This choice was another step on my path. I wouldn’t deny the pull I felt deep inside.
It had awakened when I had held Ovailia as an infant in my arms and again when the bond with her had been completed.
It was a need that I was sure I had forgotten, that I hadn’t needed.
Not since Angela.
But now…?
I can see you, Sain.
The voice came, the same as it had for centuries before I had tricked Thom into providing my escape, the sacrifice of his child necessary to use his abilities to break me out of Edmund’s control. I had heard the sound all through my imprisonment and for decades after until it had finally faded into nothing. Until my memories returned and the bastard daughter I had seen hundreds of years before put my entire plan in jeopardy.
It had started to return when Edmund had found me, days after delivering the birth stone to the Siln?. Then, when my memories hadn’t fully returned, the whispers had begun, piecing together my past before my mind could put everything together on its own.
It was nothing like it was now, the consistency only increasing with the first step I took back into the city.
Instructions, commands, orders.
All delivered straight into my mind.
Just as they had been for so long.
As I now knew they would until the end.
Even Edmund was playing into my plan in a way.
The courtyard glimmered with the shadows of red and black, the hot breeze moving through the open space and pulling at the tree’s trash and forgotten belongings from the massacre rolling and moving through the wide-open space.
My sight pulled at me as it tried to show me visions of future and past and things I didn’t really care about right then. I pushed it away as the bell from the high tower of the cathedral rang loud and clear, the sound awakening the ravenous Vil?s that were left wanting, the nasty things taking flight and zooming around the open space.
I cringed at their existence, the sound of their illness grating in my ears and on the memory of what they used to be. They had once been so beautiful, so treasured. Now they were destroyed.
I stood still as one of the vile things flew at me, my body not so much as tensing as it continued on its path, ready to devour me.
“Zdechnout.” I spoke the word aloud as it rattled in my head, and the Vil? dropped to the ground with the thunk of stone on stone.
“One down, ten million to go.” Her voice was as smooth and sweet as it had always been, the sweet tones sending my heart into a rage and my magic into a frenzy.
I looked up to her as she approached me with her hair swinging behind her, the tap of her high heeled shoes loud and hypnotic. My heart rate accelerated at the sound, the deep need for her growing out of nowhere.
“Ovi,” I sighed, fully aware of the longing that had seeped into the word.
She smiled at the nickname that had always been hers, her face lighting up with a joy I had missed from her.
The clicking of her shoes stopped as she came right up to meet me, her eyes a white hot heat as she stared into me.
“Hello, Sain.”
My magic boiled at the honey in her voice, her body bending toward mine as her arm trapped me against the gold inlaid stone of the archway.
We stood, staring at each other as the Vil?s began to calm down, my magic moving in a desperate attempt to reach hers.
“So, Sain,” she began, the whispers of the voice picking up in my ears, “tell me what Ilyan has decided.”
I knew I shouldn’t have come here, but I didn’t have a choice, just as I didn’t have a choice about whether or not I was going to tell her.
Although, not for the reasons she would assume.
With one gentle press of her lips against mine, all the secrets that Ilyan had trusted me with came free.
He had trusted the wrong person from the very beginning.
Both Edmund and Ilyan. I had learned from the moment Dramin crawled out of the mud that this world was mine for the taking, mine to mold, mine to create.
And I would.
The next, book in the Imdalind Series . . .
Dawn of Ash
Expected Release Mid 2015
Other Books by Rebecca Ethington
Kiss of Fire, Imdalind #1
Eyes of Ember, Imdalind #2
Scorched Treachery, Imdalind #3
Soul of Flame, Imdalind #4
Burnt Devotion, Imdalind #5
Dawn of Ash, Imdalind #6
The Through Glass Novella Series
Episode One: The Beginning
Episode Two: The Darkness
Episode Three: The Blue
Support the Kiss of Fire Movie Project
Visit www.KissofFireMovie.com for more information
Acknowledgments
This book was written in one of the darkest times in my life – and without the loving support of my dearest of friends, and the understanding from the most amazing fans – it may not have happened. So I thank you. I thank you for holding my hand, for cheering me on, for watching my videos, for crying with me, and for understanding as my life fell apart, that the story could still live on.
This book would not be without the amazing support of each of you.
So I thank you.