Crown of Cinders

by Rebecca Ethington

  The electric air around us made the hair on my neck and arms stand on end, my magic prickling in response. It was an odd sensation, one that flowed through my magic, charging it as I prepared my attack.

  The air around me continued to explode as her attack was about to make contact, my own countering at the last minute. The line of electric violet sizzled to nothing, and the stream of energy fell to the ground with a simple flick of my finger. The air was now full of nothing except a little bit of grey smoke.

  “I would just give up if I were you,” I taunted, shoving a large chair to the side without touching it.

  Taking a step toward her, I moved another chair, this one slamming aggressively against the wall just as she waved my own counterattack away, the power from it strong enough that she burned her hand.

  She hissed, waving her fingers through the air in an attempt to dispel the pain, but her eyes never left mine, even as I began to step closer to her, my eyes lowered in clear warning.

  “You are just like your father, Ryland,” she hissed, narrowing her eyes in an anger I didn’t expect. Not from her. Not about him.

  Yes, you are.

  It’s a beautiful thing.

  Her words cut deeply as the laugh in my head grew into a wall of sound I couldn’t escape. The sound was so loud it drowned out the words the little girl continued to yell at me, her anger clear.

  I heard none of it.

  Even she sees it.

  When are you just going to accept who you are?

  When are you just going to become like me?

  Stop stalling.

  Do it now.

  “No!” I erupted, the reaction not expected by the girl.

  She jumped, jerking into the air as her eyes widened, the same fear I had seen when she had spoken of my father now directed at me.

  “I won’t let you say such things!”

  Again, I attacked her, a heavy spell soaring through the air with the speed of a bullet. She threw a table at it in an attempt to deflect, but her weaker magic just bounced off. The little girl squeaked in fear before jumping into the air in a desperate move to escape, one I had anticipated. An identical strip of magic was already ready for her.

  “What do you take me for?” I snapped with a laugh. “A fool?”

  Her face fell as the attack hit her in the chest, freezing her magic in place and sending her back down to the ground, an impact she escaped, thanks in part to Ilyan, whose magic shoved one of the few remaining couches below her just in time.

  His face was pure anger as he came to stand beside me, blood seeping down his arm and over his face from somewhere in his hair line.

  “Calm down,” he hissed while he wrapped his strong hand around my forearm, shaking me in his anger. “Fight her if you must, but she is a child. Whatever death she finds should not be this way. It cannot be this way.”

  “This is the only way!” I yelled back, breaking free of him and turning to face him as his anger began to lessen. “Get Joclyn to the pool. Let me handle this, Ilyan!”

  I had barely gotten the words out before a wave of ice water splashed over my back, freezing my nerve endings and holding me in place once again, this time by magic.

  “Ilyan!” Míra shouted from somewhere behind me. The beautiful fear I had painted on her face was all but gone now. “I need you to—”

  Her plea was lost when, with a snarl, I broke free from her spell. My magic rushed through my muscles, and a wave of blue and white shivered through the air away from me. The wave shifted the rubble of the room toward her as the once powerful magic the girl had bound me with left.

  “Don’t listen to her!” I yelled as I began throwing attack after attack in her direction. “Get Joclyn to the pool! You don’t have time for this! I can handle it!”

  Ilyan stared at me, his jaw a tight line as he looked from me to Míra, obviously torn about what he should do.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, brother,” he finally growled, the look on his face making it clear he did not like this decision.

  “No promises!” I yelled as I turned away from him, ready to fight Míra, only to see her running away from us, down one of the many dark hallways we were surrounded by. “After all, she doesn’t deserve to live.”

  No, she doesn’t.

  End this now.

  The words were a powerful chant that reverberated within me, energizing me in a comforting lull that sent me forward, amidst the dark, after her.

  The magic that was already pulsing at my fingertips was ready to destroy her.

  JOCLYN

  27

  Blood was everywhere. It stuck to my skin in patches that pulled and stung. It poured from me, dripping from my fingers in rivers of red, long lines that trickled my life away.

  I leaned against the uneven stone wall, folded on the floor where Ilyan had left me, hands clamped against my chest. My magic was attempting to heal me, to knit me back together, but it couldn’t. Sain’s attack was still there inside of me, infecting me, keeping my magic from the injury, slowly killing me.

  Even Ilyan’s magic wasn’t enough to stop it, to heal me, but I could hardly feel that, anyway. The warmth of his magic was leaving, seeping from me as our connection began to close.

  I looked toward him, toward where I thought he was, as if seeing him would force the bond to return. Yet I couldn’t see anything other than the smears of color that swam in the blue ocean of the room I was trapped within.

  Smudges whirled in slow spirals as a battle raged before me, wobbly bodies moving slowly, sparks of color blasting through the waves in bubbles of sound.

  Rough rock pushed painfully into my head as I tried to shift my weight in an attempt to reach Ilyan. Nothing happened other than me falling forward, my body giving way as my face impacted with the hard stone of the ocean floor.

  The broken gasps of my breaths echoed against the stone I was awkwardly pressed into, the sound louder than the blasts, louder than the painful stutter of my heart.

  Neither were working right.

  My heart faltered and started again, the sound slamming against my bones. My breaths were desperate puffs, my lungs unable to fill with air. I was left gasping, my head swimming.

  My vision was blurred and broken as I tried to make sense of the slow moving ocean that I was drowning in, grateful for the reprieve as my sight kept blinding me in waves of black, the same image playing over and over.

  The pool of black water and comforting blue light flitted through the dark. I needed to go there. My sight wanted me to go there.

  Ilyan knew where it was, but every time he tried to tell me, I couldn’t hear. His mind was cut off from mine, everything but his fear.

  I could feel it rushing through me, crippling me, although that emotion might be my own.

  I couldn’t tell anymore.

  “Ilyan,” I gasped into the stone as more distorted colors erupted around me, one blast rumbling through the stone. “Ilyan,” I said again, trying to force the word out with the limited air in my chest.

  I wasn’t sure it worked. He didn’t seem to hear me.

  The battle continued to explode, pops of color fading to the silvery blue light of the ocean and then again to the cave, to the solitary orb of blue that floated above the black waves.

  The light shimmered in my mind, pulling me toward it before a spark of yellow pulled me back to the battle. The wall rattled, a blast exploding above my head with a low, shallow beat, the deep sound stretched out.

  Sparks of color fell over me like feathers, soft and hot against my skin. I knew they should hurt. I could feel them burn, but it was only another pain. Another pain didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was that blue light and that pool. I could see it now, just in front of me. I needed to get there.

  With a slow blink, Ilyan’s face appeared before me, his hands hot against my shoulders as he placed me back against the wall. Everything was fuzzy as I stared at him, at his mouth moving in some desperate message I couldn
’t hear.

  I couldn’t hear anything.

  Only the running of water, water so fast and so cold.

  I wondered where it was coming from. Maybe I could use it to wash off all this blood.

  Ilyan faded from my sight as the ache in my chest grew. I gasped for air, more blood pouring over my fingers, everything aching as Sain’s magic devoured me.

  My vision faded again into the black of the pool and that comforting blue light. The clear, undistorted image faded in an out with the slow beat of my heart, the blue light growing brighter and brighter each time I saw it.

  “I am waiting,” a deep, familiar voice said, the sound rattling inside my head as it faded again, leaving me staring at the Vaseline smear of the battle, colors popping and sticking in the air like paint.

  “It’s time,” my own voice echoed within me, pulling my focus from the colors as they dripped to the woman I had seen before, myself, but from years before.

  The older me stood as clear as day near an outcropping of the hallway, wearing the same clothes I did, the bloodstain wide across her chest.

  “It’s time for what?” I asked, amazed I could get my own voice to work with the amount of pain I was in.

  “It’s time for the end,” she said, a coy smile crossing her face as she took a step closer to me, her hand outstretched.

  “No end.” The words were distorted as I tried to push them out with so little air, my chest aching again as I took another breath. “I have to save Ilyan.”

  I turned toward him then, toward the battle that was still echoing in my head with blasts and bangs, but everything was color now, drips of it everywhere.

  “You will,” the other me said, pulling my focus so fast my head hurt. Her image began to fade and spin just like everything else. “But you must come with me.”

  She stood there, her hand outstretched, her eyes desperate as she looked from me to the battle.

  I stared at her, struggling to take a breath, blood pouring from my hand as my vision began to fade, the same pool coming into focus, the same blue light calling to me.

  “I need to get to the pool.” I wasn’t even sure the words came out the right way.

  “I can take you there. Let’s go,” she said, her voice hard as her hand wrapped around my blood-soaked one, pulling it away from my chest and toward her.

  Her hand was warm, comforting, and familiar. And not just because it was my own, but there was something else there, something I had felt before. It was her magic; it wasn’t mine.

  Stumbling to my feet, I followed her, letting the strength of her magic pull me forward, my legs tripping and faltering as I attempted to stay upright.

  Her magic moved into me in a surge that reacted with my own just as the magic from the earth did. Just like when I heard Dramin and Wyn and all those Chosen. It was the earth’s magic. That’s what she was. She wasn’t me. She was earth.

  “I am you,” she said in a clear response to my thoughts, her pace increasing as she led me around another corner and down another hall, this one filled with frightened Trpaslíks. Each of their faces was turned toward something I couldn’t see, as though I was nothing more than an apparition among them. Perhaps I was dead already. “We are the same.”

  Her words were a confusing mess as we turned again, the hallway sloping down. The sound of the rushing water I had heard before echoed from somewhere below us, somewhere in the dark.

  “It’s time,” she said again, her focus forward as she finally came to a stop in a dark, narrow room where the sound of water was overwhelming. “We must end this now.”

  Unable to hold my weight any longer, I fell to my knees, glancing around the room that was suffocating in a smooth oil, lines and features indistinguishable, although I was sure there was a large door somewhere on the other side. All I could see clearly was the shadow of my other self and the rushing underground river she stood next to.

  Against the far wall, water rushed over the stones in a torrent, swirling into a bright white foam before that was swallowed by a wide open mouth of stone, the tiniest hint of bright blue light glowing somewhere beyond it.

  The same light I had seen. The same light I was drawn to.

  “Imdalind,” I gasped, my voice strangled.

  “He’s waiting for you,” the other me said, pulling my attention from the glow to her. She was sadly smiling before she faded into nothing, leaving me staring at the dark stone and the sound of rushing water loud in my ears.

  I stayed there, crouched on the stone as I tried to keep myself upright, my desperate breaths growing farther apart, my magic pulling me forward. Pulling me toward the light, toward the river that I was sure was the one Ilyan had told me about.

  The one where the dead are sent back to the depths of the earth.

  “Ilyan,” I gasped as I struggled over the stone, praying that he could hear me, that I could feel his magic one last time before I went in there. Before I, too, went back to the earth, back to the magic that was already pulling at me, calling to me.

  “You are running out of time, Joclyn!” my own voice yelled at me, echoing over the dark pit of earth and back to me. “You have to go now.”

  “Ilyan!” I gasped again, pulling myself over the stone. I tried to force as much sound into my voice as I could but couldn’t get much above a whisper. “Ilyan, I’m sorry.”

  Stone scratched against my arms and legs as I dragged myself toward the river, toward the light, desperate to reach it, my body numb against the smothering pain. Slime covered the ground the closer the end came.

  “Ilyan,” I breathed out on a sigh as my hand slipped, sending me face first into the freezing water.

  Skin burning and stinging from the chill, I felt my magic spark from the power inside of it. But it wasn’t enough.

  Water smothered me as the current pulled me under, filling my nose and mouth as I tried to take a desperate breath. My insides burned from the cold, the icy fire consuming me while I thrashed along the stream, thrown against walls and floors.

  I fought against it, pointlessly battling the current in a battle that was far too familiar. A battle I was sure I had fought before.

  Breathing in the burn of water, I opened my eyes to the bubbles of the stream and to Sain’s face. His laughing, smiling face. Clean shaven, scar-less, younger.

  It took me a moment to recognize him as a sight, to recognize the image as past … as a past that seemed more like memory.

  He laughed while he held me beneath the waves, my body thrashing against him, against the current, against the water that filled my lungs.

  I gulped again, my head smashing against stone as the vision of Sain departed, leaving me staring into dark bubbles and stone, everything fading as my already water-filled lungs gave up, as my oxygen-deprived brain began fading into death.

  I tried to fight it, to rip myself from the water, but my strength was gone.

  I was gone, sinking into the icy water. I was swept under the current and into the mouth of the earth, its depths swallowing me.

  I love you, Ilyan.

  ILYAN

  28

  “Don’t listen to her!” Ryland screamed as he continued to fight the frightened child at the other end of the blue room, the once beautiful gathering space now in shambles.

  I attempted to stop him again, knowing he was moments away from killing the girl, but Ryland just shrugged me off, pushing me away from him with a glare so deep I momentarily saw our father in him, all signs of Ryland lost.

  My temper bristled at his inappropriate command, at his lack of respect. He had already attacked me. He was lucky I hadn’t ripped his head from his shoulders.

  “Get Joclyn to the pool!” he continued, the anger vanishing as he pulled me right back to where I needed to be, to my mate, to the woman I had left propped up against the stone wall, moments from death. My heart sagged, everything throbbing in pain. “You don’t have time for this!” Ryland screamed again, “I can handle it!”

  He was
right. I needed to let this go. I could punish him for his subordination later, but right now, I needed to save her.

  Looking from Ryland to Míra, I swallowed my pride, my jaw tight as I forced the anger back down.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, brother,” I said, fixing him with as much warning as I could.

  He met the look dead-on before throwing himself back into the fight, leaving me to Joclyn as his half-hearted promise fell on deaf ears, my focus already on something far more frightening: the smear of blood that lined the floor right where I had left Joclyn.

  Right where Joclyn had vanished from.

  “Jos,” I gasped, my stomach twisting in agony as I turned, trying to find some sign of her, trying to understand where she could have gone so quickly. Nothing was there, nothing except a bright smear of blood that led off into the dark, down the long hallway to the dungeons, to the river of farewell.

  “No,” I gasped, the already twisted fear that gripped me tightening until I could barely breathe. I knew what was down there. It was the end … the end of this life.

  The tunnels of Imdalind shook around me as the dark opening of the tunnel grew in my mind. The dread of what I was facing transformed into a monster as my fear screamed of the death I would find.

  Turning back toward Ryland in a panic, my heart fell further when I found him already gone, following the girl to some new battle. I was the only soul left in the derelict space.

  “Joclyn!” I yelled as I turned back to the smear of crimson, pushing myself forward as I followed the sinister path that she had left behind, right toward the dark hallway of dungeon and death.

  Running down the hall, I let my magic roll out of me, the power that was so used to being restrained truly free for the first time in centuries. I was ready to fight, ready to rip whoever had taken her limb from limb.

  Ready to save her.

  “Joclyn!” My voice was an echo as it stretched down the dark hallway before me, the empty corridor swallowing me as the ominous pressure of what I was approaching hit me.