Soul of Flame (Imdalind Series #4)

by Rebecca Ethington

  Everyone had spoken of Vilỳs as fun-loving sprites, magical creatures who helped man and were gentle and kind. I had seen that idea mirrored back to me in Ryland’s drawing in the Tȍuha, in the sights I had seen. I had expected winged creatures no taller than the length of my arm with odd, sphinx-like faces and brightly colored skin. However, these creatures looked nothing like what I had seen; these beasts were terrifying.

  From floor to ceiling, rows of dented, metal shelving lined the fabric walls of the tent, every inch crammed with the large, shackled creatures. The mutated, infected things were folded and contorted in an effort to pack as many of them in as possible, the mania on their faces clear as they screamed and yelled. The once bright hues of their skin were brown and diseased, large gashes littering their bodies from clawing at the ones who sat next to them.

  They screamed as they fought against the tiny shackles that bound them, their faces turned up at me, almost as if they could sense my magic amongst them. Even from so far away their magic was so strong I could barely breathe.

  Ilyan’s fingers dug into my hand as his own fear gripped him, our heartbeats speeding up in time.

  I gasped and pulled my magic away from the contagious hatred that filled me, my eyes snapping open to the dimly lit room. I wanted to say that I was safe, that I had left the putrid magic behind, but I could still feel it. I could still feel the panic wind through my frayed nerves.

  “How many more of the tents are there?” Ilyan asked of me, his body shaking in fear as he moved to mark the tent we had just seen on the map.

  I did not want to feel the poisoned magic, but I had no other choice. I closed my eyes and sent my magic back through the forest that surrounded us, the glinting tendrils floating through the trees as I counted the tents. My eyes snapped open as I felt the last of them, my palm tensing against the table as I tried to control the fear.

  There were ten tents.

  Ten weapons.

  I stared blankly over the surface of the map as ink spread from my fingertips. It flowed over the surface of the map, forming small, black boxes where each one lay. I stared at them as they darkened the paper, my breathing still trying to regulate from the smothering sickness that had infiltrated me.

  “All those are Vilỳs? I thought Edmund had killed them all,” Wyn asked, her voice shaking as the fear in the room seeped into her.

  Ilyan said nothing; he only nodded as he watched the last box appear, his lips a hard line as the plan he had formulated crumbled to the ground.

  “My Lord,” Sain said, his voice tentative as he broke the silence. “Were they infected?”

  My head snapped up at his question, my teeth grinding together in fear. I could see everyone else turn toward Ilyan in question, different levels of fear clear on each of their faces, but I couldn’t look away from my father. I couldn’t look away from an answer I was terrified to hear.

  “What do you know, Sain?” Ilyan asked, his jaw hardening as he glared at him.

  “I am unsure, My Lord,” Sain replied. “I only saw one, in the beginning, after I made sure the birthstone was delivered to my daughter. They captured me and forced the water into me. I didn’t know what I was seeing at first as I did not know who I was, but I saw it in that sight, a Vilỳ. It was sitting on Edmund’s dresser, like a prized bird.”

  “Edmund’s dresser,” Ilyan repeated, his voice suddenly monotone. I looked at him in question, sucking in breath at the weird, distanced look in his eyes. “Was it next to his bed?”

  “Yes.” The word shattered through the room in waves of terror.

  Ryland’s eyes darted to Sain in shock while Wyn looked like she was ready to explode.

  Ilyan groaned beside me, his hand dragging through his hair as he moved away from the table, his steps heavy in frustration. His muscles tensed as he paced in the darkness away from us with mumbled Czech on his lips.

  I looked from Ilyan to Thom, to Wyn, desperate for some form of explanation, but no one was looking at me.

  “He found a way to strengthen himself,” Wyn said, her voice strangely odd and distanced, like she was repeating something she had heard before. “You don’t think it is the same, Ilyan?”

  “I do,” Ilyan replied from behind me, his strong voice echoing around the elongated room.

  “But Cail never said anything about a mutation.” My legs almost buckled at the use of his name. I had no idea what they were talking about, but right then, I didn’t care. I could already feel the fear creep in, see the mortar in the wall turn to blood.

  I looked to Ryland unwillingly as my body began to shake in fear—his dark eyes meeting mine—and I cringed, the anger pulsing, screaming at me to attack him, to kill him. I gasped as I tried to push the emotion away, my ears filling with the beat of my heart as I gulped in air.

  “Cail never spoke of many things, Wynifred,” Ilyan growled, the repeated use of the name like a blunt blade gashing me open. My fingers dug into the wooden edge of the ancient table as I attempted to steady myself, my knees trying their hardest to buckle underneath me.

  “Ilyan, you know that he would—” Wyn’s voice was sugary sweet again, and I cringed at the unfamiliarity of it.

  “Do not use your prowess on me, Wynifred. This is hardly the time.” The loud snap of Ilyan’s voice ripped through the thin layer of my serenity, my torso folding over as I fought to hold onto my sanity.

  “Yes, My Lord.”

  “He has obviously done something to them, but what? And why?” Ilyan’s voice was softer now, the volume coming right down on top of me from where I lay over the table. I almost expected his hand to press against my skin, his comforting magic to fill me, but that never came.

  “They will turn you mad,” Ryland said out of nowhere, the hard edge of his voice increasing the lack of stability I was experiencing.

  I saw nothing other than the blackness behind my eyes as my fingers dug into the map, Ryland’s necklace digging into my chest as I struggled to control my emotions. I could already tell it was a lost cause.

  Everything picked up as the voices washed over me, one after another they came. I couldn’t focus beyond the fear, past the way my magic sped through my bloodstream. Everything blended together so perfectly that I wasn’t sure who was speaking or even what they were saying.

  “He has scores of them. I don’t know what he has done to them, but if they bite you, you’ll go mad. If they bite a human… well…”

  “Edmund will have an army.”

  I tried to focus on the voice as it echoed through the tunnel of my mind, to make sense of it, but everything only spun violently through me.

  “Hovno, if he builds an army out of the humans, he will be able to end everything.”

  “We can’t wait; we have to fight him.”

  “Joclyn can’t possibly fight these.”

  “The sight has shown that she will be ready… Joclyn...? Joclyn?”

  I was vaguely aware that Ilyan was calling my name, that he was scared. I could hear the fear in his voice, feel the waves of it in my mind, yet I couldn’t grasp it enough to pull me back. I couldn’t see behind it. All I could see was red, the flame of an ember washing over my eyes as I drifted into the fluid awareness of sight.

  Except this time was different than any other sight I had been given before. This sight felt hollow, open, as if I stood before a wide valley, ready to swallow the world.

  It felt powerful.

  The ember burn in my eyes drifted into black before a red-roofed skyline I had never seen before came into view. The roofs were tinted in gold as the sun set around them, the beauty of an unknown city covering my eyes before a fountain of black shot through the sun. The spout of brown, muddy water faded into faces of horror as hundreds of mortals ran through cobblestoned streets, their hands and faces covered with blood as they yelled and cried in a desperate attempt to find safety from whatever had attacked them.

  My mouth opened as the sight shifted, the air filling with the hollow tones of my own
voice, the sound of the sight echoing in my ears.

  “The death will come; the sky will fall.”

  The sight flipped again to a group of people huddled in an alley, screaming and crying as the small winged creatures I had seen in the tent flew down from the mass of brown in the sky, their teeth bared as they prepared to attack.

  “Smrt přijde, nebesa se zhroutí,” a deep, unfamiliar voice spoke through the sight, the man’s voice hollow and distorted.

  The vision flashed from the alley to a foreign river, the wide, winding brown sludge turning red as I watched.

  “The war begins in the dark of night,” my voice rang out as I watched myself run into a solid cliff face, the stone carved with a man atop a horse. I ran through the stone like it was little more than air, Ilyan and more than a dozen others following me.

  My sight flashed from the ornate carving to one of Ilyan holding me against a wall, his arm strong as he protected me, his face hard as he faced an enemy I couldn’t see.

  “Válka začíná v temnotě noci,” the same male voice echoed around us, the sight changing to those same red roofs, bathed in firelight as they burned away, the long tongues of fire reaching into the dark night sky.

  “With hell behind and hell before,” my voice spoke on its own as the fire left my sight only to see myself standing on a burning rooftop, draped in the same long cloak I had been wearing in the last image.

  “S peklem zezadu a peklem vepředu,” the voice spoke again, and this time I understood what was happening. My magic had connected to my father’s, the sight opening between us as he experienced this sight as I did, hand in hand.

  “One must fall before the light,” I said as blood flowed down the dark cave floor. It trailed through the bodies of men I had never seen, the amount of bloodshed twisting my stomach even through the dampened emotions the sight gave me.

  “Jeden musí padnout před světlem,” he spoke the words as the blood continued to run over the stone before the sight fell on the loosely curled fingers of a hand, a hand I was sure to be dead. I waited for it to continue, to show me who was to die, but the vision faded to nothing, leaving me in the glowing red embers again.

  “Je rozděleno,” we said together, our voices perfectly matched in the darkness of my sight as I spoke words aloud that I did not understand.

  The sight left me just as my breathing picked up, my eyes still drifting in and out of focus. I gripped the table as I waited for the strobe in my vision to slow, to recover from the intensity of the joint sight I had been infused with.

  Ilyan moved my hair aside as he pressed his cool hand against my neck, my Drak blood so sensitive that with his touch I was flooded with his words and thoughts, the images of his thoughts coming so fast they flashed in a blur of color.

  “Where?” I asked, my voice so strained and elongated it almost didn’t sound like me.

  “Where what?” I heard Ilyan ask in alarm, the roofline of the city flashing in my mind, the screams of the people echoing in my ears.

  I groaned in physical pain as the recall left, leaving me heaving as I tried to fight through the dizziness that still felt like it was trying to move into me.

  “Where… is that?”

  “Prague.”

  Ilyan’s emotions spiked through me as Sain’s answer sent him into a panic. His demand for knowledge came quickly, the context easily understood, even though he spoke in Czech.

  The images of his home flowed from him so fast I couldn’t stop them. The memories of his life matched up with the sight until all that was left was a jumble of fear and happiness.

  Edmund is going to use the Vilỳs to attack Prague. To use the humans to create an army, a magical race that only he can control. I sent the words into Ilyan’s mind as I looked into him, his wide eyes boring into me.

  “When?”

  Soon, I wanted to answer him, to send the words to him, but I couldn’t.

  The time table made no sense. Edmund was due to arrive in Rioseco at any time, to fight in the battle that the sight had shown would be his end. When I would kill him.

  Which could mean one of two things.

  I would either fail and give Edmund a chance to build his army, or the attack against Ilyan’s beloved home had already begun.

  Ilyan’s eyes were desperate as I looked into him, his pained need for knowledge breaking my heart. I couldn’t tell him.

  “It’s too late,” Sain answered for me. “It has already begun.”

  Ilyan’s eyes widened as his jaw clenched, the look in his eyes almost haunting. I could feel his anger and feel the pain over the knowledge that he could do nothing.

  I grasped Ilyan’s hand, desperate to give him the calm he needed—desperate to help him find clarity—when a yell broke out from somewhere in the abbey. A deep, masculine scream that echoed through the stone hallways of the abbey before it reached us.

  My blood sped at the sound. My hand wound tightly around Ilyan’s as the sound came again, Ilyan’s fear at a possible battle flooding into me.

  Not yet. I wasn’t ready yet.

  I sent my magic away from me in a tidal wave that crashed over the abbey, filling every nook and cranny until I felt the source of the scream, the answer freezing my blood.

  It wasn’t the battle.

  I had thought I had failed.

  Thanks to the fight Ryland and I had gotten ourselves into, no one except Ilyan and I knew what I had tried to do.

  What had apparently worked.

  Dramin had woken up.

  Sixteen

  Dramin.

  I spoke the word into Ilyan’s mind before I bolted away from the table, my red shoes slipping on the stone as I ran away from the kitchen toward the faint pull of magic that throbbed and pulsed as Dramin tossed in his bed.

  I focused on him as I ran, my stomach dropping in alarm as his magic ebbed a bit. The weakening strain worried me that he was slipping away again. I needed to get there before that happened.

  I had made it down one hall before voices and footsteps erupted behind me, the thunderous tumult making it obvious that everyone was following me. I picked up my pace as I turned the last corner, my feet slipping on the rubble from where I had thrown Ryland into the wall. I could see the wide door just ahead, the wooden slab inset in the stone.

  I took the last few steps at what felt like a snail’s pace, though I knew I was running; the door swung open as the flare from my magic pushed it. When I slid into the door frame with a loud grunt, Dramin turned toward me, his green eyes hooded and tired.

  Everything stopped as our eyes met, my face heating and burning as I looked into the bright sheen in his eyes. I had thought I hadn’t been able to heal him; I had thought I had failed. I couldn’t have been happier to be wrong.

  “Uncle.”

  “Silnỳ.” His voice broke and cracked as his weak body tried to push himself to sitting.

  I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face, my joy at seeing him awake temporarily trumping the guilt I felt at putting him there. I entered the room at a dead run, my arms wrapping around Dramin as I tackled him, pushing him right back down onto the bed.

  He grunted at the impact, his arms stiff before they came to wrap around me, his touch calm and hesitant. I felt the soft touch on my back, and I snapped, my guilt and sadness tumbling together until they ran down my cheeks in warm streams.

  “I am so sorry,” I sobbed into him, my voice breaking as my chest heaved, everything in me tightening in despair. “I d-didn’t mean to. I am s...sorry.”

  I pushed the words out the best I could, hating when the stutter came back yet pushing past it. I needed to tell him. I needed him to know that it had been an accident. I needed him to understand.

  “Silnỳ,” Dramin said in my ear, his voice so soft I could barely hear him. “Dear child, you did nothing other than what the sight had shown, nothing other than what was in your heart, and I do not fault you for that. I never could.”

  His arms wrapped
tighter around me, his words digging into my soul as the tears came faster. The weight that had hidden itself in the deep pit of my heart vanished, taking a tiny bit of the stress I had harbored with it. I gasped for breath as my body relaxed, the now joyful tears that slid down my face increasing as I felt the others enter the room.

  “Dramin,” Ilyan gasped from the door, his voice a wave of awe that washed over us. His quick gait pounded through the surprised silence, his hand landing lightly on my hip as he came up beside us.

  “You are well, my friend,” Ilyan whispered, the emotion choking his voice away.

  Dramin looked toward him and chuckled, the sound that I had grown so used to—the sound I had missed so much—warming me. I had almost expected never to hear it again. Hearing it lifted the fear that had lived in my heart and warmed the chill that had dwelled in this room. It was its own form of magic.

  “You’re alive.”

  The irritation that was so normal in Thom’s voice was choked by his joy, his face pale from where he stood in the doorway. I moved to the side as Thom rushed to his friend, embracing him as a brother. The two men clung to one another as Wyn and Sain helped Ryland into the room, his agitation obviously growing alongside the heightened emotions that surrounded him.

  They moved in slowly until Sain caught sight of the scene in front of him. He froze in place, the deep emotion that I had wanted so desperately to see over the past few days glistening down his cheeks.

  “Můj syn,” he whispered, and although I didn’t understand the words, I caught the meaning, the joy at seeing his son alive.

  Sain rushed forward before the echo of his voice had fully faded, his feet stumbling over themselves in his desperate need to reach his son.

  “Tatí,” Dramin whispered, the break in his voice making it clear that he, too, was weeping, but I didn’t see that.

  All I saw were his hands wrapped around my father’s. His father’s.

  All I saw was the greeting that I had so desperately wanted, the love behind it one that I wasn’t so sure I hadn’t pushed away.

  Jealousy rocked through me, green and bitter in my veins. I stumbled away from Ilyan’s side, fighting the need to run away and destroy something, to scream, to mourn what I had lost when Cail had murdered my mother.