Dawn of Ash (14 page)

It was the cloaked figure right before me, exactly as it had been for the last month, flitting in and out of my sights in a horrifying parade of faces and purposes.

Except, this time, it was not sight. It was reality. It was a terrorizing reality I needed answers to. I couldn’t let them get away.

We had been close in the graveyard, and now he was right in front of us.

Inches from me.

The fabric rippled before me as the figure ran, frantic to escape, Ilyan feet from them.

They couldn’t get away.

Then, with a faint pop, they were gone. Disappeared into thin air.

“No!” I screamed as they left, my hand millimeters from pulling the cloak from their head, Ilyan inches from tackling them, the violet stream of his attack still moving uselessly into the darkness.

Moving right into me.

Ilyan and I shouted in unison. I sidestepped as he pushed a wave of counter magic after his attack, the black smoke swallowing it whole. I knew it was pointless, magical attacks didn’t work against mated pairs, but even though it wouldn’t hamper me, it would still hurt. I wasn’t in the mood for crippling pain right then, not with what had happened.

Not with what I still needed to do.

I needed to find out where they had stuttered to. We needed to catch up before it was too late, before we lost them.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, my magic stretching away from me, spreading through the city as I moved on to my next task without hesitation—desperately searching for any trace of the magic I had been tracking, eager to catch them. We were so close. I couldn’t let them get away.

I tried to control my breathing as the deep vein of the earth’s magic filled me, the force of it so much stronger than I had ever felt. My body swayed abruptly as it filled me, as my power reacted to it in a frightening wave of power.

At any other time, I would have embraced it, would have pulled it into me, but the power was too much. Besides, it wasn’t the heavy power of the earth I was interested in. It was the residue of the magic left behind, the vile and distorted power that we had been tracking.

“Can you feel them, mi lasko?” Ilyan whispered from beside me, his hand winding around my waist as he leaned against me, his chest pressing into my back, his magic filling me.

The addition of his power bolstered me with the supportive warmth I craved. The joining of our magic was a surge of energy that seemed unstoppable at times.

Closing my eyes, I let my magic move, speeding through the city, through streets I had never seen, through houses that lay in ruins, my mind, my magic searching for any trace of the cloaked man, of where he had gone.

Every other time he had stuttered, it was a quick search, but this time, he was gone.

“Nothing,” I said, my shoulders sagging. Ilyan’s arm continued to hold me against him as my eyes snapped open to the street before us. “There is nothing left.”

It was as Ilyan had told me long ago—stutters left nothing behind. I could find nothing. Although Edmund could somehow track that magic past the blackness of a stutter, that ability obviously did not lie with me.

“Nothing?” he asked, his voice shaking in my ear before he moved away from me, his hand still resting on my hip.

“No, I can’t follow the stutter,” I said slowly, the harsh reality of what had really happened slowly sinking in. “It’s like they … left.”

“Through the barrier,” Ilyan said slowly, his mind following right along with mine. “Someone can stutter through the barrier.”

Ilyan’s awe and dread moved through me, the emotion strong and frightening, and for good reason. It was more than a stutter; it was someone who could stutter through Edmund’s fish bowl.

It was something we had tried multiple times, all without success, but … someone could. No, not just someone. And not just the cloaked man, either.

“No, Ilyan, one of Edmund’s men can move through the wall,” I corrected, and Ilyan froze. My forehead wrinkled as deeply as his did. “It wasn’t Edmund, but the magic required…”

My open question faded into the darkness as Ilyan turned away, the muscles in his shoulders tensing as his temper pulsed through me. His thoughts moved so fast I couldn’t hope to keep up with them.

“He’s done something to them. Whatever he did to those Vilỳs, he’s mutated their magic, strengthened it. Strengthened them.” He turned back to me, the quick movement making me jump.

“Do you think it was one of his Chosen?” I asked, not wanting to think about those poor people Edmund had destroyed.

The Chosen we had found in the first few days after the ambush had seemed … normal. I had been able to remove the tainted magic and save them. But the more time went on, the less human those bitten by Edmund’s Vilỳs became.

We had found a few survivors over the last few days, and what those Vilỳs had done to them still twisted my stomach. No matter how hard I tried, I hadn’t been able to help them. The truth of what Edmund had done sickened me.

“It could be, or it could be someone who is working for him.” Ilyan’s thoughts stabilized as he spoke, images flooding into me as his mind moved someplace we had visited many times before.

But with no proof, with no real evidence against him besides him being a disagreeable, old man, we couldn’t do anything.

Not unless we found proof.

“We need to get back,” he announced, his voice heavy with the same authoritative tone I had gotten used to when he went into war mode. “We need to do a count, find out if someone’s missing.”

“You mean we need to check to see if Sain is there.” My voice was hard, the anger that always erupted at his name taking over.

“Yes,” he agreed, his bright blue eyes meeting mine with a whip of energy. “It might be what we need.”

My heart pulsed heavily as I looked at him, my hands in tight fists around the soft fabric of my jeans.

He was right. After months of waiting, of having our hands tied behind our backs, we might have something. If that was Sain, then Sain wouldn’t be at the cathedral…

Everyone might tell me I was overreacting, but I couldn’t trust him. I doubted I ever would, not while he was telling everyone I was an undead, bleeding puss nugget.

Or whatever he was doing.

Ilyan’s lips twitched at that, his hand moving quickly as he took a step toward me and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me into him.

You’re not an undead, bleeding puss nugget.

And you’re not the king of France.

“Well, not now. Many years ago, however…” he said with a smile, the emotion fading quickly into a pained grimace as the deep stress of what we were really facing plowed into us.

I cringed against it, leaning against him.

“We need to go,” I gasped, not only because of the urgency of the task before us, but because of the painful wave of magic that had moved through me. The heavy heat that spelled danger.

With one quick sweep, I felt them. At least twenty of Edmund’s men were one street over, looking for us.

I was sure it was no coincidence they had chosen this exact spot at this exact time to attempt to stage an ambush.

Pulling away from Ilyan enough to see him, I felt his body tense beside mine, tension rippling through me as it did him. I could feel his need to attack them, to catch them, to try to glean some information out of them.

If only there was time…

My chest heaved as I fell back into him, apprehension winding through my spine in a need to leave.

We had one chance to catch Sain. We couldn’t waste it.

“There’s no time. We have to go,” I reminded him.

He nodded then wrapped his arms around me as his magic swelled, ready to pull us back into the void. With a gentle kiss against the skin of my forehead, my magic reached to meet his. The colored specks of light were triggered in the darkness that surrounded us as the army of Trpaslíks rounded the corner and Ilyan’s magic pulled us into the void, away from the striking ribbons of colorful magic that would have brought us death.

Everything tightened as we were pulled into the usual suction cup of pressure the void held, my heart tensing in preparation for the pain, for the black.

Except, everything was different this time.

The tense pressure I was used to was gone, my body calm in a space that felt more open, more alive. More than that, it didn’t end. A stutter that usually took seconds stretched on, my anxiety and confusion growing as I tried to understand what was happening.

Forcing my eyes open, I expected the black of nothing, expected to be trapped and lost.

And alone.

But I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t in the dark.

Ilyan still held me against him, his hair flowing around him, eyes closed, and face at peace. He was beautiful, frozen as he was in the space between time.

I could have gazed at him until we returned to Prague, let him be my anchor to the disorientation that was still plaguing me. Nonetheless, something else pulled my attention and slammed into my chest like a ton of bricks.

It was my magic.

It was ribbons of smoke and color that stretched away from me like cloth and air. It felt the same as every time I spread the magic from me, as every time I used the sight.

But this time, I could see it.

I could see the tendrils of my ability. I could see ribbons of sight that played the past and future like a movie reel.

I watched them move away from me in awe, a heavy vise squeezing my body and threatening to collapse me. My legs lost all feeling as Ilyan held me against him, his body frozen in this odd, suspended space.

As my head spun, the ribbons of sight shifted, their movements speeding up into a blur I couldn’t focus through. Heart pounding, I clung to Ilyan, gasping for breath, watching the vivid pattern of light and dark. Everything spun; everything moved so quickly I wasn’t sure which way was up or down or what was happening … until it stopped.

The movement ceased as though someone had pressed stop, leaving Ilyan and I hovering amongst lines of color so vibrant and brilliant I was sure I had never seen anything so beautiful before, not even in the world I had been raised in.

Staring at them, mouth agape, I watched the strings of never-ending colors stretch through the tunnel in tessellating motions of sound. I watched sight, watched life, watched sound that stretched beyond us, before us, and behind us. It was like we were trapped in them, like we were moving through them.

Staring at them, my head spun more, the heavy weight of what I now recognized as sight pressing against my chest.

A sight.

Could this be sight?
I wondered. A sight inside of a stutter? The thought was as ridiculous and far-fetched as a bad sci-fi movie, but I couldn’t shake it.

Although, what my magic would be trying to show me here, I did not know. It was nothing more than color, nothing more than wavering lines that surrounded us, moved around us.

Before I could look further, the colors faded to nothing, spiraling into the ebony abyss that surrounded us. The pressure of the stutter slammed against me in disorienting dizziness as we were pulled out of the void and back into reality.

The end of the stutter jerked through me like paper and tape pulled away from one another, too much of me left behind in the void, too much of the void left behind in me. It stuck to my bones and made my spine ache.

Attempting to focus on the world I was surrounded by, I was assaulted by everything revolving, shifting. I could barely make out the church, could barely see the great archway to the left.

I was certain there were people in front of me, but even that was twisted and undistinguishable behind the ember burn now blocking my vision, the red and black of my sight growing darker.

It encompassed me with an intensity I hadn’t felt since the first time I used my sight in the cave in Italy.

The cobbles against my knees were the last things I felt as I collapsed to the ground, Ilyan’s hand a hard pressure against my back as he tried to support me, his magic attempting to connect with mine. I felt the power, felt the heat of it, only to be met with a wall of sight so powerful I screamed as the world within my sight did, as everything turned to red and fire and death.

My world was sight: past, present, and confusion.

The red city swam below me, my vision drifting lazily from above the rooftops as though I was attached to the belly of an airplane. Watching with thundering anticipation, I waited for the bomb to fall, waited for the city to burn.

Instead of what I had always seen, however, I continued flying right through the barrier, into a world shrouded with a deep blue sky and covered with a blanket of white snow.

My sight had never taken me beyond Edmund’s barricade before. Even when I had tried, I had never been able to penetrate its surface. My magic had been as trapped as we were.

Now, as I flew through the bitter wind, snowflakes falling over me in wet, little specks that shook through my spine, I could see. What was more, I could
feel.
I could feel the cold, feel the wet. I knew they were not there, because I could still feel the hard, cobbled courtyard against my knees and hear the voices of whoever was at the church, mumbling over us like a garbled song.