Crown of Cinders

by Rebecca Ethington

  I let my magic stretch away from me in a desperate attempt to find her, knowing our connection should pull me right toward her. I should be able to feel her, to hear her inside my mind.

  But there was only a low buzzing as faint as if the wires between us were snapping, one after another.

  Joclyn! I screamed again, keeping my voice in my mind as I forced it through the last of our magic, the fragile fibers stretching and cracking under the pressure. Joclyn, answer me, please! I’m coming!

  Pushing myself further, I ran down the halls, my heart stuttering painfully as the answer to my plea came, not from my magic, not from my mind as I had grown so used to, but from the shadows ahead of me.

  “Ilyan!” A single word echoed back from the dark, the sound distorted as a single cry hit me in the chest, pulling my heart into a broken abyss. “Ilyan, I’m sorry.”

  The break in my soul shattered into a ravine of pain, the already fragile wires between us snapping one by one.

  “No!” I cried, letting my voice carry over the stone and to the small room that was only steps from me where the sound of the river that carried the dead roared in my ears. “Joclyn! I’m coming! Hold on!”

  Pushing my legs faster, I soared over the last few feet, terrified about what I would find in the hall … about whether I would be too late.

  Magic roaring to life, I prepared for a fight as I soared into the tiny room, expecting Trpaslíks to swarm the space, to be throwing Joclyn into the depths of the world.

  But it was only her, only her frail body at the river’s edge, her body shaking as she fell headfirst into the roaring waters, the current grabbing her and pulling her under.

  “No!” I screamed as I rushed toward her, my magic reaching for her, unable to grip her, unable to pull her back.

  It was only the desperate grip of my fingers as I reached for her, the slick ribbon from her hair as I wound it between my fingers in a desperate attempt to hold on to her, to pull her back from the undertow.

  “Joclyn, no.” My voice was broken as I tried to hold on to the ribbon, to stop it from sliding between my fingers, to stop her from leaving me. Before one beat of my broken heart could stutter into existence, however, it was gone.

  The ribbon slipped from my fingers as she was sucked into the dark. She was ripped from me, and the last fragile string of our bond snapped, leaving me alone. Alone as I always had been. Alone as I had been told I would always be.

  My throat was ripped into pieces as I screamed, falling to my hands and knees in a desperate reach for the water, ready to throw myself into the foam, to follow her to whatever life followed after this. Ready to die alongside her.

  But, with one touch, the water shot through me with a blast that burned and snapped against my bones, pressing against me like a boulder in my gut. Joclyn’s familiar magic threw me back with a protective spell that sent me soaring over the stone of the tiny room.

  With a whack, I landed against the stone, my hands and knees stinging and burning from the impact. I felt the burn. I felt my own blood pooling against my skin. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She was gone.

  Falling back, I sat on the ground, her blood covering me, my hands stretched toward the swirling water, toward the only thing I wanted in this life, and I screamed. I screamed with the pain of loss I had never hoped to feel, the pain of a thousand years of waiting, the pain of a thousand years with her I would never get, the pain of a life I didn’t wish to continue without her.

  I didn’t want to.

  The screams continued to rip from inside of me, rattling in the air. I screamed my anger at the milky foam of the river, the last haunted echo of her voice rippling through the room.

  I love you, Ilyan.

  JOCLYN

  29

  “Oh, yes, hit her harder because that worked so well last time.”

  A sharp pain moved over my cheek as a slap reverberated in my ears. The impact pulled me out of the dark bubbles that had surrounded me and right back to the pain that splintered my bones and twisted my chest. Except, now the pain was full of a cold so penetrating it burned my skin. Every inch of me was covered in the burn of frost from the icy water I had thrown myself into.

  Long icicles were frozen in my hair, the fragile points cracking as I gasped for breath. My chest arched in desperation. I writhed, blossoms of color and sight sparking through the black behind my eyes. My lungs burned with the inhale, the taste of blood strong against my tongue as I coughed and heaved, water gushing from my air-starved lungs as it was expelled along with other vile things.

  Lungs and throat burning, I was rolled onto my side by strong hands, giving the water and vomit somewhere else to go besides all over me. A flash of a hundred swords cracked within the black of my sight as I hurled, each one strapped to the hip of an army. I watched them march, each fall of their feet ripping through my body, tensing my chest as the agonizing pain from Sain’s attack ripped me from the sight and back to the blurred swirls of stomach acid over rocks.

  “See? Told you it would work,” a tiny, high-pitched voice answered the other one.

  Cold air moved over my face as someone moved my hair out of the way of the mess that kept coming, the acid making my throat burn more.

  “Hitting someone back to consciousness does not qualify as working,” the first voice, a woman, said in irritation.

  “And yet she is awake,” the tiny voice snapped from somewhere in the dark above me.

  I attempted to turn, to see who was there, but there was nothing but black as my sight took me somewhere far away, to Ilyan as he sat, sobbing in the dark cave I had just left. Heart tensing, I watched the image, the moment gone a second later and replaced by Wyn. A mania in her I hadn’t seen before took over as she screamed into the dark.

  The moment with Wyn was just as important, but it was Ilyan who stayed with me. It was only Ilyan I saw.

  Ilyan, I gasped in desperation, unable to make the words come. I just kept throwing up, knowing someone was around me yet not caring who they were or what they were talking about.

  Ilyan! I’m here!

  I needed to get back to Ilyan and save him. There was still time. I knew it.

  He was all that mattered.

  Ilyan.

  Attempting to focus past the oppressive darkness, I screamed for him, but there was only silence. No response, no whisper of him, of his magic, of our bond.

  It was all gone. He was gone.

  No.

  Ilyan! I screamed, attempting to push myself up and find a way out of the dark I was trapped in. However, I barely moved. What little movement I could muster was immediately squashed by the hands that seemed to be everywhere. Hands that pushed and prodded and shoved me back down to the stone.

  Head rattling against the impact, I gasped, pain flowering from my mark in a spider web that cracked across my skull, breaking into smacks of color and flashes of sight, everything blending together in a deeper pain that pressed against my skull.

  I tried to scream, but no sound came other than a splutter of water and a gasp. The sights continued to flash, an image I had never seen but remembered very clearly coming into focus: Me dancing on my back porch, my parents hanging the decorations for my party, and a bright blue Vilỳ fluttering right behind me.

  The image was pristine before pain wiped it away, sending me back into the icy chill of black. One thing was very clear. I had felt this pain before.

  I waited for the scream to rip from me as I shook and writhed. One of the warm hands pressed against my neck, the slight pressure numbing the fire.

  “Shhh, child,” a calm female voice whispered. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  Ilyan. Desperate to hear from him, I pled, the single word on repeat as I was rolled onto my back with a groan. The cold of the stone was welcome against the racking pain of my body as it attempted to turn itself inside out. Where are you?

  “Where …?” I forced out through the burn, desperation churning in my gut as my panic
mounted.

  I needed to know where I was, where Ilyan was, what had happened. My plea was an unheard gasp of air, however; the single word question fell to nothing.

  “We have been waiting for this moment for centuries, Rinax. Be kind,” another woman said, different from the first. This one’s voice was an odd gruff of irritation.

  Soft hands continued to move over my face, a comforting heat sinking into me with each touch. It filled me, flowing over my muscles and bones as pain leached from my skin with each stroke, with each pulse of the stranger’s magic that coursed through me.

  Groaning, I focused on the calm, letting it fill me as the confusing flashes of sight left. A haunting blue glow pulled me past the black. It floated above me, hovering in the air the same as it had in my sights.

  “Imdalind,” I gasped, my throat burning in agony.

  My sight flashed back and forth between the glow above me and the orb I had seen beside the wide black pool of water.

  “And she can talk, too,” the squeak said, sounding just as irritated as he had been before. “You two need to stop doubting me.”

  The squeak was met by a grunt, and the warm hand left my cheek as a blurry outline of a face moved in front of the glow, brown and orange smeared together in a confusing streak that solidified into a face.

  “Joclyn?” the deep voice said. The wobbles of color shifted with the single word, making me sure this was the one who was talking. “You are here with us. We pulled you from the river that runs through this cave before taking the dead to the center of the earth. We felt your magic before it faded completely and revived it. You are here, right where you need to be, Imdalind is feet away. You are almost there. Can you hear me, Joclyn?”

  I lay there, listening to the voices, feeling the deep reverberation of magic flow from the hand that was once again pressed against my jaw.

  “Ilyan,” I gasped, panic rising as my sight flickered into a single image of Ilyan, his eyes hard as he faced his sister, clenching his teeth in preparation.

  I knew that face, and it was terrifying.

  The image was distorted enough that I could tell I was peeking into the future. It was coming, and I needed to get there before it did.

  Before she killed him.

  “I need to go. I have to save him.” My stuttered words broke past the burn in my throat as the sight disappeared, leaving me staring at the people above me, their faces doubling and tripling as my vision slowly came into focus.

  “You cannot, child,” the calm woman whispered down to me familiarly, her visage finally ceasing its dance, and I saw her for the first time: hair bright in the dark, so pale it looked to be woven from pure light. “There is only one way to help him now. He will understand. He was created to understand. I raised him to understand.”

  “Raised him?” I asked as I stared at her. Her bright blue eyes cut into me with a dark familiarity that made my magic pulse and pull.

  It was then that the familiarity of the voice made sense. The comfort of her magic and touch, it all made sense. As impossible as it seemed.

  “Frain?” I asked. The story I had heard only a few times smashed into my head.

  Her name was a stutter on my lips, but her smile was wide as she nodded. I barely saw the movement before my sight obscured her. The same woman who sat before me was now kneeling in an ornate courtyard, dressed in an elegant gown from many centuries before, and standing before her was a little boy I recognized at once, even though he couldn’t be more than eight.

  She smiled at the young Ilyan before the sight faded, leaving me staring at the same woman, shrouded this time in the dark that surrounded us.

  “No,” I gasped as everything broke in two, death and failure hitting me hard in the chest.

  Right then, the pain didn’t matter. The way my head was splitting in two didn’t matter. My heartbreak, however, mattered. My failure mattered.

  “Joclyn?” she whispered as she pressed her hand against my cheek, and what I was sure was her magic moved into me. “Silnỳ? Are you all right?”

  “I failed. I didn’t save him. I didn’t save any of them,” I said, the china plate of my soul cracking into slivers.

  “What are you talking about, child?” the gruff voice of the second woman asked as she came up beside the first, her annoyance reflected in the dark of her eyes. The rich color glistened through the black that obscured most of them. They were the same as Wyn’s, the same as every other Trpaslík I knew.

  “Chyline,” I sobbed, my voice broken by the tears that were flowing freely now.

  The woman only smiled, her deep mahogany skin crinkling.

  “It’s true, then? I died. I failed.”

  The tears fell faster. The pain from the knowledge hit me hard. No wonder I couldn’t feel my connection with Ilyan. No wonder I could scarcely feel my magic.

  “Oh, what are you on about, I died?” the squeaky voice mocked. The same blue glow from before joined the women, hovering above me. I turned my head, staring at the face of a tiny blue sphinx. “You have got to be kidding me. Are you really that daft?”

  The creature lingered in the air above me, his upturned nose squished up in irritation. Fast moving bright blue wings pushed cold air over me as the Vilỳ fluttered.

  “A Vilỳ,” I gaped at him, at his beauty, at the familiarity to the being I had seen in sight moments before. The same one I had seen drawn on the walls of Ryland’s mind. The same Vilỳ who had bitten me.

  “Really? Where?” He mocked me further, his irritation mounting. “I thought you said you were dead, not hallucinating.”

  “But you are here,” I said, my voice strangely monotone in shock. “And you passed centuries before—”

  “You can’t die, foolish child,” Rinax spat as he landed on my chest, perched like a misshapen dog on my still blood-streaked shirt. “Just as we cannot. Your life is the earth’s, and you cannot die until she does. How many times do people have to tell you what’s going on before you believe them?”

  The damp fabric of my shirt made odd squelching sounds as he pranced over my ribcage, leaving me staring.

  “What do you mean I can’t die?” I asked, my mind stuck on the statement, something that only irritated Rinax more. “Everyone dies—”

  “I will not repeat that again,” the Vilỳ interrupted with a growl. “If I could not taste your magic when I bit you, if I could not sense it in the air around you, I would question if you were the right one. You do not seem like the Silnỳ that raised me.”

  “Do not worry, Rinax; she is the right one,” Frain said. “I can feel the earth magic in her, as well. Even the part she gave to Timothy’s daughter is there, barely hidden.”

  “So, I’m somehow magically unable to die?” I asked, my mind still stuck on the conversation of a moment ago.

  “You see the future and conjure spells, and this is the magic you doubt?” Rinax hissed with a roll of his eyes, his wings smothering me in cold as he hovered inches from my face, the close proximity causing me to flinch. “I have never known someone so ridiculous.”

  The pit in my stomach grew with each word he spoke, falling farther and farther to my toes as his truth became clear.

  I swallowed, my magic flashing again as sight blossomed before me, image after image of magic and Míracles rotating inside my mind: Dramin’s healing; Wyn’s revival; Ilyan’s impossible stutter, his connection fusing with mine. They came one after another until they ended with the image of Ilyan and Ovailia locked in battle. I felt the desperation to help, that knot of need twisting in my stomach.

  With a flash, the images left as I looked back up at the stubborn Vilỳ, his eyes glistening with smugness.

  I bit my lips together in a tight line, staring at him dead-on. He was right. I knew he was. Still, something about the way he looked at me was making me very stubborn to admit it.

  “See?” he shot, his attitude bristling more. “We are not dead … just as you aren’t.”

  “Not yet in this li
fe,” Frain added, her smile a calm shadow that soothed away my pride.

  “But we are. The first four … We have all passed from the world long ago.”

  I looked from Frain to Chyline as the two women moved closer to me, a haunted sorrow painted on both their faces. I stared at them, my mind spinning on its axis because of what she had just said, refusing to comprehend.

  “How can that be?” I asked, still trying to understand. My heart stuttered painfully, the organ encompassed in the dread that had filled the air.

  I knew magic could do something so crazy, yet I was lost as to how it could be.

  “Perhaps the better word is not dead, but passed. We cannot die because, as the first of our kind, our magic is bound to the earth, just as you are. We have been here for centuries, waiting for you,” Frain said, smiling gently.

  “For me?” I asked, yet more confusion rising up.

  Rinax took flight with a grunt of disappointment, a trail of light speeding from him as he soared away from us, a string of complaint and what I was sure were profanities following behind him.

  “Don’t mind him,” Frain said with a smile. “Vilỳs are not known for patience.”

  Rinax huffed angrily from where he hovered somewhere in the distance. The only thing that remained of him was a solitary blue light suspended elegantly in the dark.

  The ceiling and walls were indistinguishable. For all I knew, the cavern went on forever, stretched throughout the core of the earth in an abyss. Only Rinax’s light gave me some idea of the space, thanks to the massive black pool his light reflected off of. Exactly as I had seen in my sight.

  “It was him,” I gasped as my magic shook inside my bones, placing the clear image from my sight, from this moment, into a perfect overlay. “That is where my sight wanted me to be.”

  “What do you mean?” Frain asked, pulling my attention back to her.

  With a hiss of pain, I pulled myself into a fully sitting position, my hands pressing against the rough stone floor of what I now recognized as a cave. “My sight showed me this. It wanted me to be here,” I gasped, each word tightening my chest painfully. “It wanted me dead.”