Dawn of Ash (33 page)

“Now I am here,” I whispered, the palm of my hand running over the crown of her head with a comforting weight that even she seemed to respond to. I was kind of enjoying having her against me, enjoying the ability to run my fingers through her hair. To smell her.

“Where did you find the blade?” Cail asked after a moment, his voice tender as he pulled me away from the partial nirvana I had found.

“Inside of Ryland,” I whispered, my heart tensing with the fear that inhibited the memory. “I could hear Rosy call for me.”

“So one of the five…” He sounded like he was talking to himself.

“Five?” I asked, not following what he was saying.

“Yes.” His dark eyes pierced mine as I met his gaze, the intensity of them frightening me for a moment.

I inhaled sharply out of habit, glad when his lip twitched enough to remind me of the brother I knew and loved.

“I’m assuming you want to release us,” he finally said, his calm voice putting words to my unanswered questions.

“Well, that’s the plan, yes.”

“Then you will need all of the fragments of the Souls Blade. You have to put it back together.”

“You sound like you are sending me on some epic video game quest.” I could barely keep the laugh in.

He couldn’t.

“Maybe I am.” His deep chuckle bounced around the smoke trees that surrounded us, sending the distorted trunks into some kind of belly dance.

“Well, if that’s the case, I am going to need a better weapon. Maybe I can find one in a cave that’s guarded by a dragon.”

“He’s inside,” Rosy whispered from where she lay on top of me, her tiny proclamation pulling me out of my musing. “I’m trying to find Ilyan or Ryland so they can help.”

“How long do we have?” Cail asked, his body rising above us as the trees distorted and swayed with the movement.

The mood of our casual family soul picnic was shattered by the sharp reality. Not that it had really gone anywhere, but it was definitely pressing against me painfully now.

I tried to keep my fear inside, but it wasn’t working. Rosy was tensing, her heart thundering against mine, her tiny fingers gripping my clothes in obvious fear that I would have to go. That was exactly what was about to happen.

“Where are the blades? Where are the other pieces?” I asked, my heart fracturing with the knowledge of what was about to happen.

“You have Ryland’s. The other ones I know of are inside Ovailia and Sain. There used to be one in me, but I have no idea what he would have done with it. And there is another that went missing about the same time you and Thom left that compound. So if you don’t know where it is…” He faded off, obviously not wanting to say anything in front of Rosy, not that I blamed him. But it also wasn’t like I could go up and ask Thom if he knew where a shard of our daughter’s soul was.

I had to find another way.

I nodded in understanding, trying to ignore the pain steadily building in my chest, when Rosy screamed, her tiny body lifting off mine for the first time to look at me, her eyes mad and horrified.

“Rosaline?” I asked, too scared to hear the answer.

“You have to fight him, too, now, Mommy. You have to go.”

They were simple words, but they cut through me. I had known from the beginning I couldn’t stay there with them, so I wasn’t sure why hearing it repeated back to me was so painful. Why I was fighting against it.

“But I—”

“You have to go,” she sobbed, her eyes glistening with so many tears she probably couldn’t see through them. “You have to save Daddy.” Her voice was heavy, the dead panic resonating loudly.

I could barely breathe.

Daddy.

“Thom?” I asked, pushing the long strands of hair out of her face. “What’s wrong, darling?”

Rosaline bit her lip as she looked at me, her eyes wide in a greater fear than I had ever seen. It reminded me so much of those last moments that I gasped, a sharp pain rocking through my chest as I fought back the horror, fought back the scream, and braced myself for the plea of help that would come from her blood-soaked body.

But it was just my little girl, my child wrapped in my arms, my child as innocent as Thom and I had tried to keep her until the end.

“Honey,” I tried again, “what’s wrong with Daddy?”

“Grandpa is trying to make you kill him,” she gasped, her eyes refocusing on me. “You have to save him. You have to go.”

I looked from her to Cail in confusion. For once, Cail looked as confused as I was. However, he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at her, the little girl who clung to me, her hands wrapped around my arms so tightly she was most likely going to leave marks.

“Can you get her out of here?” Cail asked, his seemingly complicated question directed to the tiny child I held. “Will he stop you?”

“He can try,” she said, her face turning up in the same mischievous grin Cail always had. I had forgotten how much she had always adored and idolized him until that moment. “No one can stop me anymore.” She smiled at him, a defiance I had never seen in her sparking behind her eyes. It was a look I had seen a million times before, but not in her or Cail. I had seen it in me. It was something that even my brother did not miss.

“She is your daughter, Wyn.”

“I know.” I didn’t think I could get any more than those two delighted words out.

Rosy looked back at me, the power in her eyes mounting as she pressed her hand to my cheek, her lips soft as she kissed my nose again.

“You won’t be able to come back here. I’ll keep fighting him, but you have to fight now, too. Just remember what’s real.” It seemed like such an adult thing to say, and it caught me off guard.

I looked from her to Cail in some hope of answer, but neither said a word. They looked at me with a combination of fear and support.

“I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you, too, darling.”

“Say hello to Daddy for me.”

And then she was gone.

The calm of the forest was gone. The comfort of her touch was gone. The companionship of my brother was gone. And I was left staring at the same war torn world as before, when I had walked toward Edmund without control. Except, I couldn’t see straight, everything shifting. Everything faded in and out of focus as though they were bathed in a heavy curtain of smoke.

I was surrounded by it, surrounded by this uncomfortable heaviness that made it hard to think. Everything fluctuated before me as though I had drunk far too much Slivovica. It was too much.

It was darkness and confusion and a screaming that never stopped.

I didn’t know where it was coming from or why. For all I knew, it was coming from me, that the haunting, somewhat musical, sounds of terror were mine.

The disorientation of that was terrifying.

I tried to focus, tried to make sense of it as my shifting vision turned to a door I knew all too well, a door that swung open to reveal a man I had hovered over for month, a man I had been forced to watch slowly die.

“You have to save Daddy!” her shout echoed through me as if she was standing right beside me, something I couldn’t completely discount. “Fight him!”

The walls shivered as I took a step forward, my motions uncontrolled, the forceful movements jutting through me as my hand rose toward Thom.

“You have to save Daddy!”

No!

The word was a tiny spark inside my head as the magic grew, the powerful heat of it triggering a knowledge and a control that surprised me. My magic, my soul, they were connected.

I felt the power grow as my consciousness did, raging through me as the black void flashed before me. The spot of black was gone before the room came again, the walls and surroundings vibrating so badly that, for all I knew, the earth had begun to shake, the earth had turned to liquid.

No!

The call was a shout inside my mind, a determination to keep fighting. It was then that I realized the desperate call was not mine, but that of another. One who was very quickly losing control.

Edmund.

No!
It came again.

This time, I laughed.

I laughed as the shaking surrounded me, as the world came into focus, as I ran from Thom, everything drifting from black to grey until there was only black.

The burn was more than I could fathom.

I had spent the last thousand years avoiding this never-ending pain, since the night the black water had licked against my chest, creating long, red lashes that never healed. The pain had gotten worse with each burn, with each drop the black water had littered against my body. The palm I had burned getting the water into Joclyn in a moment of life or death, the welt on my arm from trying to save her, each one had branded me. Now they burned with a deeper agony than I had ever felt, an acute pain that was ripping me apart as I willingly followed it, as I let it devour me.

I followed the burn as I held Joclyn against me, her panic moving through me, her heart beating against mine. A burning force spread to every inch of me, tensing my muscles, tightening in my stomach. It grew until all I could feel was the heat that had encompassed my body, the intensity of it not just mine, but hers, as well.

The pain was us.

The magic was us.

It was everywhere.

I couldn’t stop screaming. I couldn’t escape it.

And then it was gone.

Gone in one numbing blast, leaving me with the shadow of the Black Water and the familiar warmth of Joclyn’s magic against my soul.

There was nothing else. No screams. No panic from my brother. I couldn’t even physically feel Joclyn where I held her against me.

Heart thundering in my chest, I opened my eyes, expecting to see the calm silver of hers, expecting this nightmare she had been trapped in for the last few hours to be gone, for everything to be okay.

However, she wasn’t there. Nothing was there, nothing except a different nightmare, one I hadn’t expected and couldn’t understand.

I wasn’t even sure where I was.

I was surrounded by white, my consciousness thrust into a void, a rip in time where nothing existed except me.

Everything intensified in unrequited panic as I spun on the spot, desperate to find her, to find anything that would clue me in to what had happened. Nothing was there.

Simply air and space.

“Joclyn!” I yelled, dread growing as I searched for my mate. My magic stretched away from me in a frantic need to find her, my hands grasping through the white space before me as though her sleeping body would be hidden beyond what I could see.

Nothing.

“Joclyn!”

No answer.

Thinking from beginning to end over everything that had happened, my mind ran on overdrive as my heart thundered in my ears, the sound slowing down as it faded to a low buzzing that echoed around me like a hive of bees.

“Joclyn?” I said again as her magic filled me, the slow burn so familiar my agitation calmed with the knowledge she was there. She was close.

“Joclyn?” I called again, trying to follow the pull of her magic, trying to find her. Still, nothing. Nothing to follow, just the familiar heat of her, the usual pull coming from somewhere deep inside of me. The immense wall of her power was so strong I couldn’t even feel my own anymore.

She was all there was.

“Joclyn,” I gasped as I collapsed to the ground, the demands of her magic so intense I was certain I would be strangled by it.

“Hello.” A child’s voice blossomed out of the white nothing like a gentle lullaby, jolting me out of my alarm as the weight of Joclyn’s magic restrained me.

“Joclyn?” I asked hesitantly even though I knew it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her voice, yet I knew it was familiar.

“Hello.” The warmth of Joclyn’s magic pulled at me as the child spoke, an unfamiliar heat moving alongside it, moving through it like a shadow.

“Hello?” I looked up, hoping to see the child or some other creature standing before me. But there was nothing.

“Hello.”

With a start, I realized the voice was seeping through me from the unfamiliar magic I had felt a moment before, a magic so close to Joclyn’s I couldn’t tell the difference. The two powers spiraled throughout me as if they were somehow connected.