Crown of Cinders (Imdalind Series Book 7) (12 page)

And death pits? What were those?

Nothing made sense.

“Hey, Jaromir,” Míra snapped, her hand strong as she pushed into my shoulder and popped my thoughts like a bubblegum bubble. “It’s your turn. I thought you were going to win this time.”

“What?” I asked stupidly, pulling myself back into reality. “Oh, yeah.”

Leaning over the board, I prepared my magic, determined to knock at least three marbles off course, only to stop in place as the loud booms of Ryland’s voice echoed across the dark and silent hospital.

“There you are!”

Loud shushing followed him as he ran up the rows of beds to us, several of the patients disturbed by his arrival.

Risha laughed at him, the sound so happy I laughed with her, letting it chase out all the sadness like Momma had always told me to do.

Míra looked like she was about to explode.

“We are right where we told you we would be,” Risha said, continuing to laugh as more and more of the other inhabitants joined in on the chorus of hushes. They sounded like snakes. “Playing marbles. Míra is winning.”

“That doesn’t surprise me one bit. That girl is good!”

I was positive he meant it as a compliment, but Míra scowled more.

The smile on Ryland’s face dimmed a bit, a fear I hadn’t seen before shining through.

“You have no idea,” Míra growled in code, and my spine tingled in fear.

I knew she was going to say something creepy again, and I doubted I wanted to know what.

“Just wait …”

“Míra, don’t!” I yelled, forgetting to code my words.

The hushing fell silent at my panic, and Míra moved so close I expected her hand to slap over my mouth.

“You don’t have to—”

“Stop it, Jaromir,” Míra cut me off before I said too much, her coded words ricocheting throughout the now silent hall. “You can’t convince me. I’m out of time, and I don’t want them thinking I’m good. It’ll only hurt them more. I’m not good.”

“Míra …” I pleaded, but she ignored me, standing to face Ryland, who towered over her like a burly prison guard.

The man I had always looked up to turned into a giant as he puffed up.

“You are a powerful kid, Míra,” he rumbled from above her. “But don’t push it. I like you in one piece, and I am pretty sure your brother does, too.”

Míra finally flinched, the stranger deflating a bit and leaving my scared little sister behind.

“Yeah, I do,” I added, shuffling to my feet and pulling her away from him. “I really do.”

“Good,” Ryland said, his voice kind yet the hulk remaining. “So, one piece it is! But for now, bed time. Ilyan’s orders. He wants you rested before he comes and plays capture the flag with us tomorrow.”

“Ilyan’s coming here?” I jumped, I didn’t know if I should be excited or scared. I had heard enough stories about what he could do, although the few times I had seen him had been terrifying. He was more of an angry giant than Ryland was at times.

“Yep,” Ryland said, obviously proud of himself, yet he seemed almost as scared as I was for some reason. “I told him about our game, and he wants to come.”

“I’m sure,” Míra grumbled, plopping herself down on her bed with a loud squeak of springs and metal.

“It’ll be fun!” Ryland was really pushing this, but looking at Míra’s reaction had me worried.

He wasn’t the person she was supposed to kill, was he? I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want her to die.

I needed to convince her to ask for help. Or maybe I needed to ask it myself. I knew they could help. She needed to trust them.

“Have sweet dreams of lollipops and unicorns, not death and destruction,” Risha said as she blew out the lamps between our beds, covering each of us with the rough cotton blankets that smelled faintly of smoke, blood, and an old soap my grandmother would have used.

I stared into the dark, listening to them whisper as they left, trying to figure out a way to convince my sister to trust them. My brain was already foggy with exhaustion.

“I wish that were possible,” Míra mumbled from beside me.

I was pretty certain that was the most honest thing she had said since she had come here.

“
H
ow am
I expected to think straight if you refuse to remove your feet from my face?” I didn’t think I could have said those words with a straight face. I tried, but the laugh still leaked out, deep chuckles I was known for echoing in the still room around us.

The sound was a welcomed accompaniment.

Joclyn looked up from where she lay at the foot of my bed, her eyes peering over the cover of a large leather-bound book that had been recovered from an old school last week.

As her eyes wrinkled in a taunting smile, I could see her intent before it came.

“Joclyn!” I yelled in an attempt to stop her action, and her laugh broke past, the bed underneath us creaking as she continually dodged my poor attempts to push her away, more little toes pushing against my shoulders and face.

“Child!”

She laughed more at my outburst.

“Why must you be so disagreeable?”

“I’m not disagreeable, Uncle,” she gasped out around giggles, still trying to fight me. “I’m entertaining. Admit it.”

“Avoiding required tasks … with feet … is not entertaining.” I wouldn’t admit it, and she knew it. I wasn’t foolish enough to think she would admit anything, either. We had both inherited the same stubbornness. “I will send you back to bed if you don’t cease this!” I yelled, knowing it was hopeless.

“No, you won’t. We have
required tasks,
after all. Besides, I slept last night. You have another twenty hours to put up with me.”

“I guarantee I will be rid of you before then!”

Her laugh increased, her perceived win obvious. Unfortunately for her, she had forgotten I had raised a legion of offspring.

Without warning, I stopped moving, letting her toes press against my cheek before I turned and allowed the stinky little digits right into my mouth. With her toes wiggling against my tongue, I licked them, my teeth holding her firmly in place.

She screamed, loud and playful and panicked.

“Let me go!”

I didn’t know if she was laughing or disgusted. It made me laugh more.

“I’m sorry. What do you want?” I asked, knowing there was no way she could understand me with the large appendage still caught between my teeth.

“Let me go, or I’ll zap you.”

I knew her too well by now to dismiss that the threat, so I loosened my jaw, letting her free.

She scuttled away from me, retreating to the foot of the bed and away from any other possible foot attacks.

“That was gross, Dramin.”

Ah, so she was disgusted. Perfect.

Laughing, I lifted a corner of the blanket, wiping whatever residue was left on my lips, regretting the need to swallow the now foot-flavored saliva.

“Hmmm? And I suppose your stinky, little pigs against my jaw were meant as a sign of endearment, then?”

She wrinkled her nose at my question. “Point taken.” Now she was trying not to laugh, something she was losing at.

“I think I will accept victory for that, then.” A smug smile in place, I grabbed the volume Joclyn had previously been looking over, scanning the words in feigned interest. Unfortunately, it took me a second too long to realize that the book was upside down.

Joclyn’s giggles broke free as I turned the book right side up. I still refused to look at her over the ancient type set.

“If victory required tasting my foot fungus, then you can have it.” With a flip of her hand, Joclyn leaned against the wall by my bed, staring into the darkened room, the lone lantern flickering away in the. Haunting shadows licked against the dark corners, making Thom look more corpse-like than usual.

Idly twisting and fiddling with the long, golden ribbon that was bound in her hair, she began to stretch her legs out again then thought better.

“Smart move. I will have you know, child, that it was worth the victory, foot fungus and all.” Closing the book, I met her gaze, smile for smile. I leaned back, as well, grateful for the residual chuckles that moved over me, joy swelling in my chest.

Joy
was
worth it, even if it did taste faintly of rotten fish and ocean sand. After all, joy came in unseen packages at times. You never knew what you were missing unless you took chances and opened every box.

It might have been an odd box that I had opened, but the rewards were great … if only for this moment of happiness. Dismal misery had dwelled in this room since Thom and I had been placed in here months ago, but it had lifted in the last few minutes.

Part of me wondered if he could feel it, too.

He lay there, surrounded by plants and pills, covered in bandages and salves. His skin looked grayer by the day, hair dirtier, eyes and lips fading to blue.

I doubted he would have shoved anyone’s foot in his mouth, but he would most certainly have something to say about it.

That was the pain in loss—the silence that he had left behind.

We sat in that silence, the flicker of lantern light dimming as the occasional chuckle became farther apart.

“Do you ever scream really loudly, just to see if it will wake him up?” Joclyn asked out of nowhere.

“I can’t say I ever have,” I said. Despite the idea crossing my mind a few times, I wasn’t about to admit that to her.

For all I knew, she was going to try it, anyway. He did look like he was sleeping. At least, he would if I didn’t know for a fact that he slept all curled together with his butt in the air.

You walked in on him once, and you never forgot the imagery, even if it had been forty years ago.

This was a much better look for him.

“I think I’m ready to try again,” Joclyn whispered.

My heart skipped a beat as she pulled us back to the conversation we had been avoiding since Ilyan had left us for some much-needed sleep a few hours ago.

I needed sleep, too. However, I wasn’t quite willing to admit to her how much mortality I had regained.

Tensing, I leaned forward, my hand soft against her knee, pulling her focus back to me. Eyes glistening in the dim lamp light we sat in, I had been ready to give her a slight nod to prod her forward and support her. With that look, though, everything stopped, and my heart became a heavy weight in my chest.

“I want to use Thom,” she said, her eyes alive with a frightening plan. My stomach spun as I realized what she was referring to. “He’s connected to his father. He’s connected to Ovailia. His sights might be able to get me past the barrier since that girl showed up and chased them all away, anyway. I need to see into Imdalind. I need to know what’s going on.”

“Joclyn,” I stopped her, everything twisting around me in a tangle of fear and anger. Knowledge of the girl and why she was here temporarily took away my fear for what she had planned. “He’s not with us. You can’t.”

“I’ve seen the burn on Ilyan’s arm,” she interrupted, looking away from me and back at Thom’s still body. “I know how you tried to see using me. I know how Ilyan pulled me out of that hell.”

“Thom is not trapped in a dream, Silnỳ.” The use of the title made her flinch, but I plowed on, keeping my hand against her knee, visibly shaking, the reverberation of my heart making it hard to control. “He is sick.”

“So was I. So were you. So was Míra. There was sight in all of us.” Leaping from the bed, she stood, hesitant to move closer, as though she were afraid to wake him.

“There
is
sight in all of us,” I corrected her with the familiar phrase all Draks were raised with, knowing it was fodder for her.

Sure enough, she turned back to me, that familiar coy smile on her face, one so similar to one of my younger daughters that it was hard to breathe. Her face was so clear in my mind. I didn’t know how I had missed the similarity between Joclyn and Tearney, all except for the eyes.

“You always told me to follow my magic, brother. You always told me never to second-guess. It saved you. It knew about Sain. It brought Ryland back. And it’s telling me that there is something inside of Thom that I need.”

One last glance and I knew couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t say anything that would hinder her plans. I didn’t want to. She was right.

“If I leave you with anything in this life, I am glad it’s that,” I mused, my heart tensing at the truth Joclyn still didn’t know. “I am happy you listened.”

“I do that sometimes,” she teased, grabbing a stone mug almost as old as I from my bookcase before carrying it toward her brother-in-law. Her dark hair fell down her back, the golden ribbon snaking over the floor.

Sitting up farther, I threw my blankets off, dangling my legs over the side of the bed as my heart pounded and pulsed. I needed to go to her, to help her, to join her.

However, with the way she held herself, the way she looked at him, she didn’t need me. She knew what she was doing, her magic guiding her.

Her hands gentle, she lifted the blanket from over his feet, folding it away to reveal the yards of bandage wrapped skin that covered him. A single stretch of unscarred flesh was visible above his ankle, skin that would be burned and scalding in minutes.

The deep sound of Thom’s breathing was the solitary sound as she stood, frozen before him, the mug and her hand inches away from their mark. Inches from sight.

I tensed, forgetting how to breathe as I waited for her to connect with his Drak, to connect with his time.

Eyes focused on Thom, she poured the murky water into her palm, letting it flow over her skin like rain before it dripped onto the floor in puddles at her feet. The sound filled the room before she pressed her palm against the skin on Thom’s ankle, connecting her magic, her flesh with his.

Heart pounding from the memory of the strength of those connections, longing for the return, I gasped as she did. The frantic intake of air was so loud I expected Thom to sit up from the pain. Yet he remained still, as dead and lifeless as he had been for months, not even a flinch from the magic that now infiltrated him.

“Joclyn,” I gasped, knowing she couldn’t hear me.

Her eyes were already wrapped in the pitch black of prescience, staring into the future with a power and regality that I had seen from the moment I had laid eyes on the panicked child in the snow.

A power beyond even what I had seen in my father, seen in any Drak, emanated from her. It shimmered in the air like a wave of smoke, washing over me in a force that sucked the air out of my chest.

I’d had hundreds of children, thousands of grandchildren. I loved them all, was proud of them all. But seeing my sister—no, seeing the queen before me—filled my heart more than any other.

“There is darkness here,” she said, her voice lost in the depth of the Drak, hollow with the sight of the future.

At the sound, I jumped out of my skin with a gasp and leaned forward, desperate to hear more, not caring if I fell off the rickety old bed.

“It was created by him, and when the light comes, there will be blood. Be ready. The battle comes quickly.”

I stared at the black of her eyes, trying very hard to ignore the tinge of jealousy that filled me, the desire to see again still burning a hole in my soul.

The black faded as the ache began to devour me, pulling me out of my own self-deprecation.

“What is it?” My question was little more than air whispered over the stagnant silence of the room.

“There is so much death, Dramin,” she gasped, her hand falling from Thom’s ankle as she collapsed to her knees. “So much blackness.”

Tensing, my heart ached at the sight of her breaking before me. I wished I could find a way to comfort her. I knew of the black she referred to, the hollow confusion her sight had become since that sight with Míra. It was yet another mystery to her ability that drove us both mad.

“Is he dead?” I hated asking the question and was unsure what person I was even referring to.

Edmund.

Thom.

Sain.

Ilyan.

Me.

I knew she had seen them all. It could have been any of them. I had a feeling any of them would hurt.

She pulled her shoulders up to her neck, dropping her head as she curled into herself. Time stretched between us as the silence grew, pressing against my chest and making everything spin.

“Joclyn,” I whispered, my hands shaking against the edge of the bed, attempting to lift my weight so I could get to her.

“Everything keeps shifting,” she finally responded, her voice dead. “Thom’s alive. Ilyan’s dead. Míra’s there. Wyn’s not. One thing is clear.” She looked at me, her meaning transparent.

My death was consistent in her sights. Only my death remained the same. It was hard not to admit I was eager for that end. It was hard not to tell her how close that end really was.

I knew of the sight she had seen with the girl, seeing her walk toward Thom. Joclyn, however, did not know what I had been told in that pure white sight about the girl, about how it would be my last duty to destroy her in order to save Thom.

I was ready. I simply hoped he lived after whatever happened to me. I hoped he found happiness and lived the life he had earned.

“And Thom?” I asked.

“He is there more than not.”

My tension eased as she nodded, pulling the blanket back over his now burned foot.

“At least he has a chance.”

I sighed, thinking of the memory of my last true sight, of the haunted voice, and of the little girl I was supposed to stop, whom I was supposed to kill.

Joclyn nodded in agreement, her dark hair falling around her as her focus shifted back to Thom, his breathing still a slow, steady pace.

“I thought knowing everything was a curse …”

“Sometimes, the not knowing is worse,” I finished the thought for her, knowing for the first time in my life how both sides of this morose coin felt.

I wasn’t convinced I wanted either.

“And to think, you lived in such savagery for so long.” I smiled to myself, the joke not lost on her as I reached toward the large mug on my nightstand. The knowledge of the burn this would give me caused my hand to shake, yet I didn’t care.

“How do mortals do it?” Joclyn teased before lifting her own mug to her lips, freezing halfway through the motion. “Thom is alive more than not …”