Dawn of Ash (23 page)

He didn’t miss it; he glowered at me from where I held him against the stone of the old hallway. His lips twitched in a way so unlike him I was momentarily worried it wasn’t really him at all.

“It’s about what’s in your pocket, isn’t it?” His voice was that deep, gravely wave of knowledge it always was, and where before, in the dungeon and in Spain when I would stop and listen, I reacted this time.

“What do you know about it?” I snapped, pressing him into the wall with a thud. The sound ricocheted around the enclosed space, a loud ripple that came right back even louder.

He cringed at the impact, his face cinching together painfully. “I know what Joclyn saw a moment ago.”

I froze, Joclyn’s cries echoing around us while we glared at each other. I hadn’t expected that.

My eyes narrowed as I held him against the wall, the heat of my magic moving into him just enough I was positive the warning behind it could not be missed.

“What did she see? What did
you
see?” I took a step toward him without thinking, our bodies so close I was convinced he was going to have to move into the wall to avoid me.

“Where did you get the blade?” he asked smoothly as I panicked, trying to convince myself not to attack him right then and there. It would be much easier to kill him, and I wouldn’t mind killing this one.

Mommy!

I looked at him, my eyes narrowing dangerously. “Why should I tell you?”

“Because I know what’s coming.” He stared back with the same calm he always had, his face almost looking disinterested.

If it wasn’t for the way he continually looked toward the window that opened to the courtyard, as if he was expecting someone to come bursting through the barrier at any time to attack us, I would say he was positively bored. However, the way he kept looking away, the way he kept shuffling his feet, was putting me on edge.

He moved to look again before I grabbed his chin, forcing his head back to me, and his eyes widened in shock.

This conversation was moving about as fast as a tour convoy. I was running out of patience and time.

“I got it from inside of Ryland,” I finally answered, careful to keep my voice down, the words sounding like a low groan as they reverberated off the old, stone wall that we were now so close to I could see the small imperfections in the ancient faces. What I was certain were once intricate carvings were now chicken scratches.

“Ryland?” he asked as if he hadn’t heard, all signs of his previous boredom gone. “She saw what the blade is meant for. And she knows what you are planning. She wants to stop you.”

So, she saw everything, then. Great.

“I believe you are going to help me much sooner than I had planned.” His voice was dark, terrifying, and the murderer inside of me reacted accordingly: hackles up, warning lights blazing.

Slamming him into the wall again, I placed the palm of my hand against his neck, letting the fire magic inside of me heat to a temperature that was more pain than warning, but he didn’t even flinch. He looked at me with that same darkness as before.

“What are you talking about?” I growled, desperate to have a straight answer out of this man. I knew I was probably asking for too much. He was a Drak, so his life was more riddle than reality.

“You don’t want to kill her,” Sain said as if he was reading my mind, seeing into a future I couldn’t even comprehend. “You need to run as far as you can. Run and hide. Don’t let anyone stop you. And if you make it, if you run, then you can have it all. You will find what you need to succeed.”

Succeed. I could still save her.

He had given me what I wanted, but I wasn’t sure if I could trust him after everything with Jos.

But I already knew one thing: I would do anything it took to free my daughter.

The fire in my blood sparked abruptly as a new magic shot into where we were, close enough I could feel it. The power behind it was unmistakably Ilyan.

I was out of time.

“Run, Wyn!” His arms broke free of where I had held him down, his grip like a vice against my forearms as he pushed me away.

I didn’t wait; I ran, my feet fast as I continued in the direction I had been traveling, while Sain raced in the other direction, right to the place he had been glaring at, as if it had somehow offended him.

The sound of Joclyn’s cries faded to nothing as the sound of my shoes grew in my ears. The slap of rubber and cement was a punch in the chest with every impact. I knew someone would hear me, knew Ilyan would hear me. I knew he would find me.

And if he did, there was nothing I could do.

Joclyn, Sain—anyone else, for that matter—I was confident I could defeat. But Ilyan…

I would lose everything. And if what Sain had said was true, I had to stop them all.

My sole choice was to keep running, to escape this cathedral and get outside where Ilyan couldn’t reach me.

Easy.

I had done it before. Anytime I needed an escape, anytime I couldn’t look at Thom’s slowly deteriorating face, I left. And considering the way Joclyn’s cries had somehow disappeared, Ilyan was very much preoccupied.

I needed to get to the tear in Ilyan’s barrier before anyone saw me.

So, I ran.

I darted through unsuspecting Skȓíteks, their faces full of horror as they looked toward the cries, their focus on whatever might be going on over there. As I darted through them, the questions started flowing, the shouts of fear loud as they asked me for information, begged to know if we were under attack, what was going on. Drawing attention to me, to the person who should be running toward her best friend instead of running away.

The more they yelled, the more they looked, the more I ran.

“Wyn!” I recognized that voice the second I heard it.

Risha always sounded like an elementary school teacher, and if I thought it had ground on my nerves before, it was nothing compared to right then. Nothing compared to the one quick glance I gave her, my toe pressing against the hole in my shoe, against the bare ground and sending magic right to her.

I didn’t even see her fall.

But I heard the screams.

I heard the terror and the waves of magic that soared toward me.

Sain had said not to let anyone stop me, and I wouldn’t.

Risha was the start of that.

With one swift movement, I put up a shield, my body disappearing from view as a dozen or more attacks collided with it. The bangs and explosions of colliding magic ignited the courtyard in waves of color.

I barely saw them. I just focused on my destination.

At my freedom.

As I raced down a corridor, the sound of my incessant pace broke apart as I climbed the stairs of the old bell tower, taking them two at a time in my desperation to escape those I was confident were following me.

Old brick and open casements flashed by me as I kept my pace up, moving faster as the cries in my ears increased.

Mommy! Don’t let him hurt me! Daddy! No!

The top of the bell tower opened like a fan, the tightly wound staircase expanding into the small, cylindrical room that led to the red sky, to the small crease in Ilyan’s barrier that would let me escape without his help.

I had used it a hundred times before, and I would use it again … for the last time.

A slight shimmer in the barrier hung right over my head, the glistening patch of white so faint I probably would have never seen it if I hadn’t been hiding up here, staring blankly out into the city as often as I had. But I had seen it. And it hadn’t taken me long to figure out what it was.

A tear, a rip, a ripple.

It was a way out, a way to escape my own pain as I had so many times before, venting my own pain and frustration with Ilyan’s permission.

In a way, I had resorted to mass murder to deal with this stress. While I had killed off the Draks before, it was the Vilỳs this time. I didn’t really want to be responsible for the extermination of several different races of magic, but in this instance, I was more putting them out of their misery.

A win-win.

Right then, however, it was an escape route.

With one leap, I soared off the old bell tower and into the air, letting the wind catch me as my magic supported me, throwing me toward the shimmering line of color. I braced for the impact, for the way Ilyan’s shield would grip against my body and try to trap me inside of it.

With one strong push, I shot through it, feeling the heat and weight crowd against me before it released me to the other side, my wind disappearing with the weight, sending me into a free fall. Hot air and an endless nothing soared past me as I tumbled to the ground below.

I should have been frightened, and perhaps I would have been if it had been the first time I had journeyed beyond Ilyan’s barrier. However, I was ready.

With a snap, my magic moved just fast enough to stop me from hitting the hard ground on the other side—well, hitting it hard enough to do some damage. I still hit too hard, my knees slamming into stone, hands barely able to stop me from face planting into the loose gravel.

That wouldn’t have been a good look.

Heaving, I froze, staring at the old, filthy asphalt as I waited for some scream, for some shout, for some clue someone had seen me.

There was nothing except silence on this side of the invisible barrier, the stillness of a world that had been ripped and devoured by the creatures that would now hunt me.

That I would now hunt.

I might have been safe from Ilyan, but I was far from safe.

Moving myself to standing, I pressed my hand against my jeans, making sure the hard ridge of the blade was still in place before I took off into the dark alley I was facing, knowing there were darker things before me.

A city—no, a battlefield—that, for the first time, I didn’t know if I would come back to if I even could.

I took one look back at the place that had become both a prison and a sanctuary, the image of Thom on that bed a stab in my heart. Longingly, I tore my focus away from the cathedral before I let the alley swallow me, silently praying he would be okay and that somehow we would all get through this okay.

Our daughter included.

“Wyn?” The single syllable sounded all distorted and wobbly as it reverberated around the cathedral, the fear in my voice causing it to tremble even more.

My heart rate picked up into a violent tattoo as the sight burned in my mind, pulling to the forefront of my recall, to her awed face, her hands covered in blood, an incapacitated Ryland below her.

Frozen in fear from the sight, from what was going to happen, I gaped at her, trying to figure out how to stop her. But no, this wasn’t something I could stop, because this was something that had already happened, something she had already done.

“What did you take out of Ryland?”

She stiffened as I did, my joints becoming a rigid mess as the lies she had been spewing for the last few minutes came to a head.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Wyn? What did you do?”

She still wouldn’t look at me, her lies pulling at me and making the painful reality of what I had seen even harder to swallow.

The pulse of her magic washed over me, the reaction increasing my anxiety even further. She felt dangerous. I had never felt anything quite so out of control before: the strength of her power, the fury behind it. It scared me.

I couldn’t help it; I brought my magic to the tips of my fingers, ready for what was to come, the violent sound of my heart beat reverberating in my ears.

“Wyn?” I asked slowly, my hand extended toward her as I tried to get her attention, eager to bring her back down to earth. My hand wrapped around her wrist in a move I hoped would calm her, no matter how much the contact scared me.

I should have stayed scared. I should have stayed away.

With that one touch, her magic answered, the same flame and fire as minutes before ripping through me.

My body writhed as darkness smothered me in a stifling heaviness, the weight making my heart race and muscles tense. I couldn’t think beyond it.

Attempting to fight it, attempting to fight her, I took a frantic gasp of air, fire erupting in the dark of my eyes. Sight blazed through my mind in a pillar of light that broke through the black, my magic catching fire as it showed me bright red flames engulfing the city, licking the red roofs and engulfing the decimated buildings.