Crown of Cinders

by Rebecca Ethington

  “Well, it’s a good thing I can fight back. Otherwise, I might be short an arm by now. Maybe I deserved it. I am dangerous.” I laughed, and Risha did, too. It wasn’t much of a joke, not with the way Míra looked at me. You would think I had one eye and three heads or something.

  Or maybe you look like me.

  The voice came without warning, the unwanted depth rippling inside me like a stab wound, and I recoiled. I hadn’t heard the haunted voice blossom from inside of me for days. Almost a week, in fact. I hadn’t put words to it, but the hope was there that I was free of it forever. Yet, here he was again, shattering my desire and infecting my mind with a poison that burned within me like acid.

  “Ignore it,” Risha said without looking at me, extending her hand to wrap around mine, the silent vow of support as wanted as the way her touch made my insides tango.

  “I wish I could,” I said more to myself than to her. After all, the voice was right; it was the reason Míra was afraid of me. It was also the reason I was here.

  I carried the image of my father, and she had lived under his rule for months. From what Joclyn’s prescience had shown her, Míra had lived through the same hell as I had. She had lived with the same violence and threats. She had lived through the same brainwashing nightmare.

  No one in this camp would understand that. No one in this camp would know how to face that.

  No matter how my eyes and curls terrified her, I was the only one who could understand what she had gone through and help her overcome it.

  I guessed the dark, broken piece of my subconscious was good for something besides the crazies.

  “You can, and you will,” Risha reassured me, her thumb gentle as she ran it over my knuckles. It took everything in me to restrain the shiver that moved up my spine at the touch, my stomach flopping around like a dead fish. “I know you can,” she repeated, her voice soft.

  We sat on the rock and rubble, her hand wrapped around mine. I stared at the green in her eyes, at the small amount of freckles that moved over her nose, at her lips and the way they gently arched …

  “Are you guys going to kiss?” Jaromir asked from in front of us, bouncing around on his heels a few feet away.

  I jumped, and Risha jerked back to reality as I did. Everything around me spun as my heart rate began to slow down, reality catching up with me. I was already missing the dream.

  Was it a dream? I couldn’t be sure. But I was definitely having trouble breathing.

  “Jaromir!” Risha shrieked, pulling her hand away as she shifted her weight. “I didn’t see you there!”

  Jaromir smiled bigger, his teeth flashing as he ran toward us, placing himself between us as heavy and thick as peanut butter.

  “I’ve been here the whole time, Risha. We were playing a game… right here in the cathedral …”

  “A game that I was betrayed in!” I yelled, wrapping my arm around his shoulders and ruffling his hair.

  He yelped in protest, but I didn’t let go. This one, he deserved.

  “You’re a dirty little traitor!”

  “I did nothing of the sort!” he shrieked, jumping away from us and back over to Míra who glowered at the outburst. The wicked child I had grown used to took over her features.

  “Traitor,” I grumbled under my breath, exaggerating my irritation to comical proportions.

  Jaromir attempted to look guilty for half a second before breaking out in laughter.

  Míra, however, looked between us, her arms wrapped around her torso as unmistakable terror crossed over her face.

  Fear.

  Fear that I hadn’t seen since that day two weeks ago when we had pulled her out from amongst the dead.

  “I wasn’t a traitor, Ryland.” Jaromir giggled, pulling my focus from his haunted sister. “I was a spy. Those are infinitely cooler.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh, although Míra didn’t seem to get the joke. Her fright increased, her eyes darting around as if she were looking for a way to escape.

  “A spy!” I yelled, trying to keep the joke going while my spine tingled with the sudden change of tension that was affecting the air around us. “That’s just as bad!”

  “No, it isn’t, especially when you have magic.” Jaromir laughed again, waving his hands before him. A few stones lifted into the air, dancing amidst the last of the fog before falling back down to the ground with a ripple of sound. “Then you can do anything you want.”

  Risha sat next to me as stiffly as a board.

  At least I wasn’t the only one to notice Míra’s erratic behavior.

  “So, you can change sides whenever you want? Be a bad guy or a good guy at will?” I asked, knowing I was moving into dangerous territory. “And that’s okay?”

  “Well, maybe not a bad guy … but I would change sides not to be bad. Definitely,” Jaromir said confidently, sinking down onto the rubble with his legs crisscrossed.

  I leaned toward him, rocks crunching beneath me at the shift in weight. “So, are you saying my side was the bad side in our game?”

  “No!” Jaromir interjected loudly, forcing out a laugh.

  Míra jerked, the same look of fear running over her face.

  “You aren’t bad, Ryland. But Míra was on the other team, and she’s family.”

  “Edmund is my family.” A statement. One simple, horrifying statement that sent a ripple around us, causing Jaromir’s jaw to go slack, his eyes wide, while Míra stiffened like a jolt of electricity moved through her, different waves of horror taking control. “Should I defect to his side?”

  “No!” Jaromir jumped to his feet, a new wave of defiance taking me by surprise.

  I had never seen him so against my father. Before, he had been interested. Before, he had wanted me to train him like my father had me. Now, he looked as scared of him as his sister did, as scared as if Edmund himself were standing behind me, threatening each of them with death. I didn’t think I was that far off with the way Míra had begun shaking, her jaw so taut I could see the muscles in her neck.

  “Edmund is evil!” Jaromir continued, the strength of his shout rippling over the ruins, threatening to bring the rest of the cathedral down around us. Thank goodness the magic Ilyan had put on it so we could still use it as an arena held, though I could hear the stones groan under the weight. “You aren’t evil, Ryland. And neither is Míra.”

  “I agree, Jaromir,” Risha said with a smile, leaning forward to ruffle the boy’s always out of control hair. “I don’t think Ry’s bad. And I know Míra isn’t.”

  I smiled, expecting the fear to slip off her face and the calm child to take its place. However, her anger grew, erupting inside of her in hatred deeper than we had seen before.

  “No,” she said, the single word a slap as she rushed toward her brother, rocks shifting beneath her. “I am bad. He made me that way.”

  “No,” I started, my heart aching with the truth behind her words, the familiarity hitting me deep. “He didn’t—”

  “Ko, nuchín tě xadít!” she interrupted, the loudness of it feeling like a slap.

  “Sho shceš adych uděbal?” Jaromir responded, his voice low and under his breath, so low I almost didn’t hear him.

  I didn’t understand what they were saying in the first place. The secret language of twins, something I had heard about on several occasions, but had not witnessed until a few weeks ago when Míra had come into my life.

  It was endlessly irritating, but we had chosen to put up with it for now. We needed her to trust us. She only trusted Jaromir right now, and she needed that. Taking away their secrets was simply going to strengthen her distrust of us.

  “Meneshte ho botkni che mě, Jaromir!” Míra screamed, the reaction exactly opposite from what I had been hoping for.

  My muscles tensed in my neck, my heart rate increasing at the sudden outburst.

  “Míra,” I scolded, knowing I was sounding a little too much like a TV dad, “you don’t need to yell …”

  The words left my min
d with one stern look from the girl in question, sparks zapping around her body in a very clear warning. My magic surged in preparation for restraint, not wanting today to end this way, not after all the progress we had made.

  “You need to calm down, Míra,” Risha interrupted, towering over her as she stood, not letting the child’s magic deter her. “I don’t want to have to take you back to the hall yet.”

  Míra flinched, Risha’s choice of words affecting her.

  The sparks of warning had stopped, but the hatred and anger didn’t leave her eyes, her rigid posture straightening more.

  “Zíš, sho to je, víte, sho pochředuji. Neshbosydňují.” Míra’s eyes were dead as she spoke directly to Jaromir, the anger lessening into a desperate plea, one that he didn’t miss.

  As though he had been slapped, Jaromir straightened, some hushed exchange breaking between them before he turned back to me, his eyes as hard as hers now.

  “Ale meschi, adi ván donohl.” His voice was as numb as the expression on his face, the mysterious fight they were engaged in coming to a head.

  “Dubeche nuchet, dokub schete, ady všismi žít.” Míra looked at us as she spoke, her eyes still as hard.

  We understood nothing, yet her warning was clear.

  “I know there is some good in you, Míra,” Jaromir whispered, his focus on his hands before lifting them to hers, his eyes filling with tears. “I know you don’t have to do that. I know you will find a way.”

  I jerked as much as Míra did, her eyes shocked before reverting back to anger. Glancing between Risha and me, she feared what we had heard, what we had understood, which wasn’t much.

  He had spoken in clean Czech, yet it was still no more than gibberish with nothing to connect it to.

  “I know there is good in you, too, Míra,” Risha added, leaning toward the kids and stretching her hand toward the girl in what she probably thought was a sign of friendship.

  However, Míra stared at it, her lips sneering in disgust before she stepped behind her brother again, using him as some kind of barricade.

  “Then you don’t know me,” she hissed, the bright eyes that should have been full of so much joy and youthfulness cold and dead.

  “I know you,” I interrupted, my heart building into a painful staccato as I made the connection, as I truly understood what she was saying. Even the monster in my mind understood. The deep rumble of his laughter rolled within my subconscious, lifting my heart rate further. “I know where you came from. And I know what my father would ask of you. I know you and the hell you are stuck in better than you think.”

  “You don’t have a clue. You could never know what he would want of me. What I have to do,” she snapped, the preteen angst ripping amidst the air between us.

  So much for the afterschool special.

  “I do because my father made me kill my mother.”

  Míra stiffened, Jaromir following suit as their eyes narrowed. Míra’s motions were slow as she turned to face me, nose wrinkled in a look that was haunting, something that turned the fear and familiarity I had sensed before up to an eleven.

  “He asked me to kill someone,” I continued without waiting for a response, “and I did, not knowing there was someone else I could go to. Not knowing there was a good side.”

  The stress and tension in our little group were higher than they had ever been. None more so than from Risha, whom I was certain was crying.

  I ignored it, not really liking it when people cried for me.

  “There isn’t a good side, Ryland,” Míra whispered, the hatred dripping from her face and leaving me staring at the true little girl for the first time. “Not with this. Everyone gets hurt. Everyone is going to die. I can’t stop it. No matter what, it happens.”

  “That can’t be true—” Risha began, her words cut off with one sharp look from the little girl before us.

  “It is, Risha. Everyone is going to die.”

  My heart stopped beating. The world spun around me as what she said sunk in, as the truth behind it sunk in.

  Jaromir looked between us, his nose wrinkled as he clenched his jaw, a different kind of fear taking over him. I didn’t think words more haunting had ever been spoken by a child, ever spoken by a little girl with so much sadness, fear, and hatred in her eyes.

  Like a geometric video game, her words began to fit together. Ts and Ls and sticks all fell into place. I could hear the tiny game music in my head, the steady tempo increasing as the beat of my heart did. The sounds moved at a rapid pace in a countdown that I already knew I couldn’t outrun.

  “My father trained you.” The statement was molasses in my mouth, but Míra didn’t look away. “He trained me, too. But that doesn’t mean he owns us.”

  But I do.

  I own your mind.

  I own your will.

  As I do the girl’s.

  And she’s right; she’s going to kill you all.

  Watch and see.

  You deserve it.

  I let the hatred in my demons fuel me as I stared at Míra.

  Jaromir looked between us in panic, the fear on his face deepening due to what I had so openly confessed.

  Risha gripped my hand as she leaned closer, her actions making it clear she knew what I was doing. It was making me uncomfortable.

  I knew she was trying to get me to stop, but I couldn’t. I was like a freight train hurtling toward the cliff, the destination on the other side of the cavern clear.

  “He doesn’t own us,” I repeated, my focus on the girl in question. “We don’t have to give him that power.”

  Her hatred deepened, but this time, it was toward me.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Ryland. You don’t know what you are saying.”

  “I do, Míra. I—”

  “No, you don’t!” she exploded, her rage rippling over her as her fists hit against her thighs. “You don’t know!”

  “Wíš sho; řechmi nu,” Jaromir tried to calm her, his voice weak.

  Míra glared at him, the look increasing the just-been-punched look the boy had.

  “Mebleť che po tosho! None of you know what you are talking about!” She turned toward us, the anger clear as she clenched her jaw before, with the slightest of pops, she vanished into thin air, pulling herself into a stutter as she left our side.

  The already tense bands of muscle in my shoulders and arms tightened, my heart seemingly forgetting how to beat as I stared into the space she had been.

  A stutter.

  A darn near perfect one from what I could tell, performed by a child. It shouldn’t have been possible, not even with the Štít inside of her. I had watched Cail for years. Even he hadn’t been able to stutter. He hadn’t been able to do anything without the permission of Edmund.

  He had been his slave.

  As this girl should be if the Štít was Edmund’s as Jos had seen.

  “Míra!” Jaromir screamed, freaking out as he turned around, looking for his sister. “What did you do to her?” He rounded on us, anger burrowing through him so fast I was worried he would turn on us, too.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Risha gasped, clenching my shoulder as she stood up, her eyes scanning the hills of rubble in a desperate need to find her. “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “She shouldn’t be able to,” I pointed out, forgetting Jaromir’s panic as I, too, stood up, looking over the piles of rubble for some sign of her.

  What had we done? We needed to find her before she did something.

  As I stood, another small pop sounded, the girl reappearing in the same spot she had left moments before.

  “It’s a stutter,” she said, proud of herself. “I bet you can’t do that.”

  I couldn’t, but that wasn’t the reason I was staring at her with such fear. It wasn’t the reason my heart had turned into a thunder of noise and my muscles had tensed into cords of iron. It wasn’t the reason Risha’s fingers were sparking in preparation for the battle she was convinced was seconds
away.

  “How did you do that?” I asked, my voice dead against the panic.

  “It’s a stutter, dummy,” she repeated, irritated I hadn’t followed the obviousness of her statement. “I knew you couldn’t do it.”

  “I can’t, but how can you …?”

  She opened her mouth to answer then stopped, the malicious intent on her face fading away.

  “Did Edmund let you have full control?” I asked.

  “Once I got here, everything changed,” she hissed, that same powerful pride taking over her again. “He knows I’m here. He knows what I am supposed to do. I can’t stop it. I’m not a good person, Ryland. I can never be.”

  “No,” Risha gasped, putting it all together a second before I did.

  Regardless that what she was saying was horrifying, the mysterious job one that I knew at once we needed to stop, it was what she had done that was the real danger.

  It was what it meant that made her dangerous.

  “The hollow Štít … It’s not hollow because he took it away. It’s hollow because there is nothing on the other side.” I spoke to myself, the same realization clear on Risha’s face as her chest heaved in panic.

  “What are you talking about?” Míra asked from beside us, obviously confused. “My Štít isn’t hollow. It’s cursed.”

  I could see how she would think that, but it didn’t fit.

  We ignored her, our eyes wide as things fell into place.

  “He would have to be …”

  Dead.

  I put the word into place in silence, the reality not one Míra should know. Not yet. Not with whatever certain death and expectation she was facing. She was such a loose wire that I didn’t want to give her hope, only to have her erupt. At the same time, I didn’t want to leave her in the dark for long.

  If this were true, it could be the difference between her loyalties, from pulling her away from whatever job she had to do.

  “Get them back to the hall. Don’t take your eyes off them. I need to talk to Ilyan. I’ll be back,” I said to Risha, not waiting for her nod of understanding before I took off into the air, my magic lifting me higher as I soared away from them and toward the main courtyard.