Soul of Flame (Imdalind Series #4) (28 page)

I cringed at her words. I could tell they were meant in jest, however, I was sure she had no idea of what they really meant to me. Of how true they really were.

She pulled me away from the table and dragged me—half-tripping, half-walking—across the room. I fought against her lead, my eyes darting to where Ilyan stood with his hands wrapped around Ryland’s as he mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

“Don’t worry about your boyfriend.” My head snapped to her at the term, the familiarity of it almost catching me off guard, but she only smiled with that wide smile of hers, making it clear she had chosen that word on purpose. “He will catch up, I promise. If anything, this will get him out of the room quicker.” She laughed at her own joke.

I let myself fall in step beside her as we weaved our way through the disheveled furniture and out into the hall. The door closed behind us with a bang that sounded like a cannon, and I flinched, my muscles and joints tightening painfully as my anxiety lit itself into an aggressive fire. I fell against the stone wall next to the door as I tried to control it—tried to push it away—yet it didn’t seem to be helping and the openly worried look that Wyn was giving me was not exactly helping me to win the emotional battle I was waging.

“I’m fine,” I grumbled in answer to the unasked question, glad when her face relaxed, giving me a chance to calm the firestorm of nerves that was waging within me.

I kept my breathing even as I pushed the last of my anxiety away, the uncontrollable emotions leaving until all I was left with was the panic of what would come tomorrow. I knew I couldn’t push that away, however, even if I wanted to. That panic was different than what Cail had given me; it didn’t turn my world upside down, it only made me more aware, and I kind of liked that. I would take ‘aware’ over ‘psychotic break’ any day.

“I’m fine,” I repeated as I pushed off the wall, moving away from her in what I hoped was going to be the right direction.

“So…” Wyn said, the way she lengthened her vowels, making me worried for what was coming. As long as she didn’t mention my inability to manage my emotions, I think we would be good. “Speaking of boyfriend…”

Or not.

“We weren’t,” I let my voice growl, desperately hoping she would drop the subject, even though I knew she wouldn’t.

She didn’t, and the mischievous grin on her face grew before the most embarrassing phrase known to man tumbled off her tongue. “Is Ilyan a good kisser?”

“What?” I practically shrieked, knowing right away that my frantic outburst had given me away. Even though she had figured it all out before, there was no way I could get out of her demanding a full play-by-play now.

“I knew it,” she cooed, causing every single blood vessel in my body to freeze in place. “Spill.”

I exhaled, knowing that I wouldn’t tell her anything. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have.

“No,” I said, my voice distorted as I ground my teeth in embarrassment.

“Oh, come on! It’s not like it’s a secret or anything. Although why you want him to kiss you, I have no idea.” She said it just like she always had and my head spun toward her at the familiarity.

Now she talked about him like she was grossed out by him, like she had before when Ilyan had trained me at the motel. Not like this morning, not like earlier when Ilyan had laid out the plan. It was like the many faces of Wyn. I thought I had known her, but now I just couldn’t keep up. I narrowed my eyes at her, almost willing my sight to come so I could figure out what she was playing at.

“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
.”