Dawn of Ash (24 page)

I had seen this vision before. It was familiar. Except, this time, it wasn’t. This time, Edmund’s red barrier was gone, and the peaceful yellow sun hovered over the city as if it wasn’t being eaten by ash and flame.

Watching in fearful awe, I pulled out the differences, watching the city die as my heart raced. The speed increased as the sight shifted to that of an army thousands strong, marching into the streets of Prague as it burned. The sound of their march echoed through my sight, reverberating off my panic, the heavy pace divergent to the gentle snow falling over where Ilyan and I stood on top of a distant mount, surrounded by a dozen tattered people.

Huddled together in the chill of the snow, we stood, watching the army, waiting for an attack we knew we could not win.

Then, with a painful ache, with a rip that spread through my chest in agony, I saw what I had missed before: the mound of dirt behind where we stood, the single red rose resting upon a fresh grave.

It was then I noticed who was missing from our ragged army.

With my heart breaking, my sight accelerated, spinning as everything reversed. Again, I saw the death of my beloved brother, the handkerchief placed on his face, and the bright red blood that spread over it. I saw his body placed in that grave behind were everyone stood.

Shovelfuls of dirt fell over him, one after another. It was then that the snow that fell over us shifted and changed, the delicate white flakes mutating to heavy wet drops of the deepest crimson. The color cascaded over us all, staining our faces, our skin, our clothes. It asphyxiated us in the smell of iron, each drop mirroring the emotional agony of my heart that I could never hope to explain.

No one moved; they just let it cover them until everything was red and white.

I waited for the sight to continue, desperate for it to end. Instead, I remained trapped in the blood-soaked brilliance as a voice broke through the vision like shattered glass, my heart seizing at the proximity.

“Oh, Ilyan is going to kill me.”

Wyn’s voice was clear, the Czech vibrant, but it wasn’t part of the prediction. It wasn’t something within the vision that my magic was giving me. It was real. It was reality.

The two had never mixed so clearly before.

I knew she was next to me, but I couldn’t see her. I saw nothing except the sight that stormed through the fire in my eyes.

Images flashed in a quick and vibrant succession, moving faster as my horror amplified. My confusion as to what was happening was so heavy I couldn’t focus on the future playing before me.

With a jolt, her hand pulled against my arm as the hot air of the cathedral ran over my skin, and I could smell the familiar aroma of smoke from a magical explosion taking the place of the iron and blood.

I was aware.

I could feel it all.

And yet, I couldn’t see. I was still within the sight.

For the first time, I was in two places—fully aware of the world yet still trapped in the paralyzing sights that continued to move faster. The images were more violent than anything I had seen before.

“Joclyn?” Wyn’s voice broke through the divination as something shifted, as the sight began to change and slow.

Just as before, when Wyn’s magic had burned through me, I saw her covered in blood as she knelt beside Ryland. This time, however, I saw clearly what was lying in the pool of blood in her palm.

It looked like rock, the jagged fragment a little larger than the size of a thumb, the deep red color vibrant even against the sheen of Ryland’s blood.

The whispers of my magic screamed in horror as I watched the heavy fluid drip over her fingertips like a leaky faucet. With wide eyes, she stared at it, the greed on her face growing into a type of awe I had never seen in her.

The fear in me increased as the deep Drak magic screamed inside, as it pulled and begged and warned me of something that frightened me more than the double reality I was trapped in.

The Soul’s Blade.

I had heard of it. I knew what it could do. I didn’t want to believe the dark magic it held. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing since so much of what my prescience had shown me had been broken.

The sight shifted with a snap, my chest tensing from the abruptness of it. Now there was an image of her with the blade, kneeling over a bloodied body, the jagged thing protruding from her hand. Another snap, another jolt and now she was in a foreign forest, hunting something I was certain was also hunting her.

Sight after sight came, raging through me as the warning flowed heavier.

“Give me,” I gasped, unaware if the words had actually broken through the sight and made it out of my throat. “Give it to me…” I looked toward her, gasping from the pull of the magic, knowing she had the blade on her.

“
Stop her
!” The same unfamiliar voice that had haunted my sights came again. Its meaning was clear, the warning obvious.

I had to change this.

My mouth opened in a wide, panicked scream as my sight shifted to the image of Wyn, her short frame standing tall before me in the middle of the cathedral, just as she had a moment ago—before the fire, before the sights. She stood there, yet her image was distorted, shrouded in the shadow of sight. The reality of my friend before me was overlaid with that of precognition. Bright flashes of her with the blade, her fighting, and Edmund smothered the image of the real world as if the magic of the Drak was projecting itself over reality.

“Wyn,” I said, my voice distorted as it moved through the sight, the depth of it similar to the voice I had heard within my sights so many times before. “You need to give me the blade. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

I reached toward her again, reaching through the sight of a bridge crumbling into a river, the image swirling through the air like smoke. My fingers clawed at her, desperate for her to see, desperate to stop her from doing this, from going down that path. I couldn’t.

“No!” she screamed at me as she stepped away, her magic flaring in a tangible wave of warning.

I gasped, the magic feeling like a wave of water smashing against me, the power of it sucking the air out of my chest. I tried to regain my strength, to regain my breath, but neither came while my heart pounded with more urgency, more desperation. I needed to stop this.

“Wyn, please.”

I barely got the words out before I watched her jerk again, the movement twisted as she jumped, a dark cloud moving over her eyes with a hatred and animosity I didn’t think I had ever seen before.

I saw her mouth move, but no words came out. The shadowed overlay of sight pulled her in and out of focus, her anger blended with the image of Ilyan’s death, the same haunting vision that had been stalking me coming to full force.

Blood flowing over rocks, away from his lifeless hand, his eyes lost and forgotten. I stared at it, wishing I could look anywhere else, wishing I could see anything else. However, it was death or the blade. It was all connected.

“Wyn,” I gasped, a heavy desperation leaking through me as the sight that was bleeding through reality shifted. The image of my best friend spread and fluctuated before me, as if there were two of them—one who raised her hand toward me before the other one did.

I felt my magic flare in fear, my heart racing as I looked into the face of what Wyn used to be, who she was raised to be. For the first time, I saw the eyes of a killer and instantly knew what she was going to do.

What she wanted to do.

“No!” she screamed, the sound ringing over the cathedral as I tried to scoot away from the attack that spread from her hand.

I watched as the distorted mirrors attacked me in turn, one after another: first my sight then my reality.

My sight gave me a perfect warning of what was coming.

I should have been awed. I should have been amazed at what was happening. However, I couldn’t think past the terror gripping me. The fright was a debilitating force as I struggled to move my weak body away from an attack I was positive would kill me.

Ilyan!
I screamed his name, trying to focus on the broken world before me, trying to dodge my friend as she attacked again, the powerful blast hitting against the stone I had been sitting on moments before.

“Wyn!” I tried again. “You must give it to me … You can’t—”

“No!” she screamed, another blast rumbling around me. This one was so close I could feel its heat against my leg, could smell the singed jeans.

I could barely focus on what was going on in front of me. The overlay of sight became confusing at it altered even further, her motions moving forward and back in quick succession.

“You can’t have it!” she yelled, another attack moving toward me.

My joints seized in agonizing strain as they tried to fight the weight that sight always gave me.

“You can’t have my daughter!”

Joclyn!
Ilyan’s fear filled me as his voice did.

My sight shifted yet again, pulling away the superimposed image of my friend and taking me right to where my mate was, his terrified face clear as he stood still in what looked to be an abandoned department store.

Ilyan!
I called again as another attack sped from my friend. Without the warning, there was no way I could move fast enough, no way I could have dodged.

Violent waves of heat ripped through me, the magic ripping through my flesh, convincing me I was being torn in two. I could feel the warm blood spread over my skin. I could smell it.

“You can’t have her!” she yelled again, the sound of her anger barely distinguishable above my agonizing screams. The sound mixed with the heat of her attack in a pressurized agony.

I clawed at it. I screamed louder, certain my head was about to implode, rivers of warm wetness flowing from my ears.

“Help!” I screamed, knowing it was no use.

I pried my eyes open, only to face her retreating back as she ran out of the cathedral at a high sprint, the sound of her retreat drowned by my screams.

“Ilyan!”

Her back was the last thing I saw before I collapsed to the ground in a ball of agony.

The sights took control with more strength, more force than I had ever felt. Sight after sight flashed before my eyes. The strength of them grew with each image until they were embedded in my soul, speaking to me, a part of me, as if they were
me
.

Before, I always looked into the visions. The visions always took me to what I needed to see. Right then, the sight surrounded me. It was a piece of reality, and I was a piece of it.

Ilyan,
I gasped, practically screaming his name in my desperation to get his attention from where he and Risha were off surveying another part of the city.

Nothing came in return. No sound. No response. Not even the whisper of the fear I had felt moments ago. I lay there, paralyzed by the agonizing pressure in my bones that mixed with the weight of the visions until I could barely think. I lay, helpless, watching the images of children laughing in a field turn into strips of a grey-green sky.

Lifting my head toward the door, I took a heaving breath, trying to think, trying to find a way out, desperate to push my way out of the sight enough so I could move, so I could see where I was going. The sky faded to the cathedral I was trapped in, the two images casting shadows over one another, making it hard to know what was real and what was sight.

The large chapel was full of ancient pews and men in long robes while women cowered in fear of a god they didn’t understand. They moved around me, apparitions of smoke and past, people of a time long forgotten, surrounding me as though they were real.

“Ilyan,” I gasped aloud as I watched them, watched as time shifted.

The robed men were replaced with Victorian women in high lace collars and frilled dresses. A tall lady with her hair in curls walked past me, a white parasol flung over her shoulder. I looked from her to a child in knickers and a cap who ran away from a very haggard looking nun. A chill of ice rippled up my spine as he ran right through me, his body swirling into wisps of smoke at the collision.

“Ilyan!”

My arms gave way as I crumpled to the floor with such force my face compacted with tile in a thwack that resounded through my skull. The pain of before increased, the strain so much now I could barely think through it.

For a moment, I worried that what was before me was based more on injury than magic until the same booming voice of before crashed through the pain and took the last of it away, letting me see the past as it was, letting me feel the future.

“This is sight. This is real. This is pure,” the unfamiliar woman said, the loud boom crashing through me as the sights did.

“Ilyan,” I gasped, anxious to hear him now.

Joclyn!
With a boom, his voice broke through the sight, broke through my mind in a rush of panic.

I relaxed at the sound, at the flutters of his magic that I felt moving through me, only to have them leave again, the connection breaking up like a flickering light bulb.

Where …? Are … okay …?

His questions faded to nothing as the sight gained control, the magic coming on so fast I screamed with the force of it, the strength of the vision suffocating.

A man, Edmund maybe, holding a baby as he stood near an ocean. It was calm, relaxing, yet my body didn’t feel the emotion. I didn’t feel the cool air of the sea. I felt heat, felt the heavy thump of fear that moved through my chest. I couldn’t ignore the fear that perhaps he was going to throw the wriggling infant into the ocean.

The vision faded back into the distorted haze of the cathedral I was in, and this time, my sight showed me the medieval workers who had built the magnificent building and Ilyan standing before me as he worked amongst them. His hair was short as I had seen it before, his face spread with a wide smile as he lifted the massive stones.

Ilyan.
I wasn’t certain whom I was calling to: the man before me or the man in reality. It didn’t matter; neither answered.

“You must move.” That voice came again, the foreign familiarity of it frightening.