Imdalind Ruby Collection One: Kiss of Fire | Eyes of Ember | Scorched Treachery

by Ethington, Rebecca

  “Jos,” Wyn sighed, “Ovailia is looking into it. If she had found something, she would have told him, right?”

  Ovailia should have told him even if she didn’t think she had ‘found something.’ Something wasn’t right. My heart ached and beat uncomfortably. I didn’t like things being kept from me, and these were the worst types of things; things that affected me. To make it worse, not only were things being kept from me, but from Ilyan as well. I needed answers, and being stuck in this apartment was limiting my resources.

  “Can I...” I was going to regret this. “Can I speak to Ovailia?”

  “Why?” Wyn asked, worried. I didn’t blame her, being around Ovailia was uncomfortable enough, asking about something like this was sure to be an unpleasant experience.

  “Because I need to hear it from her, and I have something else to ask her anyway.” I said, quickly stringing together one worry with another.

  “Ilyan will be very upset if you go behind his back,” Talon warned, his voice deeper than usual.

  “Nah, if he is, he’ll just torture me by making me spar with him again.”

  Talon chuckled softly, his voice making the phone’s microphone vibrate. Talon and Wyn had warned me about Ilyan’s temper, but I had never seen it. Maybe it had something to do with this protector nonsense he had been throwing around, which was the other thing I wanted to ask Ovailia about. My stomach tightened as I began to second guess myself. Ovailia on the phone. What was I thinking?

  “Alright, but it’s your funeral.”

  I heard a knock on a heavy door and then Talon said something, his voice muffled. Ovailia snapped something back. I instantly regretted this decision and she wasn’t even on the phone yet.

  “Hello, Joclyn, what a pleasant surprise.” Ovailia’s voice was as sweet as acid, as usual. It didn’t sound like she was pleasantly surprised, it sounded like I was asking her to pluck all her hair out strand by strand.

  “Hello, Ovailia.” I tried to sound chipper.

  “What can I do for you?” I almost lost my nerve, but decided to plow through. If for nothing more than to be off the phone with her. Trying to explain why I wanted to talk to her without asking my questions would have been worse.

  “Wyn tells me there is a spy in Prague, and I know Ilyan doesn’t know.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. I hoped my bluntness would prompt her to tell me what I needed.

  “How could you possibly know if I have told Ilyan or not?” I could almost see her eyebrows arch and rise delicately on her perfect face.

  “Because, if he knew, he wouldn’t be taking me out to dinner tonight.” There was a pause, but it wasn’t the pause of someone who was contemplating how much information to tell you. This was Ovailia, and her pauses ended with her decision of how much to scold you.

  “He’s taking you out? Out of the apartment?” I was surprised by the alarm in her voice.

  “Yes, and I am concerned that as ‘My Protector’ he doesn’t know that Edmund might already know where I am hiding.” I placed it well, hoping the words were heavy enough that she would either give away what Ilyan had meant or verify that the words meant nothing.

  There was a pause, and I waited. I didn’t dare say anything, worried I wouldn’t get any of the answers I needed, however instead of answers, Ovailia began to laugh.

  “Your protector?” she said through her wicked laugh. “Your protector. Oh, you stupid little girl, don’t make me laugh. If he had told you that, you wouldn’t be saying the words with such pride. You would be terrified.” She laughed harder and my stomach dropped. “I will tell Ilyan when I have information that this is not all just a prank. Don’t you ever come prying for information from me again, or I can assure you, you will get more than you bargained for.”

  The phone went dead, and I dropped it to the floor like it was poison.

  That hadn’t gone at all as I had planned. Not only did Wyn dash my joy at getting to leave the apartment, but my impromptu espionage for answers had blown up in my face. The only positive information that I had gleaned was that it was obvious that the news of the spy was being kept from Ilyan, and that Ilyan was in fact ‘my protector’—which sounded much worse than I thought.

  Secrets, lies, spies. I didn’t like it at all.

  I stood and stumbled around the apartment for a minute, waiting for my brain to tell me what I should do next. Ilyan wouldn’t be home for an hour at least, and who knew how much trouble I had just gotten Talon and Wyn into—I cringed at the thought.

  I needed to talk to someone, and there was only ever one person I could really talk to.

  Without thinking, I grabbed my necklace and pushed my magic into it. This Ryland wouldn’t hold my hand and talk me through my problems like he used to, but I could at least talk without him judging me.

  I opened my eyes to the Tȍuha and gasped. Everything had been destroyed in the few short hours since I had left him. Every single drawing, every one of Ryland’s masterpieces, they were all smudged and smeared, some erased completely. I looked around me in shock, my mouth hanging wide open in horror. Could this day get any worse?

  “Ryland?” I asked softly. Normally he was right here waiting for me. But no one was here. No running feet. No happy, smiling face; just months of masterpieces, destroyed.

  “Ry?”

  I ran through the room filled with smudged and destroyed dreams until I heard him. His little whimper was soft and broken. I ran toward the sound until I found him hunched against the wall, crying into what had once been the drawing of him holding the Vilỳ. He rubbed his fist into the face of the creature, his body shaking with sobs.

  “Ryland?” He spun at my question, his face screwed up in anger.

  “Go away!” He yelled, throwing broken bits of chalk and crayon at me. “I don’t need you anymore!”

  “Ryland? Wha… what happened?”

  “Go away!” he yelled again, his words cutting through me.

  “You don’t mean that, Ry.”

  “Go Away!” He turned away from me, rubbing harder into the blue smudge and turning it into a blur.

  I rushed to him, wrapping my arms around his tiny frame. He fought me off, but I fought back harder while he cried and continued to push away from me. I held on as he battled, his cry getting louder rather than softer as I had been hoping for. His pushing turned to punching and finally I was forced to let him go. He skidded away from me, both of us panting hard. I couldn’t stop looking at him. I didn’t know what had happened; where this had come from.

  “Ryland?”

  “Leave me alone! Go back to wherever you come from and never come back here again!” he screamed at the top of his lungs and backed himself into the wall. I wanted to reach for him, but was scared as to how he would react.

  “I can’t do that, Ryland, you know I can’t do that. I’ll die.” I spoke softly, partly in the hope of calming him down, but mostly because I was scared. I didn’t know how to react or what to say.

  “Then die!”

  “Ryland!” His words cut through me; he couldn’t possibly mean that.

  “You don’t care what happens to me, you don’t care that I am here alone, and you don’t care about me. You just want that other guy!”

  “What other guy?” I asked, confused.

  “The one you are waiting for, the one you lost. You think I’m him, but I’m not. I am just me, and you don’t care!”

  “Ryland, I do care… I—” I pleaded with him as I tried to piece together the puzzle of his outburst. He interrupted me, his next words like lemon against an open wound.

  “No, you don’t! I hate you!”

  “You don’t mean that.” My voice was almost a whisper.

  “Yes, yes I do,” Ryland was losing momentum as his tears took over. “I have to.”

  “You have to? Ry, you don’t have to do anything. I know you don’t hate me, so please don’t say that.” I moved closer to him, watching his movements to see how far I could get. He stayed against t
he wall, crying and eyeing me as I got closer.

  “You don’t hate me,” I said as I carefully placed my hand on his knee to comfort him.

  “I have to, Jossy. He said… you don’t…” He stuttered until his voice disappeared.

  “He?”

  “You don’t love me anymore, you love the other guy.” His shoulders shook, and my heart shattered.

  “Of course I love you, Ry. You are my everything.”

  He stared at me, I could see something click together in his mind, and a weak light began to return to his eyes. I took the opportunity and moved closer to him.

  “Really?” His face brightened with hope. I returned the smile and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him to me.

  “Yes, really. I couldn’t live without you, and I never want to hear you say you hate me because I know it’s not true.”

  He nodded against me and I squeezed him tighter, grateful when he returned the hug. I held him for much longer than necessary, but I wanted him to calm down; to know the truth of what I had said. I wasn’t sure how to communicate that to a child. A hug seemed the simplest way.

  “Now, about this ‘other guy’ I don’t think you are the other guy. I think you are you. I loved your drawing, and I am sorry I didn’t say so. I shouldn’t have said those things before, and I am sorry I did.”

  “Thanks, Jossy.”

  “No problem, little man. Now, I did come bearing good news.”

  “You did?”

  “I did. I get to go to the city tonight.” I smiled brightly, hoping at least one person would be excited for me. Instead, his face fell a little bit.

  “But I’m still stuck here.”

  I sighed. Obviously this was not the best timing to have told him, given the outburst he just had.

  “How about tomorrow, after I get back, we get rid of our white room and make the city. Then we can have our own adventures; pretend to be superheroes and magicians and anything you want. I’ll spend all day with you”

  “Really?”

  “I would love to.”

  Ryland’s face lit up like a million fireworks and he crashed against me in a big hug. Giggling like crazy, I reached for him as he jumped up, his face serious again.

  “You’ve gotta go! That way you can bring the city back with you.” He grabbed my hand and heaved until he pulled me to a stand, dragging me toward the door. “I’ll make super hero capes, and villains, and all sorts of stuff.” He jumped up and down a bit before running away, presumably back to where his chalk lay scattered.

  “Bye, Jossy!” he yelled behind him, his focus on his new tasks.

  “Bye, Ry,” I said softly before turning the knob on my exit door, my eyes opening to Ilyan staring right at me.

  Sixty-Eight

  Joclyn

  “Been busy have we?” Ilyan said, his lips pulled up in a half smile.

  “I wouldn’t call it busy.” I grumbled as I stood, stretching my joints out a bit. My body was supercharged after the Tȍuha, though strangely stiff from sitting. I glanced toward the digital clock on the floor. I had been sitting for twenty minutes which meant I had been with Ryland for a little over two hours. We had done the math when I first started having to visit the Tȍuha every day. Two hours in the Tȍuha was equal to about twenty minutes of real time, and it was a good thing it wasn’t the other way around because I needed about forty minutes of real time in the Tȍuha for my body to stay perfectly strong.

  “More like stressful and confusing.”

  “Hmmmm, yes,” Ilyan said, moving away from me. “Ovailia called me.”

  “Great,” I grumbled, dreading his response to my foolish phone call, however instead of yelling, Ilyan only smiled.

  “Don’t worry, Silnỳ, despite Ovailia’s best efforts, I am not upset with you. I have decided that the one who kept things from me in the first place should be the one to gain the punishments.”

  “So Ovailia’s in trouble?” I said.

  “I don’t know what you qualify as being ‘in trouble’, but she is no longer acting in my stead, that role has been taken over by Talon.”

  “Talon?” While he seemed the obvious choice, something about changing leadership in Prague made me worried.

  “Yes, Silnỳ. This would not be the first time he acted in my name. Many years ago, before Ovailia returned to us, it was expected that Talon would take my place if I was to pass. He is my second on the day to day.”

  Ovailia being stripped of her power did not sound like a party I wanted to be invited to. Knowing how much Ovailia felt she was entitled to, taking away the power she had scraped into her possession would mean trouble.

  “I’m glad I’m not in Prague. I don’t know what would be worse, Ovailia in charge, or Ovailia mad because she is not in charge.”

  “Ovailia not in charge is worse. She tends to snap and act out when she doesn’t feel respected.”

  “As opposed to…?” I opened my hands in question. Ovailia was always snapping and acting out.

  “My point exactly.”

  I grimaced, suddenly glad I was safe and hidden in our little apartment since I was the one responsible for her dethroning.

  “Poor Wyn.” I said

  “Poor Talon.” Ilyan agreed. “I wouldn’t worry. If anyone can rein in Ovailia’s temperament when I am not there, it’s Talon. Although, he may be calling a bit more than Ovailia does.”

  “Let’s just hope that doesn’t backfire.”

  Ilyan cocked his head to the side and looked at me heavily, his eyes digging into my soul.

  “Why are you worried?” he asked.

  I sighed and joined Ilyan in the kitchen. “I don’t know. Something feels off, like a snake has wound itself up my spine.” Ilyan raised an eyebrow at me, or perhaps at my odd description.

  “Shouldn’t we be running back to Prague right about now? I mean someone is ‘crying’ information about us all over the city.”

  “You mean the caves?” he asked, his eyebrow still raised.

  “Excuse me?”

  Ilyan narrowed his eyes and pulled out our two juice glasses. “Everyone is confined underground, in the side of a mountain near the city of Prague. When we say Prague we mean our caves. So someone is going around our underground caves—not the city—crying and doing who knows what.”

  Everyone had made Prague sound like this wonderful place, but if it was really just hiding under a mountain, it sounded just as terrible as the tiny room I had been trapped in.

  “Shouldn’t we go back, though? Make sure everything is okay?”

  When Ilyan came over to stand next to me, I craned my head to look up at him, his face soft and concerned. He reached out and placed his hand against the side of my face, his fingertips tracing the rough lines of my mark as always. I didn’t move away from him; I didn’t flinch. I only stood there, my heart thumping at the contact.

  “I would if I thought something was wrong, but I am not sure if I do, yet. Talon will be looking into it for me. I will keep you safe, Silnỳ, that I promise you.”

  “My Protector.” I had barely spoken above a whisper, but he still heard me, making me regret my words. His face darkened as his hand dropped from my face to a tight hold against my elbow.

  “Ah, yes.” He said softly before moving away from me. “That is another thing, please don’t go to Ovailia for answers. I keep things from you because you are not ready to hear them. You will not receive the truths you are looking for from Ovailia. She will only paint a canvas with lies to manipulate you.”

  “If she is going to manipulate me, then why do you trust her?” I had expected him to be angry at my impolite question, instead he only spoke quietly to me.

  “I trust her because of what she has done to redeem herself. I trust her because, out of all of my siblings, she has stood by me. She may not be the best in character, but she is the best on word. Although, she might be a little bit jealous. So, for now, I will trust her.”

  Ilyan’s voice had strengthened into that
commanding tone I had grown so used to. I fought the urge to sink into my sweater and hide from him. Instead, I took a deep breath and looked at him firmly.

  “So you will trust her with every bit of information about me, but you will not give me the same information?” I tried to keep my voice level, yet I wasn’t sure it had worked. I was starting to get a little upset. The darkness in Ilyan’s face faded away, but I barely noticed.

  “I have not told her everything about you, only enough so that she understands my position.”

  “Which is...?” I prompted, but Ilyan only raised an eyebrow at me.

  “I will tell you when you are ready, Silnỳ.” Ilyan said simply, which only added to my frustration.

  “Why can’t I be ready now?”

  “Because I am not the one to tell you.”

  “Then who is?” I begged, leaning over the countertop to him.

  “You will know him when you meet him.” Ilyan turned, his voice playful even if his face was stern.

  I hated that he was keeping something from me. I hated that he treated me like an all-important piece of his life but wouldn’t tell me why. I hated that he didn’t trust me. I threw my hands in the air in exasperation before I sunk into one of the chairs at the table.

  I would have gone to the other room, if we had another room to go to.

  “Silnỳ, do not be upset with me.” His hand rested on the back of my head, his fingers moving through my hair. “You will know all soon enough, and then the weight of the world will be on your shoulders.”

  When I turned my head to look at him, his tall frame crumpled a bit so he could meet me at eye level.

  “Is that why you are keeping things from me, Ilyan, because of ‘the weight of the world?’”

  “You already have so much pain in your heart, Silnỳ. I do not want to add to that. I only wish to see happiness in your soul, and when the time comes for your knowledge to change, I will be there to help you carry it.” I didn’t know whether to be grateful or scared, but I smiled all the same. Ilyan’s hand moved from my hair to trace my mark, his sad smile melting me.

  “I would say thank you, but everything you said sounded way too ominous and dramatic. Even for me.”