Dawn of Ash (40 page)

“Father,” I gasped, unable to hide the shake in my voice anymore, unable to keep the fear at bay. “I would never do that. You are my master. I am loyal only to you.”

As I said the words, I stepped closer to him in feeble desperation. However, even as I said them, I was no longer convinced they were true. I was no longer convinced I would give my life up to this man.

Sain’s sobs grew louder as I cowered before my father, the words “pet” and “servant” resounding in my ears.

Edmund’s face fell, his focus falling on the imp for the first time. His eyes narrowed in an anger that trickled through the room like poison, Míra and Damek stepping away in preparation.

“I’ll be good,” Sain sobbed as Edmund came to a stop inches from me. “A good pet.”

“I see you brought Sain back.” He didn’t even look at Sain, only at me, the back of his fingers running down my bare arm, leaving trails like ice against my skin.

I couldn’t help it; I shivered.

I wasn’t the only one. Míra shrank back at the movement, the guards tensed, and even Sain quieted.

The color and emotion in my father’s eyes were dead as he stared at me, the gentle touch of his fingers against my skin becoming a grip, a tight vise I cringed from, a sob seeping from behind my lips as the bite of his nails pressed into me.

“Where. Is. My. Bride?” He spat each word in my face, the grip of his nails against my forearm increasing, the sharp points digging into me, breaking the skin.

“I lost track of her,” I hissed out through the pain, trying my hardest to stand up straight before my father, to show him I could take it, but finding it hard when I knew what was coming. “I tried to find her … but we had to run … Something happened … They knew we were there.” The words came out in strained gasps, my chest heaving as his fingers pressed into me, spreading the tiny cuts in my skin apart, causing blood to flow down my arm in hot rivers, pooling against my wrist and in my palm.

“What happened, Ovailia?” he growled, leaning in to press his face against mine, his breath hot against my ear. “What could have possibly happened that made me lose my bride?”

“There was a sight,” I gasped in desperation as Sain’s cries faded to nothing.

The muscles in my back reacted as his free hand wrapped around the loose fabric of my shirt, the sheer purple cloth pulling against my abdomen for one brief moment before he ripped it from my body. His hand then moved immediately to claw, to dig into the scar that lined my spine.

Hot, wet rivers moved down my cheeks as I cried, their heat matching the blood that coursed down my arm. I tried to move away from him, but he held me in place, leaving me staring straight ahead, into the bathroom he had come from, the floor red with blood, a limp hand laying across the tiles.

“What sight?” Edmund’s voice was deep in my ear as his fingers pressed harder against the base of my spine, against the tip of the scar I had carried since the day he had made the first cut.

I gasped at the pressure, the warning understood. I opened my mouth, ready to tell him everything, what I had seen, how we had killed all of the Chosen. It was right there on the tip of my tongue, my heart thundering in desperation to get it all out, my chest heaving in dread of what would come if I did not.

Regardless, there was nothing to tell him, nothing I remembered. Nothing except a white room and a voice that echoed in my head, screaming at me, screaming through me.

“I will not permit you this. You are not a Drak.” The words were not mine, but they came, anyway. They came through me, and my father’s eyes widened in anger, my nerves twisting with the reality of what I had said. Of what had happened to me.

“What!” My father’s voice roared as his blood-covered hand moved to wrap around my hair, pulling me away from him, arching my back as I stared at the ceiling, his face moving. “You have no right to this! To tell me I am not a Drak! And you are? I made you what you are, you filthy, little half breed!” He spat the words as he threw me to the ground, my feet slipping in pools of my own blood as I fell. “I am the first of the Chosen. I hold all of the magic!”

His voice was a roar and a rumble as I lay on the floor, my breath coming in desperate inhales of anxiety, of fear I was quickly accepting. Emotions swelled as his foot pressed against my calf, the heavy weight increasing as he held me in place, as he pressed down, as the bone snapped underneath him, as his laugh boomed.

I screamed at the break. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop the sound. It bled from me like a white flag; except, I knew this was a white flag Edmund would never accept. He reveled in the pain, loved the sound of punishment well met. With that one scream, I gave him what he wanted, but also the promise that more would be coming.

He fell on top of me as my scream reduced to a sob, the bulk of him sitting against my hips, holding me in place so that, even if I could run, I wouldn’t be able to.

I could already feel my magic working to repair the break in my leg, but it was pointless. More would come. I couldn’t stop it.

I had walked into this.

“What am I!” he screamed at me, the parallels of his chosen question a cruel joke. I tried to fight against the weight, simply to have it increase against me. His wide, barrel of a chest pressed against my bare back. “Am I a Drak?”

“Yes!” I screamed through the sobs, through the fear, as I felt his hand wind around my wrist, the weight against the joint intensifying as he bent it backward, the tendons straining with the unnatural movement.

“Are you a Drak!” he yelled as the tendons snapped when he pressed back even more.

My scream broke through the hiss of his anger, loud and abrasive, as everyone around us stepped away.

“Answer me!” he screamed again with more force, more ripping, more blood moving over my skin.

“Yes!” I could barely get the word out from above the pain.

He dropped my wrist with a laugh, moving away from me. However, I wasn’t dumb enough to think for a second that would be the end.

My eyes snapped open, a desperate part of my brain trying to formulate an escape plan as I gazed into the dark green of Sain’s eyes.

His focus did not deviate from mine, and the intensity of his gaze froze me in place. He should be cowering. He should be in pain, but he looked at me with the same power I had seen in him before. His eyes flashed from black to green again before his voice drifted over to me.

“I know another way.” Sain’s voice was an unheard whisper, the repeated promise stuck inside of me as my father wrapped his hand around the ankle of the already broken leg.

With one yank, the bone separated, my desperate scream drowning out Sain’s plea, my body sliding across the floor and back over the pool of my own blood.

“You cost me the fire magic, Ovailia,” he hissed as he dropped me in the middle of the floor, the rhythmic grinding of metal against stone flinching through me as he sharpened a knife. “You cost me a mate. Imagine the magic we could have created.”

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, knowing the words would never be enough, knowing he didn’t care anymore.

“Yes,” he barked, the sound of stone and metal abruptly stopping as he moved to stand beside me, his bloodstained shoes inches from my face. “So I have heard. Again and again.
You are sorry
.” He sighed, the sound beating into me as he crouched down, the blade swinging before my eyes, reflecting the light of the room against me as he twirled it. “I’m getting tired of your excuses.”

I flinched, expecting the knife to make contact, expecting a gash against my cheek, against my arm, against my back. I waited for it, but it never came. He knelt there beside me, the knife twirling between us in warning.

“I made a decision. I am going to send Míra to do the job you could not. I will send her into the cathedral to kill them all. It will be her first, real task, and I’d like to offer you a deal.” He paused, but all I could do was sob.

I couldn’t find the words in me to formulate any kind of response. He just laughed, the sound deep and hollow as it resonated through the silence.

He finally stood, his steps vibrating through my body from where I lay on the cold, stone floor, the smell of iron and salt increasing.

“If she survives, if she succeeds, then I will let you live.” He paused, everything tensing in me as the sound of my pained gasps increased. I knew him too well to believe it was that easy, that I would get out of this unscathed, if not alive. “If she fails, you die. That is, of course, if you survive this.”

He had barely spoken before I felt the icy chill of the knife, the sharp point pressing against the base of my spine.

I screamed before I felt the pain, before I felt the cut, knowing what was coming. The sound of my scream, of my pain, mounted as the blade sliced through me, splitting open the scar he had made centuries before, opening up the flesh all the way down my back. I felt the cold of the knife, felt the heat of my blood, and felt the burn of the water as it was released from its prison. Regardless of all that, all I could hear was the scream of my pain and the sound of his laugh increasing. All I could feel was the grip of his servants as they rushed to hold me down.

“You are not a Drak.”

I didn’t know if it was the pain or the sound of my own scream that pulled me out of the black of my unconsciousness, but now that I was out of the blissful, pain-free prison, I wanted to go back.

Everything hurt. Everything ached and throbbed and burned in a low rumble that had wrapped around my body, pressing against me, trapping me in place.

I tried to move, my mind desperate to escape the pain, but every shift of my weight brought more agony. Every flinch, another flare of my already weakened magic tried in vain to heal me.

“Shut up!” a voice hissed in my ear, the tone so low that I didn’t recognize it for a moment. “If you keep screaming like that, they are going to come back here, and neither of us really needs that right now. We aren’t ready yet.” The voice hissed through the air like a snake, cold hands pressing against my back. The agonizing pain increased before his magic moved into me, a wave of heat and warmth that flooded me in moments, numbing the pain and leaving me heaving, face down on a bed, unable to move.

His magic took control, my own moving right alongside his, feeling every broken bone, every ripped muscle, everything my father had done to me. I was very glad I had blacked out early on.

“Good,” Sain whispered.

My eyes fluttered open to the sight of a dimly lit room, everything cast in shadows so deep I couldn’t really make anything out. Even the man who sat beside me on a bed I recognized as my own was covered in shadow and dread. Although, why we were here and not in my father’s preferred dungeon, I had no idea. It wasn’t like him to keep people comfortable.

“I don’t want to keep putting you back together. You are of no use to me broken.”

I cringed at the phrasing, so similar to what my father had spat at me before. Although the hatred in Edmund’s voice was missing from Sain’s, the infliction was still there, and I cringed, hating how weak and out of control I felt.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should be scared, knew I should try to formulate a way to get out of this situation, to make it to Ilyan. I had done it before. However, I highly doubted he would forgive me this time, that he would give me sanctuary.

Not after everything I had done.

Even if I could escape, I would simply be walking from one death sentence to another. At least I knew that death at the hands of my elder brother would be pain free.

“What use am I to you, Sain?” I asked, each word sending pain over my spine, each word shaking out as I pushed past the agony to deliver them.

I expected a harsh rebuttal, expected some form of punishment for my retort. To my surprise, however, he laughed, the sound deep and rich as he rose from the bed. His magic left me as he walked away, and my body rippled with pain that I tried my best to ignore, my teeth clenched in stubborn defiance.

With a heaving sigh, he collapsed on a large, overstuffed chair I kept in the corner, his face and body cast in long, dark shadows, the blue and black moving over him like bars. The effect made him look like a villain in an Audrey Hepburn movie.

“Well, good morning to you, too, gorgeous.”

My heart tensed excruciatingly inside my chest as I tried to understand what I had been thrown into and wishing in vain I could at least move.

“What do you want, Sain?” I tried to say the words with as much warning and venom as I usually held, something I was marginally successful at. Not that it mattered, because he knew I was incapacitated thanks to the jagged cut down my back and the small, warm rivers running over my skin, making it obvious I was still bleeding.

“I want you to heal. I want you to survive what your father has done to you.” He spoke slowly, the same depth permeating his voice, the same powerful undertow still weaving its way through it. Still, I hadn’t expected that answer.

I also wouldn’t believe him. “What do
you
want of me?”

Sain sat still, his face covered in black shadows so deep I couldn’t see anything, even though I was certain he was looking at me, studying me.