Crown of Cinders (Imdalind Series Book 7)

by Rebecca Ethington

  “Jaromir!” he yelled, jerking awake several of the Chosen. Jaromir turned, his face breaking out into the biggest smile I had ever seen, causing the mark on his cheek to squish together.

  With a rush, he ran from the bed to tackle-hug Ryland around the waist.

  “I heard you have news for me,” Ryland said.

  “The best news!” the kid erupted, grabbing Ryland’s hand and dragging him toward the girl who still sat on the bed, blonde hair braided down her back, face wilting in what I assumed was fear. “This is my sister.”

  “Hello, Míra,” Ryland whispered, his big, meaty hand wrapping around the girl’s tiny one, his magic surging from the contact. I was confident he was laying the foundation for what I needed to do. “It’s so nice to meet you. Welcome to our home. We are so glad you are safe.”

  “So am I. It was so scary out there,” the little girl squeaked, her response hesitant and worrisome.

  I could tell she was attempting to look brave, to look innocent. The shake in her voice was perfect, the way her shoulders pulled into her ears carefully done.

  It was almost overdone, a perfect replica of another deceptive man I was related to.

  That might be why I saw right through her.

  I saw through the wide eyes and looked into the darkness that haunted her. I looked past the innocence in her voice and heard the malicious voice that had haunted my dreams for so long. I heard the wickedness that had hunted me in shadows.

  I would love to say I heard it because of what Ilyan had said, because I knew there was a Štít inside of her, but one look to Ryland and I knew I wasn’t alone.

  I wasn’t the only one who had heard it. I saw his back stiffen, freezing him in place, his hand still wrapped around the little girl’s as his muscles knit together. I could almost hear his mind buzzing with anxiety, my own spiking in fear of what seemed like an imminent attack.

  So, you hear it as well? Ilyan whispered into my mind, the words lost amongst the panic I was fighting.

  Before my magic could awaken into a flood, however, Ryland shivered, his curls bouncing as a ripple moved down his spine like a dog shedding water.

  “Well,” Ryland continued, his voice shaking with exertion, fighting the demons exhausting him, “you are safe here.” He smiled warmly, although I could see the panic in his eyes.

  The little girl looked at him with her wide, dark eyes picking up on the change. I was certain she couldn’t piece the reasoning together as to why he had reacted that way. At least, I hoped she couldn’t.

  If Ryland was right, and Edmund had sent her, we were all in a bit of trouble.

  “I brought a surprise,” Ryland continued without missing a beat, turning away from the children to face me. “I present Queen Joclyn.”

  The girl’s eyes widened, her awe obvious. Her brother, meanwhile, looked concerned and somewhat fearful of my presence.

  She sat as awestruck as a little girl in a theme park. Ryland had announced me, and the spotlight shone right on my face. At least my braid was pristine. She didn’t even seem to notice the holes in my dirty jeans.

  “Queen?”

  “Hello, Míra. I am very pleased to meet you,” I told her, trying to ignore the way my stomach swam.

  Leave it to a child to make me feel more like a queen than all the councils and pretty dresses combined.

  Ilyan chuckled at my complaint as I kept the smile plastered on my face.

  I didn’t extend my hand as Ilyan had instructed me months ago. Instead, I kept them politely by my sides.

  The girl looked a bit affronted at first, something that vanished when Ryland and Jaromir bowed a bit toward me. The legitimacy of my claim unquestioned, her eyes widened.

  “Hello.” Her voice was barely above a squeak, the awe wiping away all sign of the darkness I had heard behind her voice before. “Are you really the queen?”

  “Yes.” I chuckled, my smile widening, the girl’s eagerness at meeting me infectious. “I am. Queen of the Skȓíteks. That’s the magical people charged with protection,” I answered at the confused look she gave me, which seemed a little forced.

  “So, you can protect me?”

  “Yes, we can,” I answered, careful to stay standing. Even though I wanted to sit beside her, I knew I wasn’t there yet. I still needed to gain her trust. “We protect everyone in here from the dangers outside. We even protect Ryland, and he helps to protect us. Although, I’ll tell you a secret.”

  Her eyes enlarged as she leaned toward me. Even Jaromir tried to get closer, which was saying something because he had always been pretty much terrified of me.

  Trust gained, I sat down on the bed next to her, leaning toward her in an obvious show of secrecy, one I could tell they wanted in on. Magic reverberated over them pleasantly as I watched for any sign of danger, of that magic I hoped I would not find.

  One mischievous look at Ryland, and I giggled. The poor boy looked concerned about whatever I was going to lay on them. I had a library of secrets about him, after all.

  “I could never beat him in a Nerf gun battle.” I jerked my head toward Ry, the two children looking confused before they dissolved into a fit of giggles.

  Jaromir leaned even closer to me. “I love Nerf guns,” he whispered, playing into the vein of secrecy with perfect accuracy.

  “So do I.” I leaned in even closer, aware of the burly man who was standing not too far away, magic bristling. “We should get some and gang up on him sometime. I think we could take him together.”

  “I heard that!” Ryland interrupted loudly, the false frustration clear.

  The kids, however, missed it, erupting into loud fits of giggles that I gladly joined in on, knowing at once what I had to do.

  “It’s a plan,” I whispered to Jaromir, leaning into them in joint conspiracy, something they both lapped up.

  “How about you, Míra?”

  With the focus drifting to the girl, she nodded her head once as a wide, pure smile donned her face.

  I extended my hand toward her, palm flat, ready for a handshake. She looked at it in awe.

  A queen’s hand.

  Purposefully, I hadn’t shaken her hand when I had met her, and now I was offering it to her … like an equal.

  She looked at it, hesitating, that same darkness penetrating her eyes.

  Tension coiled in my body, the same sensation I felt seeping from Ryland. I was convinced by the silence that surrounded us that he wasn’t even breathing.

  “Want to be part of my team?” I asked.

  The darkness grew as she looked at me, her jaw tightening, taking away the innocence of the child and replacing it with the madness of a different king.

  Ilyan!

  I said nothing more before she placed her hand in mine. My magic reacted at once to hers, pushing me into sight.

  A gasp so loud it echoed in my ears seeped past my teeth. My eyes turned black as the ember burn filled my vision before pulling me into her reality, into her past, into her future … and right into Edmund’s palm.

  The taste of blood filled my mouth as, within my sight, Míra fought child after child in cruel battles, adults circling around her, money changing hands as she felled child after child. Sweetmeats were handed to her from would be masters as she killed more, as she conquered more.

  She was happy, stuffing her face with the candies, but then the image shifted, moving in a shadowed tent and Míra as she lay, crying in a disheveled bunk, hundreds of identical cots surrounding her. The Chosen that Edmund had created, many dirty and misshapen, writhed and cried as they fought impossible illnesses. They wallowed in dark and filth, left on their own as they recovered from the bites that had infected them thanks to Edmund’s Vilỳs.

  The darkness around the bunks overwhelmed me, the smell of feces and the hollow sounds of inescapable death smothering the air. I gasped underneath the pressure, desperate for fresh air, only for the scene to change to the bright sun of a stadium, to the cool chill of the winter that was on the
other side of the barrier. Sounds of cheers replaced the cries. The same money-hungry men filled a stadium, and in the center, smeared with blood and mud, Míra fought with hatred clear on her face as she ended the life of a boy her age with a well-placed kick.

  Heart stampeding in my chest, I watched her approach Edmund, watched him place the Štít. Then with his magic infecting her, he left Míra to train, to hurt my father, to rip the spine from someone’s back, the amount of blood that seeped from the wound covering everything.

  Evil filled the girl before me, an evil so deep I could feel my magic bristle with a need to snuff it out.

  “Ilyan, I need you to come with me.”

  The panic in me increased with those three words, spoken by the girl whose hand I still held, her face shifting into view as the sight changed.

  Míra yelled at him as explosions sounded around her, rattling the cave as she screamed at him to follow. She screamed again before running down a hall deep within Imdalind, opening a door as everything continued to shake around her.

  “I know where he is,” Míra gasped out as she burst into the room. “You have to hurry.”

  She stood in a room I had seen a million times before, the door closing with a thud, leaving her standing in the large open stone space that Ilyan always died in.

  Over and over again.

  This time, it was different.

  Míra stood, facing someone I hadn’t expected. Not in this moment.

  Ovailia.

  “Are you sure he didn’t follow you?” She asked with that acidic voice of hers.

  My heart picked up into a panic at the sight of her there, horror drowning me as the scene began to shift, changing and mutating as everything stuttered and shifted. Ovailia stood in the middle of the room as Míra shifted; disappearing, only to be replaced by Ilyan, only to have everything shift again and both Míra and Ilyan stood before her.

  The two of them continued to dance around the sight as everything flickered, the screams of all the players rotating as everything continued flash and change.

  Ovailia screaming.

  Míra crying.

  Ilyan dead.

  Míra dead.

  Míra was there one minute and gone the next. Ilyan was there, standing by Míra, then he was spread out in blood soaked horror the same as before.

  “Watch!” Ilyan yelled outside of the sight, the one word breaking through as everything stuttered.

  My heart clenched as he fell to the ground, blood spurting out of a wound in his neck before it rewound to him standing, Míra behind him, her eyes nervously watching him and Ovailia.

  “Death!” Ovailia screamed, the word out of place as the child vanished again, Ilyan spluttering through an injury.

  Again and again, it shifted. The images rolled around as I tried to make sense of them.

  I had seen this vision a million times, manipulated by my father as he changed the murderer, changed the death. This time, however, everything felt more real.

  With my heart stampeding, the shifting room faded into a snow-clad forest, fading again into an unfamiliar alley. Words and images ran over each other as everything altered, a heavy wave of red flowing over the image, drowning it all in blood.

  Míra fought Sain, desperately trying to defeat him before she fell to the ground, bleeding from her chest and her mouth.

  Blood covered the child as Sain threw her in with the bodies he had destroyed, assuming her for dead. But he was wrong, as we were.

  For, as the sight shifted again, she was now running down a hallway within the cathedral, Jaromir at her side. Then a door opened as Thom came into view, a single shot of magic speeding toward him from her hand.

  A scream ripped from my throat. The sound emerged in the real world as the sight’s ember burn drowned the blood, fading into black as reality greeted me home.

  My heavy breathing was the solitary sound in my ears as the ember left my eyes, leaving me staring at the child, everything painfully tight inside of me.

  “You’re the Drak,” she gasped, all pretense of innocence gone now. The child was smothered with the evil and hatred I had sensed in her before.

  “And you’re Cail’s replacement. You are here to kill Thom.”

  Ryland stiffened behind me, but I stayed still, my hand a vice around hers.

  My magic held her in place as I searched within her, looking for any sign of Edmund’s magic, feeling the Štít for any sign of the dratted man.

  “Wrong.” She smiled, deep and dark. “I am here to kill you all.” Her magic surged from the hollow space within her, the strength elevating with the hope of attack.

  Smothering it, I let my magic wind around hers, freezing it in place as I searched for some sign of the man I despised almost as much as my own father, searching for some sign of Edmund’s control.

  His rancid magic was there, wrapped deeply within her, but it was a faint residue, almost like a weaker memory of what the man currently was. No, what he had been.

  That couldn’t be right.

  Her magic surged again in an attempt to break past my barrier, but I overpowered it, taking control before she could get any farther, locking her in place.

  Her eyes clouded with fear at the restraint, my smile spreading as hers died, drowning in the shadow of my fire.

  The doors far behind us slammed open as Ilyan, Risha, and Wyn ran into the hall. The girl’s fear increased, her hand shaking in mine as Jaromir began to cry in confusion; Ryland’s gentle hold around him was neither comforting or wanted.

  “I have bad news, little girl. You are all alone here. Besides, if what I saw is true, you will save us all.”

  SAIN

  3

  Loud buzzing, like a hive of angry bees, bled past the heavy walls of the tiny room I had closeted myself in. Thousands of Trpaslíks’ voices drifted from the old hall in shades of worry, concern, and excitement. The emotions mixed together in a dangerous harmony as beautiful as the sweet and salty fragrance of blood that flowed up from the twisted corpse at my feet in low, smoky tones. The scent of charred flesh followed like a delicate afterthought. It was a perfume that could have been made by a French master in the dark ages. Seamlessly blended, impeccably intoxicating.

  A smile, long and terrifying, stretched my lips, pulling at the sticky hairs of my beard uncomfortably as I looked over the tangle of flesh, at the blackened skin and bone, the crimson blood. The same color that covered my arms in cracked patches, the same color that blossomed over the robe I still wore like a talisman over my shoulders. Watercolor roses against white and black. The bloodstains were as intricate as the embroidery you would find on a king’s cloak.

  And that was exactly what this was.

  The cloak for the blood-soaked king.

  And soon, everyone would know.

  Eyes wide to the pitch dark of the room I stood in, long greasy strands falling over my face, I stared, my heart pounding against bones in eager anticipation of what was about to happen.

  I closed my eyes, needing to see it again. The weakened strains of my sight pulsed over me in the usual prompt, the powerful ebbs and flows of the ability weaker than normal, thanks in part to the Zámek I had placed around us. Regardless, they moved through me like a wave of steam, rumbling within my blood until I let it take me, let it pull my mind right back to the same sight I’d had before.

  Instead, it was black.

  Black silence that was broken with a voice that clenched my heart like a vice.

  “Be prepared, for fire will come, and fire will be needed. Water will do.”

  That woman who had haunted me for so long, who had infected my sights for the past few months. It was her voice in the dark, her voice that controlled me before my sight pulled me back to that horrifying night at the cathedral.

  The eagerness of my heart turned to stone filled fear as the words of the prophecy filled my mind. I waited, scared of what more would come, but it was merely silence, silence broken by the ember glow as my sight left, my m
agic retreating back into me, leaving me standing once again in the dark storeroom. The sound of the gathering crowds buzzing in my ears.

  Tension knitted itself into my muscles, a misplaced doubt winding inside of me. A doubt I needn’t have. Pure Drak magic led to truth. It showed what was to be; and I had already seen what I needed to know.

  “I need answers, not riddles, woman. You can’t hide from me forever.” I said, the same promise I always made to the faceless entity who haunted my sights angry on my lips.

  My irritation twisted through me, making me more dangerous than I would be otherwise.

  At least I had an outlet beyond the door.

  As if on cue, the door opened, the murmurs of the crowd bathing the silence as Ovailia slipped her way in, light and sounds dissipating as the door closed behind her.

  “They are primed and ready,” Ovailia said without hesitation. “Half are expecting the war to start. And half are expecting Edmund to present Ilyan’s head on a pike.”

  “That man …? Damek, was it? He did his job?” My questions were coarse in the dark, the residual stress from the sight leaving and desire taking its place. Even the tension in my shoulders left, slipping down my back and dripping into the thick pools of blood and ash I stood in.

  “Yes.” She smiled, her eyes gleaming in the dark as she stepped closer, stopping right before her father’s corpse, as though she were somehow afraid to disturb him. “No one has any idea what is coming.”

  “This should be fun.” The hiss of my voice slithered across the dark as my magic flared, the penetrating green orb filling the tiny space with ominous shadows.

  Ovailia looked at them as though they were emeralds, eagerness clear in her eyes as she fixed me with a dark and menacing smile. “It will be a true bloodbath, as you saw.”

  “As I want.”

  I could feel her magic in the air, winding around her, winding around me, taunting in the dark, trying to lure me in.

  I ignored it. Now was not the time for me to give her what she wanted. To give in to the weakness I was positive she knew I had.