of honor.

  After everything I had faced, after everything I had done, the badge had been well deserved. And to be able to look at myself and see how much stronger I really was … I didn’t even think my own mother would recognize the ‘me’ I had become.

  “But needing help, that’s okay, too,” I whispered, knowing it was more to myself than it was to her.

  She smiled, anyway.

  “Zdechnout.”

  Tiny teeth gnashed inches from my face before the creature fell to the ground in a lifeless heap at the sound of the word, a thud of flesh and stone ringing throughout the tiny alleyway.

  It wasn’t often that one of those things would slip back through the barrier with me, and I wasn’t sure how it had happened when it had taken so much effort for me to move through the space on my own. Yet, it had.

  Luckily, I could kill them easily enough.

  Stripping off the heavy cloak, I dropped it in the same weeds I always kept it in, grateful to be rid of it now that the winter chill was trapped on the other side of the barrier.

  I didn’t even check to make sure it was hidden, in too much of a hurry.

  Joclyn was a smart girl—sometimes too much so—and thanks to her personal vendetta against me, I was sure they had moved past the first stages of assuming they were being double-crossed by whoever was under that cape and moved to solid assumptions of me being the culprit behind the cape.

  I could only hope to be so lucky.

  Now I had to find them before it was too late, discredit the brat even more.

  I had been worried it was too soon for her to see me, but after this morning, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. A little more insanity for her repertoire.

  Now I needed to add to it.

  “Pošetilý Ilyan,” the words were a grumble as I walked away from door, dropping the cloak without a second glance, and into the large church complex full of his people.

  The brainwashed herd wandered around as if the world on the other side of the barrier wasn’t trying to kill them, as if they had forgotten why the light was red and the air was hot. There was more laughter than training, more joy than fear. It was a stark contrast to what little I had seen of Edmund’s camp.

  It was kind of exciting to see how ill prepared they were, how secure they were in the delusions I had been force-feeding them for so long.

  The attack won’t come until spring.

  The barrier will fall months before the danger finds us.

  The lies made me smile, the wide grin catching the eye of a few members of the tittering horde who were wandering meaninglessly through the courtyard.

  “Sain,” a Skȓítek I had met several hundred years before called to me from across the large, stone square. He was one who had always stood and fought by Ilyan’s side. If I remembered correctly, his mate had perished in one of the innumerable battles Ilyan had led them into many hundreds of years ago.

  Now his eyes were dark with questions and doubt.

  It was beautiful to see.

  Several others perked up at the boom in his voice, their own questions buzzing through their heads as they, too, made their way over, and I waited for them. Part of me knew I needed to get the bathroom in order to check that I held no incriminating evidence on my body of where I had been, while another part was grateful I had been stopped—at least they could provide some sort of an alibi if Ilyan found me before I found Joclyn.

  “Yes?” I questioned as they grew closer, the soothing nature of my voice completely contradictory to the thunder of anxiety that had taken over my insides. The tall man’s eyes darted toward a few of the people who surrounded him in waning confidence.

  “We are sorry to bother you…” he began before stalling out.

  “It’s no bother,” I assured him, stretching my hand out to rest on his shoulder, noticing a small patch of dirt near my thumb. Perfect. “I was seeing to some of the children in the ward.” The group seemed awed by the lie, their worry softening as the doubt began to fade. “What can I help you with?”

  “We were wondering if you could tell us what happened to the queen this morning … if she saw a sight, if we are safe here.”

  Of course they weren’t safe here. No one was.

  I tried not to bristle at his question, but I was sure it showed.

  Wiping my hand off on the leg of my faded dress pants, I turned my face down into a frown. “She did see into the future, but there is no way to know if that sight is true.”

  “What do you mean?” the man asked, his face wide in horror. “I thought the sight of a Drak is infallible.”

  I sighed heavily, the exaggerated sound seeping from me as I ran my hand over my forehead. “It is when the magic is pure. Hers is not pure. It is uncontrollable at the moment. Her sights are dwelling in the depth of the Zlomený.”

  They began whispering, the word known to a few of them. Even if they didn’t understand its true meaning, they still understood the impact. Even the ones who didn’t understand could grasp the fear aroun
d them, their eyes wide as they looked to their peers for answers.

  “So everything she sees—”

  “Broken, yes,” I clarified. The looks of shock and fear deepened with each lie I spoon-fed them.

  “But yours…?”

  “I am of the first, and I can fight the Zlomený better than any of my kind, but it is still hard. Because of her foolish choices, everything is muddled.” I wasn’t even going to give the older woman a chance to say anything more. I didn’t want anything other than what I gave them put in their heads. “I hold the Drak magic deep within me, and I will do everything in my power to restore true sight, stop Joclyn from this tirade, and save us all.”

  Calm, relief, and awe washed over all of them. The fear slowly dissipated at the knowledge, their own minds putting the pieces together that I wanted them to. After all, who would want someone with a broken sight leading them when pure magic stood right there?

  “So we are safe?” a young Chosen asked, the look on her face making it clear she didn’t fully understand what was happening.

  “For the time,” I answered, my hand heavy as I placed it on her arm. “Do not worry; I am watching.”

  I smiled, waving away any further questions as I walked from my captive audience, my eyes scanning the courtyard for my daughter, despite knowing she wouldn’t be here—I hadn’t heard her yell at me, in any case. Hopefully, I still had time to find her.

  In a few steps, I moved into the vast marble and stone hallway that led toward the catacombs, leaving the still tittering crowd behind me. This space was familiar, one I had helped build, one I had been worshiped within, and one I had run through a few months before with Wyn. I walked down it now with an ever deeper sense of urgency than I’d had then, my pace quick.

  In the beginning, it had held long kitchens with ovens similar to those at Rioseco. However, somewhere around the early twentieth century, bathrooms had been added with running water, flushing toilets, and all. Thankfully, the ceramic palace was as empty as the hall outside, the wide room already filling with the echoes of the ambient noises my very presence was causing.