Burnt Devotion (4 page)

My heart had forgotten how to beat. The heavy, lead cage clamped so tightly around it I was sure it would fall right to my toes, a solid mass of bleeding, useless flesh.

That was it.

That was what it was about.

More than who I was and what I had become, it was knowing the most treasured parts of my life were real—Thom holding me at night and reciting poems in French. Talon bringing me flowers and dancing with me in the lamp light. Rosy cuddling into my collarbone, her breath hot on my skin as we tried to sleep.

Those were who I was, and they were the memories I treasured more than any other. Still, they all intersected in a jumbled mess. They all felt like a dream and not like a life I had really lived.

I had to find the reality.

“It was,” Thom said, his hand pressing through the blankets against my knee, the warmth of him seeping through the heavy layers of cotton. “You know it was. Just because there is change, it does not deter from the promises and the realities you know. It’s all true. Just because some of the facts were hidden from you for a time, it doesn’t deter what you know.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to let his words seep into me and become real and easy to accept. They only floated somewhere in the air between us, however, a part of me not quite ready to accept them yet.

Thom seemed to see that. He sighed heavily as he moved closer to me, his hand moving up my leg to rest on my waist, the pressure soft and careful as he leaned closer. The bright blue of his eyes deepened as they soaked in what little light we were surrounded by.

“Thom?” I asked, the word choking on its way out.

He only shook his head, his eyes shining as he wrapped his hand around mine. Then he pressed his forehead against mine, leaning into me the way we had done so many times before.

“The love,” he whispered, his voice soft in my ear. “The life you had, the life you built; the memories you hold, the memories you will make; and every whispered word, every shared laugh, they were all true, Wynifred. I still find you very easy to love.”

My heart restarted as the words seeped into me, as the pain in my chest eased enough that I could feel my heart beat.

I sucked in breath then pulled away from him as he did me, his hand pulling away so softly I almost missed the movement.

“You always were wise beyond your years, Thom.”

“Everyone keeps saying that lately. I’m about to go back to not talking. As irritating as pretending to be mute is, at least I wouldn’t have to put up with being known as the Dali Llama.”

“To you perhaps.” I sighed, my muscles already tightening at the admission I was about to make. “I missed talking to you. I would miss it still.”

“Do you remember, Analine?” Thom asked, the sheer abruptness of his question catching me off guard. Not because it had come out of nowhere—something that was pretty standard practice for him—but because of what he was asking about.

“Your mother?” I almost couldn’t get the words out. They felt foreign.

“Yes.”

“Of course.” I don’t think I could ever forget the woman who, at the time, was regarded as one of the most beautiful in Europe, a French princess Edmund had quite literally stolen off the throne. There were still portraits of her hanging throughout the world, except no one knew who she was anymore, just a nameless beauty whose memory Edmund had squashed into oblivion.

I had known her quite well before Edmund had ordered me to remove her heart. The memory of her tear-stained face came to me without prompting. She hadn’t even fought me. She had only rambled in French about her son, the very man who sat before me.

“Before she was taken away, she told me something about my father that I didn’t believe until after I had left. Something about how he loved me, but he didn’t know how to show it, because he had never felt love before.”

“I find that hard to believe.” I couldn’t keep the scoff out of my voice, not like I really tried. The idea of Edmund loving was painfully laughable.

“So did I. Because I had never felt love before, either. I had never known love strong enough that losing it destroyed me. Losing Rosaline destroyed me. Losing you…” He paused, his voice catching in his throat as he turned away from me for the first time since I had woken up.

I stared at him, trying to push the same emotions I was sure were plaguing him away, stop them from rising up in me. My bones bowed at the attempt, my spine curving in as Thom’s arms wrapped around himself, his back shuddering as he drew in breath.

I reached forward without thinking, my hand pressing against his back in a desperate show of support, a plea to remind him I was there. Despite not wanting to, I was feeling the same things he was.

Even after three hundred years, her death still hurt. It always would.

“You can’t show love unless you know what it is to feel it. You can’t recognize it until you’ve lost it.” He spoke away from me as the room illuminated with a forked streak right outside the window as his body continued to shudder under my touch.

“I’ve changed, Thom.” My hand dropped from his back as I spoke.

He turned to me as the room roared with noise. “I know, but not as much as I was expecting. There is softness in your eyes that wasn’t there before. Even after Rosy was … born,” he ended lamely, his eyes leaving their intense focus to look at his large calloused hands as they writhed over each other.

“Is that why you are sorry?” I asked, my voice so soft and meek I wasn’t even sure it was mine.

I waited for him to answer, knowing I needed to give him time. I was sure I was ready to hear what was coming, part of me anxiously hoping it would help me solve the swirling identity puzzle I was trapped in. It was like an intro to a Yes song.

“No. I’m sorry for leaving you behind.”

I froze, every muscle tightening in tense ropes that froze me in place. My eyes widened as I stared at him, my heart a thundering pulse at the apology he had shared with me. It was an admission that I had been waiting my entire life to hear.

He
had
left me behind.

However, he had also held me as we cried, as we mourned the murder of a child we had both adored. That loss—that moment when we had watched her soul slip from her body and into the knife Edmund would later use against me—had destroyed us more than I think either of us had realized.

He had withdrawn into himself, mourned and cried in inconsolable sobs that scared me, something only Sain understood. I, instead, had chosen to lock the emotion away, killing hundreds of Draks and thousands of mortals.

It had been the only outlet I could find.

I had needed him, but he couldn’t be there for me. He couldn’t, because he was as broken as I was, and inside that shattered soul, his only recourse was to flee, leaving me behind.

Another pain had been added to the mound already there. I felt all the pain now as he reached for my hand, as his hot fingers wrapped around my cold ones, and his eyes searched mine, waiting for a response, for an acknowledgement, for the forgiveness I wasn’t sure I could give him.

Not now.

Not when the emotions, the sadness, the memories of abandonment were so fresh.

With only a few words, he had brought all of them back. The gauntlet swelled inside of me so fast I could barely breathe. I could feel it building in a wave of magic and anger that I felt sure was going to explode out of me.

I
wanted
it to explode out of me.

I wanted Thom to hear, to feel the depth of what he had done to me.

I wanted to make him hurt as I had so many others.

Yet, that part of me wasn’t the only part of me anymore. It wasn’t the only emotion I had, the only memory I clung to. Yes, it was me, but there was more—more understanding, more compassion, more forgiveness that Thom had never been able to instill inside me.

I was more.

I was more because of what had happened, because Thom had left. I was more because of Talon. And, although it hurt, I don’t think either of us could have come to terms with our monsters if we had stayed by each other’s side, if we had let the demons that plagued us grow together into a roaring beast.

Now, as we sat across from each other, his hand wrapped around mine, the soft bed I had shared with Talon sagging under the weight of us both, I thought I understood.

Not in its entirety, and I don’t think I ever would. There was too much in this world to understand, too much to make sense of, too many lives to meld together. However, as I squeezed his hand and let myself fall into the emotion in his eyes, I at least grasped the first step of the thousand step journey I was about to take.

I had said it before in the belly of Imdalind with my legs shackled to a wall.

I am Wyn.

Sometimes, you didn’t need to overthink things.

Be Happy.

“But you came back,” I whispered, my voice cracking as tears silently fell down my cheeks. “And that’s all that matters.”

Thom smiled at me as his hand tightened around mine, and he opened his mouth to speak. They were words I never heard, trapped in a rumble that shifted the bed we sat on so abruptly I was sure I had lost it.

Thunder roared as the abbey groaned, but I knew at once it was more than the fit the earth was throwing. It was something magical, something that had erupted from inside the walls.

“Are we under—”

The abbey shook again before I got my question out, the hallways echoing with the sound of an explosion. Dust shook from the rafters to fall over us in some type of ridicule.

“I don’t know. Can you find them?” The bed groaned loudly as Thom moved to stand over me, his body disappearing from sight for a minute as he looked out the window. He searched the fields and forests that surrounded us for signs of movement, war, and who knew what else.

Even through the weakness that Joclyn’s healing ability had left me in, I knew I could, or at the very least, I had to try to find the enemy. Battling was probably out of the question, unfortunately.

I only nodded once in acknowledgment before I rolled myself over on the bed, my body screaming in protest as I dropped my hand down to the old hewn wood that had been worn smooth over the last thousand years, and let my magic flood it. I let it move through it as I searched for the pinpoints, searched for the little pressure of power that I could always feel.

I hadn’t even reached the exterior walls of the abbey before the panicked screams echoed through the hallways, before my search became un-needed.

“I don’t need you!” The words came loud and clear as my exhausted magic snapped back into place. The anger and frustration behind the shout was terrifying, but there was something else that was even more frightening.

The magic that followed on its heels, the voice that was unmistakably Joclyn’s, followed by a man’s, and while the words were undistinguishable, I recognized the panicked tone at once.

Edmund had turned Ryland into a weapon specifically to hunt and kill Joclyn, and somehow, they had found each other.

Sain had told Ilyan what had happened. He should know better than to let the two of them find each other.

I flung the covers off myself, bound and determined to go help my friends, to stop the massacre before it began.

“Stay here, Wynifred. You will only hurt yourself.”

“Yeah, right…”

“Please.” I had never heard him plead with me in such a way. I had never heard that level of desperation in his voice. It was like sticky syrup against my soul—warm yet you wanted to wash it off before it dried there.

I nodded in numb disbelief.

Thom returned the gesture before he ran, the door snapping shut as I forced myself to stand.

Even through his plea, through the way it twisted my soul, I still couldn’t ignore the screams that rang through the air. The pain of my friends was something I didn’t think either part of me could ignore. Thom should have known better.

My legs shook beneath me as I leaned against the bed. My arms an unset gelatin as I used them as supports. The mattress gave far too much way, and I almost went down before I was able to catch myself. Then another shake of the abbey surged through me, awakening my magic with a pulse that empowered me.

I needed to get there.

I needed to pull Ryland out of the hell his father had created for him. I needed to see Joclyn, to know she was okay.

With each shake of the building, each scream, my determination grew. My body felt stronger, even though each movement only sent a new wave of muscle aches and weakness through me. I wasn’t even sure how I was staying upright with the pain that held every inch of me, with the way I was leaning against the cold stone that was little more than ice against my hands and the bare soles of my feet.

I clung to the wall as the abbey shook again, making my head spin and my knees try to buckle.

With forehead pressed against the cold stone, I waited for the movement to stop, for the strength to continue, only to have the silence broken by a scream that pierced my heart, a plea that never should have seeped past that girl’s lips.

“I want to kill him!”