Edmund.
My heart accelerated to a pace that vibrated through me, my entire body tensing in fear. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t escape the sight. I stood, staring at him where he was in the middle of the street with Ovailia by his side, Sain huddled off to the side like a wounded kitten, and a small child I had never seen before standing before him.
My sight flashed as I watched, red and black skittering over my vision before the street came back into view, my heart plummeting at the way the child fidgeted, the way she tried to move away, but something held her in place; something was keeping her there. She twitched and tried to run, but she couldn’t move. Her sobs echoed, the pained sounds increasing my fear.
The closer the sight took me, the more in focus she became. She was no older than five; a long, tattered nightgown hung over her emaciated frame, dirty brown hair falling past her waist. Blood dripped from her fingers in a slow rhythm then fell into pools of carmine that covered her feet, sprinkling over her bare calves like a Jackson Pollock painting.
She turned to me slowly, and the red of the blood splattered down the front of her nightgown, seeping from the ragged gash in her throat, her eyes crying tears of the same color.
“Auntie,” she whispered, and I recoiled, the alarm in my sight increasing. “You’ve got to stop him. He has it. He’s going to hurt her.”
I wanted to scream at the sound of her voice, at the way she looked at me, but the sound never came.
The sight melted away in an ember burn, leaving me standing in the middle of the hall, the low chatter of Ryland and his protégé still coming from somewhere behind me.
I stared ahead, my mind still trying to process what had happened, what I had seen. It had changed again, but this time, it hadn’t changed in the normal way. The sight was different. It was stronger.
More than the cloaked man, more than Edmund standing in the street, the way it moved was different. Like the first time Dramin had pulled me into sight, pulled me into the truth of my magic, it felt real.
Ilyan, I called to him, needing his advice, needing his connection. Judging by the way his heart beat thundered inside of me, he had already seen. He already knew. Did you see?
Come here, now. He hadn’t needed to say it.
I was already running.
I moved at a dead run, my ribbon pulling against my sloppy bun as it trailed behind me in a bright line of color. I ran past the hordes of people who looked at me with a combination of horror and fear. However, my mind was still too trapped on that dark, blood covered street to even dwell on what was going through their minds.
I had one task—get to Ilyan.
Throwing up my shield, I ran past the thin, white line that covered the cobbles and through the barrier Ilyan and I had made to protect everyone inside.
The tension in my heart increased as the pressure of the barrier pushed against me like cellophane and a suction cup. It was hard to breathe, hard to think, but I didn’t stop. I kept moving, propelling my feet through the pressurized space and out into the open where fear and tension combined with the painful reality of what the world around us had become.
Within Ilyan’s barrier, the space still held shadows of the war we were stuck in, streaks of blood no one could remove, broken windows and shutters still waiting for repair. But it was clean, safe. Here, underneath the bright red glow of Edmund’s dome, trapped in the city he had designed to be a death sentence, the safety was gone.
Out here were silence and fresh streaks of blood. Out here were carcasses and remnants of life, burned out cars, and belongings scattered over bloodstained streets from when people had attempted to escape. Out here it was an active war.
With a tight knot forming in my gut, I took one look back to the cathedral. All signs of life were gone now, wiped out by the shield, leaving me looking at a cathedral and courtyard as broken down and devoid of life as the one I now stood in, exactly how it would look to Edmund’s men.
Can you show me again?
I knew what he was asking. I could hear his terror as he tried to play back over the sight, as his brain picked apart every change in a mad yet useless attempt to make sense of it.
I’m almost to you, I said as I took off into the air, my wind and magic catching me as I jumped, propelling me forward and toward the heavy pull that Ilyan’s magic always gave me.
Be safe, he whispered, his magic further filling me as he tracked my movements, as he traveled alongside me.
I welcomed it, pulling it into me, knowing I might need it.
It wasn’t safe out here.
Even with all the magic, there was no way to be safe. Our own men moved through the streets like ghosts, looking for survivors, for food, for any sign of Edmund’s guards as they patrolled the streets, groups of them attacking with no warning, even when shielded. The Vil?s scoured for anything they could try to attack, like rabid dogs.