Imdalind Ruby Collection Two: Soul of Flame | Burnt Devotion | Brand of Betrayal | Dawn of Ash by Ethington Rebecca

Author:Ethington, Rebecca
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Imdalind Press
Published: 2021-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

55

Ryland

“Take it out,” I moaned as I woke up, the sound more pained than pleading, the ache of my body followed right behind.

I jerked up in the bed I was in, my mind moving a million miles a minute as it tried to keep up. The Vilỳs. Sain. Joclyn. Wyn. Wyn right there as I begged her…

Everything came in waves as I sat there, my eyes trying to adjust in the bright and dark of the strange red light that seemed to be everywhere.

The color only added to the confusion and I lay back down, my eyes finally adjusting to tall, sweeping ceilings and old buttresses that, while part of me thought they should be familiar, they weren’t.

Nothing about this was familiar.

‘You’re home.’

The voice was a low growl, a hum that bridged the reality of now and before.

I jerked and it all came back.

I could see it all. The city we had worked so hard to get to. The rumble of the earth as the sky had dimmed around us. The screams and wind as the Vilỳs my father had mutated attacked us from all sides. Mostly, it was the voice—the voice that had rampaged through me, terrorized me as I tried to fight for my friends. To save them. To save my brother...

I had tried.

‘You didn’t try hard enough.’

But I had.

I had tried until the moment I had begged Wyn to remove the painful voices from me, until the world had become black as she had knocked me out again. Now, I lay on a creaky cot, the hollow sounds of breathing and distant footsteps echoing through the cavernous space.

It was then that I recognized it, even if I had never been there.

This cathedral was one I had only heard stories of—the massive holy place that stood in the center of Prague. And now I was here.

‘I’m here, too. So is Ilyan… You should kill them…’

No.

‘Kill them all.’

“No.” The word was calm as I stared at the ceiling, listening to the voice that had once been so loud and sure and was now hollow and fragmented, like the transmission was broken.

No.

Like the receiver had been removed.

The shard had been removed.

‘You can never escape me.’

I think I already have, Father.

He yelled in anger at my reply, but the sound was lost. My mind was almost peaceful. It was like waking up from a deep sleep and having everything around me be new. Even if the voices were still there, they were only a distant memory now.

My hand shook as I lifted it to my chest, my fingers fluttering against my bare chest as they trailed toward my heart, toward the dozens of scars that had cut through the skin, straight to that battered, beating thing my father had used to control me and everyone around me for so long.

My heart was mine.

‘Not completely. Not quite.’

I couldn’t help smiling at the faint taunt, my heart not even so much as twisting in response.

Everything had changed.

Suddenly, the large stone archways that hung above me did not seem so old.

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