Soul of Flame (Imdalind Series #4)

by Rebecca Ethington

  “What?” she asked, obviously confused by the look I was giving her.

  “You didn’t seem so adverse to the idea this morning,” I said, my eyebrows arching as I waited for an explanation. She, however, looked at me like I was crazy. “You came to our room, and looked at him like you wanted to eat him. Not like he was disgusting.”

  “Now you are sounding a tad bit jealous.”

  “No, I’m just confused. Last I heard, you didn’t like him and wouldn’t try to hit on him like you did this morning.”

  “Hit on him?” she asked, her eye roll so exaggerated that I knew she was hiding something. “Whatever.”

  She scoffed like it was some big joke, like I had just imagined it. I didn’t know why, but it cut through me. Who knew, maybe I was being a bit jealous. Jealous or not, it didn’t change the pain I saw in her eyes, the way she avoided me. It didn’t change that somehow, I got the idea she had become a different person when Edmund had captured her.

  “I know what I saw, Wyn,” I said as I pushed into her shoulder a bit, hoping that the somewhat playful gesture would thaw the ice that had encased her.

  Instead, it had the opposite effect, and she stopped, her jaw tightening as she held her breath. I didn’t know why, but I almost expected her to attack me. Right then, she felt dangerous. My pace slowed to a stop as I turned toward her, the dim light of the hallway making the valleys of her face darker. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled with fear for the briefest of breaths before her jaw loosened and her eyes softened.

  “I just have trouble knowing who I am sometimes.”

  “What?” I asked, the one word seeming to break the spell that I had somehow put over her, and her head jerked up, her face twisted into a mischievous grin.

  “You tell me how good of a kisser Ilyan is, and I’ll spill.”

  Even if I wanted to respond, I had no idea what to say. I had no idea how to explain what it felt like when Ilyan’s lips pressed against mine, when his hands pressed me against him. When everything became light, and the world stopped spinning. Every time, it felt like magic before I had known that magic was real, and I could feel the power of the world rejoice as if it was celebrating our union. It was perfect.

  The words were in my head, but I knew they would never find a way out.

  She knew it, too. She also knew I wouldn’t give in. I just stood there, my jaw working mechanically as the thunder from the storm continued to crash around us.

  “Just what I thought,” Wyn said dreamily, a knowing smile on her face as she turned a corner into another dimly lit section of hall.

  I fell into step beside her and she laughed, the sound claiming her supposed victory before she shoved me playfully into the wall next to her, her hand hot like fire against my skin.

  With one touch, an inferno burned away the tendons in my hand. I screamed as pain spread through me, the sight of my fingers twisting into weird, broken angles only making the scream that much louder. I pulled my hand away as I tried to stifle my screams and control the nightmare that was threatening to take over.

  I stumbled against the wall as the fire moved up my arm, my fingers clawing at the heated skin while the muscles continued to cramp and bend. I could hear the clanging of pipes in my ears, the madness getting closer. I couldn’t focus beyond the pain to chase it away, the loud scream that ripped from me only seemed to be bring it on faster.

  I bit my lip until I could taste the blood in an attempt to stifle the scream, to keep the insanity from taking over. I felt my magic rush through me, trailing the burn with ice as it attempted to heal me.

  Wyn jerked up to me when I yelled, the fear in her eyes almost as painful as the heat that surged through my hand. I expected her to apologize, but she only stared at me, her eyes wide as if she was trying to figure out why I had reacted the way I had.

  I shook my hand as my magic extinguished the branding iron that had ignited inside of me, glad when the fire lessened to nothing more than an exaggerated heat and I could focus on keeping my mind intact. I gasped as the ice chilled me, keeping my eyes away from the blood-drenched wall across from me.

  “That hurt,” I gasped as I closed my eyes, bringing back Ilyan’s dream in an attempt to keep the madness away.

  “My magic hurt you?” Wyn said, the confusion I had seen on her face even more defined in her voice.

  “Burned me more like,” I grumbled as I brought my hand up to eye level, almost expecting the skin to be charred away, yet it was smooth, like nothing had happened. Wyn ducked down in an attempt to see better, but didn’t say anything, her heart-shaped face screwed up in confusion.

  “What happened? Your magic was so cold before.”

  “It’s never done that, moved like that…” She spoke to my hand, her focus a million miles away.

  “What has never done that before?” I was trying not to panic, but Wyn’s obvious lack of knowledge was not good for my nerves. That was, if I had any left. She may have just burned them all off.

  I waited for a response, but none came, so I pulled my hand into my chest in an attempt to get her to stop looking at it.

  I don’t know what it was about the way she was staring, but she looked lost in thought, her dark eyes haunted by horrors I had never seen before. Something was definitely up, and it worried me.

  “Wyn?” I asked when she didn’t look away, the blank stare starting to bother me again.

  “Sorry,” she said sheepishly as her eyes finally shifted back to me. “It’s probably just the Drak magic, my Trpaslík blood and all that. Maybe my magic hates you.”

  Her voice was light, as though she was trying to make a joke, but the sound did not reach her eyes, and I flinched a bit, waiting for whatever was going to come next to jump out and slap me in the face.

  “Are you saying we are enemies now?” I asked, unable to help the way my voice cracked in the echoing hallway. I stepped away from her out of habit; that one word seeming to awaken a wild animal, the raw emotion expecting an attack. I knew she hadn’t meant it that way, but I couldn’t help the way my magic flared. Whether it was in preparation of attack or to run for my life, I wasn’t sure. My anxiety was almost too raw for me to control after my last panic attack.

  “Well, aren’t we? Technically, I mean,” Wyn said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes before she turned and continued down the stone hallways. “Not like I would ever actually attack you.”

  Her voice echoed back to me as she waved her hand through the air. Her actions made it clear that she hadn’t meant it at all the way I had perceived it.

  “No!” I yelled as I ran to catch up with her, the loud slaps of my red shoes sounding twice as loud as they really were in the seemingly endless, stone hallway that stretched before us. The large, wooden slabs of the doors were set so perfectly that, if it weren’t for the color, I wouldn’t have been able to tell they were there at all.

  “What?” she asked as she laughed at me. For some reason she obviously didn’t believe that I didn’t view us as enemies. It seemed like such a weird thought to me, though. She was my best friend. Why would I want to attack her? And yet, somehow she seemed to feel like it was expected that I would try.

  “Trpaslík, Drak, Skȓítek. Human. Chosen Child. It doesn’t mean anything to me,” I said as I fell into step next to her.

  “Spoken like a true human,” she said in a ridiculous baby voice as she patted my head. I batted her hand away, fully prepared to scowl at her, but she only laughed.

  “Half-human,” I corrected her, unable to stop the smile that spread over my face with the memory of Vienna sausages.

  “Whatever. You are kind of everything,” she said with a smile, yet the words only wiped out my temporarily good mood.

  “So I have been told.”

  She was right after all. I was kind of everything. Ilyan may be half-Chosen, but he was also half Skȓítek. He knew what he was. However, my father was a Drak, my mother a human, and my neck held that mark that had given me every other
kind of magic. I was a little bit of everything.

  “What’s it like?” she asked softly, her voice loud in my ear as she leaned in close and wove her arm through mine again. I only groaned at her question, fully expecting her to guilt me into a step-by-step kissing documentary. Instead she pulled me to a stop before one of the many doors that lined these hallways, this one bearing the same handprints I had seen on her door at the motel except now it looked like someone had tried to scrub off the larger handprint with a scouring brush.

  My heart clenched together at the faded paint—at her heartbreak—knowing I should look away, but unable to make myself do so.

  “What’s what like?” I asked, my voice dead.

  “Seeing the future?”

  I cringed at her question; no part of me wanted to answer it, not after what had just happened with my father. I wasn’t even sure why she wanted to know. After all, she had stood there, watching my father berate me for being a useless Drak only minutes after sharing a sight with him. I guess that didn’t really answer her question, though, unless she wanted to know what it was like not to follow sights.

  Because that seemed to be all I was good for.

  “I dunno; it’s fine unless you talk to my father...” I said, a little more bitterly than I had meant to, wishing she would drop the subject.

  “Sain is only trying to—” Obviously not.

  “Can we talk about something else?” I snapped. I really didn’t want to hear the rest of that comment.

  “You mean like the day after tomorrow?”

  I looked at her in alarm only to be met with a wide smile that I tried very hard to return, although it didn’t quite want to take. My face felt like it had suddenly become devoid of blood, my heart pumping madly against the lead I had been filled with. She knew what tomorrow was, and she knew that there might not be a day after.

  “You’re scared about tomorrow, aren’t you?” Wyn asked, making it evident that my fear was as clear on my face as it felt. I just looked at her without knowing what to say. If I should even talk about the sight; if I even believed it.

  Wyn shook her head at me like I was the most pathetic thing she had ever seen, and I guess that in some ways that’s exactly what I was. I looked away from her sheepishly, suddenly feeling that old, introverted part of me coming on strong. Wyn pushed off from the door she was leaning against, her arm reaching up to drape around my shoulders. She almost looked like she was going to impart a secret wisdom passed down for generations, but instead, she did what Wyn did best.

  She pulled out the Styx.

  “I know you feel these are the worst of times; I do believe it's true. When people lock their doors and hide inside. Rumor has it, it's the end of Paradise.”

  “Wyn, don’t…” I begged, but she only smiled wider and sang louder, her horribly off-pitch voice echoing off the stone and rippling back to us, bringing the laugh out whether I wanted it to or not.

  “The best of times!” She stepped away from me to dance through the hallway, her movements crazed and wild. “Our memories of yesterday will last a lifetime. We'll take the best, forget the rest. And someday we'll find…”

  She spun and danced before making one last spin and ending up in front of me, her hand extended like a microphone, obviously expecting me to provide the last word.

  I restrained the last of my laugh as I stared at the microphone, knowing there was no way she would let me off the hook.

  “Paradise,” I said, knowing I had totally rained on her parade.

  She, however, only smiled wider before grabbing my hand and dragging me into her room.

  “Close enough.”

  Eighteen

  I could tell that, at some point, Wyn’s room at Rioseco had looked closer to the room I had seen at the motel. One wall was painted neon green, and the bed had been pushed up against another wall where several large rectangles of stone appeared to be cleaner than the rest. Shelves were emptied, carpets rolled up and put aside, and the garbage overflowed with band t-shirts and the posters that had once graced the walls. The bed had been stripped bare, the old, stuffed mattress instead covered with a single woven blanket that looked oddly similar to the one that had hung over Thom’s bunk in the cave in Italy.

  Her room was a window into the heartbreak she was feeling, and looking at it made me feel filthy and somehow unworthy to be here. Not ten minutes before, we had walked down the hall, her suffering showing as she spoke of not knowing who she was. I should have pressed her, found a way to help her, but instead of sharing with her one thing, I had shut her down.

  It made me feel sick to my stomach.

  “I would ask you if you wanted something to eat, but I just cleaned the floors,” Wyn’s voice floated to me from somewhere within the depth of the room. I turned toward it, expecting her to emerge, but I faced nothing other than more destroyed remains of her life. I stood still, waiting for her to return while I tried not to let the fear that standing in the open, unfamiliar space was giving me.

  “Funny,” I said into the empty room, knowing my voice wasn’t loud enough for her to hear.

  Wyn appeared a minute later from what I could only assume was a kitchenette, her hands full of tall, clear glasses and an archaic looking bottle. She smiled brightly as she bounded over to me before setting her bounty on the low coffee table I stood next to.

  “I can’t drink that, either,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “You wouldn’t want to,” she said as she carefully organized the glasses. “It’s a two thousand year old whiskey. It’ll make your hair fall out.”

  My eyes widened at her words, and although I wanted to say she was joking, one look at that bottle had me wondering. The bottle was brown and so dust covered that it looked like Wyn had dragged it out of some long forgotten attic, rather than a prized collection. Most of the label had long since disintegrated and what little was left was written in what I was sure was Czech.

  “Lovely,” I said, suddenly glad I had a reason to casually decline. I wasn’t sure what was in there, and it kind of worried me that she would even trust it enough to try. At least my body would rebel against anything I put in it.

  “Did you raid some ancient catacombs to get this?” I asked as I grabbed it from off the table, the bottle heavier than I had assumed. The glass was strangely gritty, not like dust, but more like dried fungus.

  I was just turning the bottle to see the label when Wyn snatched it away, her eyes narrowed at me as she set it back down.

  “No,” she practically snapped, her face hard and frightening.

  My eyes widened in confusion at the expression on her face, at the way her eyes dimmed within seconds of the word escaping her lips. My muscles rippled at the darkness behind her eyes, part of me screaming to attack while the other pleaded with me to cry, to scream.

  I begged my mind not to view Wyn as a threat, to stop seeing enemies where only friends remained, however, my agitation wasn’t sure it wanted to listen. I exhaled shakily as I tried to take control of the fear, hoping that Wyn wouldn’t notice any immediate change in me.

  “This is the last of the abbey’s stock of Slivovica. For the last night.”

  “The last night?” I asked, my voice trembling before the remainder of my foolish anxieties melted away.

  “It’s what we call the toast before battle, Jos.” Her face was hooded and tensed, a million thoughts and memories weighing her down as she casually touched the ancient cork that had plugged the bottle for longer than I cared to think about.

  The cork popped out easily at her touch, leaving the top of the bottle smoking slightly. A heavy smell of fermentation filled the room, rotten fruit and cat vomit mixing together as it hit my nose. The stuff smelled terrible, worse than any of the wine that my mother had served to Edmund for all those years—and I thought that stuff had been foul. I scrunched my face up in a foolish attempt to block the smell while trying to be polite and not run gasping out of the room.

  Add another reason why I w
ould never put that stuff in my mouth.

  If only I had brought a mug with me, then at least I could drink of the Black Water and drown out the smell with my water’s strong aroma.

  “We call it the last night because it is the last night for many of us. Not only for this battle, but for all of them. And this war has been going for quite a while,” Wyn said softly, the calm sadness of her voice pulling my mind off the smell and right into her words.

  My heart pumped faster, the pain moving through me so fast that I was barely able to fight the sob that tried to seep out. She was right; it was the last night for many of us. Not only me.

  It was my last night.

  Strangely, seeing the sadness on her face—thinking of the thousands who had lost their lives before me—had numbed the fear. It’s not that it wasn’t there anymore—because it was—it just didn’t bother me as much as it had only minutes ago. The mind-numbing fear had disappeared, leaving me with a sadness for what I was going to lose; for the short time I had been given to experience it.

  “Oh.” It was the only word I could manage. I didn’t know what to say after that. I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to say anything.

  “Don’t worry,” Wyn said as she turned to face me again, her glass now full of a foggy red liquid. “I am sure Ilyan will be fine. I don’t think he is capable of dying.”

  I gasped at her words, at the misplaced worry so startling my chest tightened under the pressure.

  “Wyn?” I started, my pulse quickening as I fought the need to tell her, to tell her everything. I wanted to tell her of the sight, of what was coming for me, of what was expected. However, part of me said she already knew, and even if she didn’t, I wasn’t quite sure how I would begin to have that conversation. I wasn’t sure I was ready to say goodbye.