“One must fall before the light,” I said as blood flowed down the dark cave floor. It trailed through the bodies of men I had never seen, the amount of bloodshed twisting my stomach even through the dampened emotions the sight gave me.
“Jeden musí padnout p?ed světlem,” he spoke the words as the blood continued to run over the stone before the sight fell on the loosely curled fingers of a hand, a hand I was sure to be dead. I waited for it to continue, to show me who was to die, but the vision faded to nothing, leaving me in the glowing red embers again.
“Je rozděleno,” we said together, our voices perfectly matched in the darkness of my sight as I spoke words aloud that I did not understand.
The sight left me just as my breathing picked up, my eyes still drifting in and out of focus. I gripped the table as I waited for the strobe in my vision to slow, to recover from the intensity of the joint sight I had been infused with.
Ilyan moved my hair aside as he pressed his cool hand against my neck, my Drak blood so sensitive that with his touch I was flooded with his words and thoughts, the images of his thoughts coming so fast they flashed in a blur of color.
“Where?” I asked, my voice so strained and elongated it almost didn’t sound like me.
“Where what?” I heard Ilyan ask in alarm, the roofline of the city flashing in my mind, the screams of the people echoing in my ears.
I groaned in physical pain as the recall left, leaving me heaving as I tried to fight through the dizziness that still felt like it was trying to move into me.
“Where… is that?”
“Prague.”
Ilyan’s emotions spiked through me as Sain’s answer sent him into a panic. His demand for knowledge came quickly, the context easily understood, even though he spoke in Czech.
The images of his home flowed from him so fast I couldn’t stop them. The memories of his life matched up with the sight until all that was left was a jumble of fear and happiness.
Edmund is going to use the Vil?s to attack Prague. To use the humans to create an army, a magical race that only he can control. I sent the words into Ilyan’s mind as I looked into him, his wide eyes boring into me.
“When?”
Soon, I wanted to answer him, to send the words to him, but I couldn’t.
The time table made no sense. Edmund was due to arrive in Rioseco at any time, to fight in the battle that the sight had shown would be his end. When I would kill him.
Which could mean one of two things.
I would either fail and give Edmund a chance to build his army, or the attack against Ilyan’s beloved home had already begun.
Ilyan’s eyes were desperate as I looked into him, his pained need for knowledge breaking my heart. I couldn’t tell him.
“It’s too late,” Sain answered for me. “It has already begun.”
Ilyan’s eyes widened as his jaw clenched, the look in his eyes almost haunting. I could feel his anger and feel the pain over the knowledge that he could do nothing.
I grasped Ilyan’s hand, desperate to give him the calm he needed—desperate to help him find clarity—when a yell broke out from somewhere in the abbey. A deep, masculine scream that echoed through the stone hallways of the abbey before it reached us.
My blood sped at the sound. My hand wound tightly around Ilyan’s as the sound came again, Ilyan’s fear at a possible battle flooding into me.
Not yet. I wasn’t ready yet.
I sent my magic away from me in a tidal wave that crashed over the abbey, filling every nook and cranny until I felt the source of the scream, the answer freezing my blood.
It wasn’t the battle.
I had thought I had failed.
Thanks to the fight Ryland and I had gotten ourselves into, no one except Ilyan and I knew what I had tried to do.
What had apparently worked.
Dramin had woken up.
Sixteen
Dramin.
I spoke the word into Ilyan’s mind before I bolted away from the table, my red shoes slipping on the stone as I ran away from the kitchen toward the faint pull of magic that throbbed and pulsed as Dramin tossed in his bed.
I focused on him as I ran, my stomach dropping in alarm as his magic ebbed a bit. The weakening strain worried me that he was slipping away again. I needed to get there before that happened.
I had made it down one hall before voices and footsteps erupted behind me, the thunderous tumult making it obvious that everyone was following me. I picked up my pace as I turned the last corner, my feet slipping on the rubble from where I had thrown Ryland into the wall. I could see the wide door just ahead, the wooden slab inset in the stone.
I took the last few steps at what felt like a snail’s pace, though I knew I was running; the door swung open as the flare from my magic pushed it. When I slid into the door frame with a loud grunt, Dramin turned toward me, his green eyes hooded and tired.
Everything stopped as our eyes met, my face heating and burning as I looked into the bright sheen in his eyes. I had thought I hadn’t been able to heal him; I had thought I had failed. I couldn’t have been happier to be wrong.
“Uncle.”