As much as I had wanted this battle, this was going to try my ability to the absolute limit.
Challenge accepted, Edmund.
I fought without thinking, magic moving from my hands, streaking through the air as attacks met in mid-flight, exploding into the air in fireworks of color and energy. More than once, I felt the heat of them against my skin, the now stagnant attack burning potently into my flesh.
I had only just destroyed the last man before five more broke through the trees. Ryland screamed to the left of me right as Sain called out, the sound loud and pained as I was sure whatever Ryland had done was injuring him.
I couldn’t even turn to check.
I couldn’t even help.
The knowledge was a painful vice against my heart. I needed to help them, but with the armies Edmund had sent after us … I might be powerful, but I wasn’t Ilyan.
“Thom!” I screamed his name, my voice cracking with iron and salt as I transformed the five before me into ash, their bodies erupting in stone as the rain splashed against their once alive facades, streaking them with tears they could no longer shed.
“Thom!” I ran to Ryland before the next wave hit us, my magic rushing into him the moment I reached him in a desperate plea to calm him, to knock him out, anything. I might as well have been trying to turn carrots into glass. My hand was nothing more than ice against the heat of his skin.
He looked to me at the contact, his black eyes startling me for the briefest of moments before he smiled. It was a wide, wicked gleam that spread malice over his face. Stone weighed me down at that look, the realization that I was looking at Edmund and not at Ryland feeling like a stab in the gut.
“Think you can survive this, do you?” His voice was a snarl of ice, the magic that had built a wall inside of him so familiar that, for one brief moment, I wasn’t sure if I was looking at Ryland or Edmund. They looked so similar. The voice was the same. The magic was the same.
However, they weren’t.
I had seen Ryland and what they had done to him. I couldn’t let it continue.
“You are a fool to think you can, Edmund.” The words ground out of me as the full force of my magic pressed against the barrier Edmund had placed inside his son. I knew it wasn’t enough to break whatever he had done to him, only Joclyn had that power. Regardless, if it could give us reprieve for long enough to make it through the cave, long enough to make it to safety, I would do it.
I had to try.
I screamed as the magic drained from me, my body feeling weak and broken as the hold Edmund had on his son lessened enough that the boy came back full force, his eyes fading to a pained blue as he looked at me for the first time in the last few minutes.
If only it was enough.
The moment the boy came back, the next line of attack broke through the trees with a scream. I turned away, toward the monsters that rushed us, knowing I had to keep them safe. Without the contact of my skin against his, the voice snapped back into his mind, and he went right back to attacking anything and everything that surrounded him.
Throwing Sain away from the boy in a mad attempt to keep him safe, I ran toward those before me. There was nothing he could do for him now, and if he kept trying, he would only get hurt.
I sped through the air with a leap, landing on one of the Trpaslíks with a violent force that sent both of us to the ground, my hand pressing against his windpipe as I burned it closed, his lungs seizing as the flame continued into them.
Moving as quickly as I could, I jumped from the body of the first, lunging into the second and sending him plowing into a tree trunk as a spider web of flame moved over his face, spreading down his body as the slow burn devoured him.
Ready to take on the third, I turned, only to see Thom burst through the trees, Dramin falling to the ground as he moved to attack the next line that was already bursting through the trees.
I ran to Ryland, fully intent to stop him in his tracks, to find some way to keep him alive, to get him to stop as Ilyan and Joclyn appeared beside us in a stutter, their bodies seemingly materializing from nothing before they ran toward us covered in sweat, dirt, and blood. The fear that ran through me relaxed a bit at seeing them there, at knowing they were safe, that they were alive. It was a short-lived calm, because despite being glad to see her, I knew what else it meant.
I didn’t dare ask, because part of me already knew. Sain had spoken the words only minutes before that, in some way, had sealed her fate as much as ours.
Everything was broken.
“Did you kill Edmund?” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice, although the emotion was more based in the battle I fought and not in the outcome.
I raised my hand again as she reached me, taking down another of Edmund’s men, trying to ignore the spark of recognition of having killed someone I knew. Someone I had grown up with.
I had killed people I knew many times before, but somehow, it felt different this time, more like betrayal.
In my pain, I ignited a tree not far from where I stood, glad when Thom took advantage of the powerful fire and threw the trunk into a few of the mad Trpaslíks.
“We have to get out of here!” Joclyn didn’t even answer. Her response was as much a guarantee to what I had already thought as to what Sain had said.
I nodded once in understanding, knowing anything else would have to wait until we reached the cave and what I foolishly hoped would be safety. Then she would have to tell me everything—about the golden ribbon that was peeking out from behind her hoodie and everything.
I would have to tell her, too.
Right now, I needed to get us out of here, and sadly, I already knew how.
“Thom,” I yelled to where he valiantly fought, the hunch of his shoulders showing his weakness more than he knew. “You take the Draks with Jos. I can stop them all long enough to give us a good start, but you all have to be ahead of me.”
I rushed the tree line as the sky opened up in a noise that tensed through my nerves, moving directly toward where Ilyan was battling Ryland in an attempt to get him under control.
Flinging two more of Edmund’s men away, I turned as an attack hit me in the gut. I gasped at the pressure, the pain rocking through my spine for only a moment before my magic burned the attack away, the residual energy moving through me with the same fire I always held, rumbling under my skin until it expelled into the earth, erupting several small trees around me into pillars of flame.
We couldn’t wait any longer.
“Ilyan!” I screamed his name in an attempt to get his attention. If this was going to work, everyone needed to be in front of me.
“Ilyan!”
He threw a now unconscious Ryland over his shoulder, his magic flaring as two other Trpaslíks were foolish enough to attack him, but still, he did not hear me.
An endless wall of Trpaslíks were coming right us, so many that, if we weren’t gone before they broke the tree line, I wasn’t sure what I could do, even with Ilyan and Joclyn here to fight with me.
I opened my mouth to scream again, right as Jos came up beside me, her voice so calm and controlled that it felt out of place for the firestorm we were surrounded by, for the blood she was covered with.
“He’s coming.”
I didn’t dare ask for clarification. There was so much more in her statement than calm, something that I was missing.
I let the fear fuel my magic as I turned from my friends, facing the trees that in a moment would become nothing more than flame. They would face the full extent of my magic.
They used to say that there was a reason the fire magic was taken from the earth, that those too foolhardy to use it brought so much destruction to the earth that it was nothing more than flame and glass, which only made me wonder why I had been given such a unique gift.
Why me with my temper and my terrible sense of right and wrong? Why had I been cursed with so much power?
Back then, when I had flared for the first time, it had scare
d me. That was when I had known.
Even with all the destruction I had done, even with all the death I left behind me, it was something I had never fully unleashed.
Until now.
The magic built to a raging inferno that devoured me from the inside out, a tangible force that pressed against my skin, against my skull, that moved into my bones and rattled them until they were going to fall apart, which was exactly what was happening.
It was a magic so strong that it devoured every fiber of my being. It controlled every part of who I was to work.
I was nothing but fire, nothing but magic. Nothing but destruction.
I could feel the flames licking against my skin, fingers of every color moving over my body and slithering across the ground like snakes that only I could control.
Snakes of flame that would destroy everything in their path.
I fought the need to scream out in pain at the power that had consumed me, my body shrieking as it became nothing more than the flame that dwelled inside of me.
My eyes snapped open as the army burst through the trees. What Edmund had meant to be his last line of defense froze in place as they came face to face with the witch that was bound in an inferno.
One small woman with a frame so small she could be a child standing before them in a gown of fire. It was a rippling serpent that moved over her skin like it was nothing then licked over the ground and devoured trees as if they were little more than pieces of tissue.
I could see the fear in their eyes. I could see the reflection of the demon I had become. I smiled, the magic growing as my excitement did, ready to take that last step and destroy Edmund’s final attempt to do away with what he viewed as his enemies.
“Hello, lovelies.” My voice echoed with a dead hollow, the magic rippling through me as though I had become possessed. The fire grew with each word, rattling through the trees as they sparked with flame, the clothing of those that stood closest to me beginning to spark and smoke.
I was nothing except fire.
The fire was nothing except me.
I smiled once more as the flame devoured me, as I screamed in pain and exhilaration, my hands flying toward them as the blaze burst from me. It spread from me in a fan of flame that shook the ground then seeped into the soul in a cylinder of heat that turned everything to ash, that destroyed what Edmund had sent, a warning of what he was truly facing coming right on its heels.
Men turned to nothing more than smoke, trees evaporating from the sheer enormity of the pressurized explosion. With the force of an atomic bomb, it spread away from me, eating the world into nothing but flame, the once proud forest turning black and white with char.
No one would have guessed that an army had stood before us.
No one would have guessed what I had really held inside.
I wasn’t even sure Ilyan had known.
Now he would.
There was a reason I had wanted this power bound. It had never been a danger to me. I had learned to control it beyond all else. However, it was a danger to the world, and if Edmund got his hands on it…
And now he would want it more than before. Now he would stop at nothing to get it.
If he had ever been successful in all the times he had tried, this was what the world would have become—this barren wasteland that I now stood in the middle of, the ring of fire that I had unleashed continuing to burn in a slow moving circle that would smolder until someone mistook it for a forest fire and came to put it out.
I stood amidst the ruin, the black and red burn of the soul, looking at what was left of the world and of people I had known so many years before.
I stared at it, my heart tensing at the reality of what I faced, of what I had done. A regret I had never felt before seeped through me like an unwanted poison, eating at me until I pushed it away. The pain in my soul began to lessen as I stood in the center of it all, the fire that had taken control of my body settling back into my blood as if it was nothing more than a gentle burn.
Still, I didn’t move, my eyes scanning over what I had done, fighting with myself over whether or not I had made the right decision.
Although, there was no turning back now.
With one last look, I turned to run, plumes of blackened soil erupting into the air around me with each step, the golden embers eliminating what tree skeletons remained. I didn’t even look, only ran, letting my magic move into the earth with each step, my ability tracking the line of destruction as well as the quick progression of my friends, the frightful reality of their close intersection twisting through my gut.
My heart sped up to a hectic pace as I ran, knowing that, if they didn’t move faster, the fire would reach them. Then, not only would they see, but they would be in danger of having the same fire burn into them.
Time and fate was not on our side today.
“Run!” I screamed before I had even reached them, my feet moving faster as the disease I had plagued on the earth continued to move, chasing after my friends and threatening to destroy them, as well.
I only hoped they ran fast enough that it didn’t reach them.
That they hadn’t seen what I had done.
That they wouldn’t find out that, this time … This time, I had enjoyed it.
OVAILIA
Twelve
I followed the toe-headed man, my heels unstable against the charred earth we walked over. I fought for stable footing with each step, but I wasn’t going to let that show. I kept my head high, my jaw set as my hair swung behind me, glowering at the golden highlights in the man’s hair as if they had somehow offended me. Of course, I guessed in a way they had.
I knew he was a distant cousin—only the direct bloodline of my grandmother had blonde hair—but I didn’t care anymore. Not with what he was leading me toward, anyway.
Ilyan’s perfectly planned attack had begun moments before Edmund had arrived. I hadn’t had a chance to speak to Edmund before the battle had begun. Before Ilyan and his whore had destroyed the work we had spent almost a year putting together. What was worse, we had failed.
It was that failure that I was on my way to answer for.
I passed the pained and writhing bodies of those who had already faced his wrath, the waste of perfectly good soldiers disgusting me. They screamed as whatever Edmund had done to them raged inside of them, the weaker ones already succumbing to death, their bodies heating and burning as whatever magic had scorched the earth moved in to destroy them to.
I wrinkled my nose at the smell, at the sound, and flipped my hair behind me, staring straight ahead as I blocked the sounds from my ears. If they were going to be weak under my father’s discipline, they could at least do it quietly.
I could already see him, standing on the top of a high outcropping, more than a dozen of his body guards cowering near him as they both tried to do his bidding and feared his wrath. It was a bad place to be, especially now that Timothy and Cail were gone. There was no one left to challenge him. No one to hold him back, not like either of them had.
Now it was only him and I, something I both relished and feared. To be trusted to be so close to him, to his greatness, yet to be close enough to receive the brunt of his frustrations.
My teeth ground together as I began to climb the hill, burning embers of what had once been a forest glowing brightly underneath the thunderheads that still plagued us, their roar incessant as the earth mourned.
I wish it would just shut up.
“Sir,” the man I followed began, his voice shaking as he went down on one knee, ready to announce his arrival and a job well done.
I didn’t even give him the chance. I breezed by him, knocking his unstable figure to the ground with the heel of my shoe, moving right up to where my father stood, his focus scanning over the still smoldering earth.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Ovailia?” He glowered, the depth of his voice filled with more awe than I had heard in all my life. I expected some new woman, a new prize to be standing before him wit
h how he spoke.
It was only devastation, the bright red flames of magic still devouring the tree line far ahead of us.
Of course he would be referring to destruction.
“If you enjoy death.”
My heels sunk into the charcoal below me as I came to stand behind him, the sky igniting with forks of lightning. Bolt after bolt hit the earth as though it was trying to put out the flames; instead, they only grew.
“I am not speaking of the fire,” he soured, his voice trailing over my spine like ice.
I flinched at the sound, almost expecting what was coming, and glared into the space before me.
“I am speaking of the fire magic. I am speaking of the destruction our dear Wyn has caused.”
He might as well have been looking at a woman. It wasn’t the destruction he admired as I had assumed. It was the power. Or, more specifically, the power that laid inside of a woman. A woman I had already known him to lust after for far longer than would have been deemed appropriate.
I rolled my eyes as my chest tensed, my irritation growing as I turned toward my father. The dark curls that had loosened themselves from the slicked-back style he normally had fell over the piercing blue eyes that looked into me the moment I turned.
I flinched at the emotion and hatred behind them. The jolt of my fear was subtle, but still apparent enough he had noticed, a reaction that only caused him to smile more.
“I must have it.” The greed dripped off him as he took a step closer, his bulky frame coming level with mine.
I could not stop the eyebrow from rising or the twitch of my lip as I smiled at him. That was it? After everything, after failing to kill or capture any of them, after losing track of them and losing more than two hundred of the vile bats he had spent centuries creating, he wanted me to capture Wyn, to bring him her heart.
There had to be more. There always was.
My back tensed as I waited, watching him for some sign of what was coming. He only stood in the darkness of his greed. The vile emotion colored his face until, looking into him, I felt like I was looking into my own death.
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