Burnt Devotion (6 page)

Kill.

“Kill.”

“No, Ryland,” Sain soothed again, the way he always had.

His voice was only enough to pull me out of the words, if not the movement. I still rocked myself into the stone, the heavy thumps of pressure feeling comforting somehow.

“You don’t want that.”

Table. Window. Fireplace. Thom.

Go!

“If I can’t have her,” I growled as I rocked, “then no one can.”

“You don’t mean that, Ryland.”

“Need … Now.”

Now.

“Now.”

Now.

“Now. Kill.”

Kill.

“Ryland,” Sain whispered.

My focus darted right back over to him, my body jerking at the thunderous roar that broke from the sky before my focus began darting around once before going back to him. Although I tried to keep my focus on him, it was hard. It was hard to control my body, hard to control my mind.

“They are nowhere near here. The blade is nowhere near here. You are safe.”

You are never safe.

But, he said…

Never.

Not from me.

“You are safe,” Sain repeated as if he could hear the battle raging within me.

Safe.

The foreign word that my heart clung to like a lifeline pulled me out of the frantic motions and right back to the man who hovered before me, his dark green eyes plunging into me like an anchor, one I clung to with all my might. It was another thing I knew, something else my father couldn’t quite take away.

I stared at him, my eyes focusing for the first time as I rejoiced in what I knew at once to be freedom, to be safety. The panicked breathing slowed as he looked at me, his hand pressing against my bicep in a firm reminder of the reality we were in.

We merely stared at each other as my breathing mellowed, the same way we had done so many times before, every day when he had pulled me from the insanity Cail had placed me in. Usually, it didn’t seem to hold. Usually, it was a fine line that I always fell from easily. While I knew this time was no different, it felt sturdier somehow, as though I was balancing on a wooden plank instead of only a high wire.

Sain realized it, too.

“You are safe, Ryland.”

My hand shook as I placed it against his arm, my fingers leaving streaks of blood on his elbow as I pulled him toward me.

“It’s okay.”

“I want to kill her.” We both jerked at my statement, at the calm mellow of the words, at the simple statement that cut through the air with blood and fire as the voice in my head began to laugh.

I hadn’t meant to say that.

Other words had been forming in my mind, yet those were the ones that had come out.

Sain’s face blanched as the pressure of his hand against me increased. I could feel his pulse through my skin, feel it accelerate as mine did, as my body tensed and tightened at what was coming. I pressed myself against the wall in fear, almost wishing there was a place I could escape to, that there was any place on the earth that was safe for me.

However, I knew better.

Joyful laughter was already filling my head, and the sounds grew the more I tried to push them away, to focus on what I knew to be real, to stay astride that narrow plank that splintered underneath me.

“I want to kill her.” The words felt sane as they seeped from me. My voice wasn’t pulled into the depth of my madness, yet I knew they had been wrought in the same subconscious place. I knew they were real.

And it scared me.

That’s my boy.

I flinched at the familiarity of his voice, at the feigned love that oozed through it. My heart sped up at the acceptance I had always wanted, despite knowing what that meant.

Kill.

“Kill,” I hissed.

Sain’s lips pressed into a tight white line. He knew what was coming as much as I did.

“I want to kill her.”

“Ryland,” Sain pleaded through the flickering light of his magic, but I knew at once his plea was useless.

“Kill!” It was a roar the echoed round us, the light fading to black for a moment as my magic smothered it. “I want to kill her.”

“No, you don’t.” I jumped at the new voice as much as the snake that lived inside me did, the slimy creature retreating into my belly like a heavy lead weight.

My body tensed as I pushed myself into the wall again, and a bright orange light joined Sain’s green one, leaving us sitting in a puke-filled room as Wyn slowly walked toward us.

A pained smile on her face as she leaned against the table then the wall and, finally, Thom. I had almost forgotten he was there, as quiet as he was.

My magic flared with a violent spark, as if it was reacting to an enemy, one who had awakened the dragon of my madness I had been trying so hard to restrain.

“I need to,” I hissed through gritted teeth, wishing there was a way I could restrain it, wishing I wanted to.

Then go.

I need to go.

“No, Ryland, you don’t,” Wyn’s face was wrinkled in a pained grimace as Thom helped her to sit, gently leaning her against him when he sat beside her.

I looked at her as I shook, as my back hit against the wall, as we sat in the darkened, stone room the way we always had.

“I do.” The words were a moan.

“No,” Wyn said, a smile turning up the corners of her mouth, though pain still haunted her eyes.

For one frightening moment, I wondered what my father had done to her, how she had gotten here. For one moment, I opened my mouth to ask, but the same word ran through my mind on repeat, and I didn’t want it to escape. Therefore, I slammed my back into the wall with a little more force, part of me hoping the impact would be enough to shake my father out of my mind.

“You don’t, just as she doesn’t want to kill you,” Wyn continued as if nothing had happened.

My eyes darted to hers for only a moment before continuing their tour of inanimate objects around the room.

She’s lying.

She wants to kill you, too.

No, she’s good.

Don’t fool yourself.

You can see it in her eyes.

She wants me dead.

I want you dead, too.

The thought came unbidden. The truth of the phrase, the knowledge that I wasn’t alone in my desire, no matter how wicked it might be, calmed me. While I should have been able to grab that calm, it only angered the monster that lived inside of me, trapping me with his screams as I began to shake and rock in place.

She wants you dead.

Look at her.

She’s going to kill you.

No, she’s safe.

She’s like her brother.

Her brother hurt you.

Cail hurt me.

You should hurt her.

I twitched as the voice continued gaining in volume while I slammed into the wall. What little calm and clarity I had found vanished with the flash of white light that filled the abbey.

“Want to … need to…” I wasn’t sure if I was speaking to Wyn, Sain, or my father. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to kill anymore or if it was all of them. The result was the same. “Kill. Kill. Kill.”

“No.” Wyn’s voice was a little more forceful than it should have been, given how weak she appeared. The strength behind it moved through me with a jump that pulled my wavering focus back to her. “You don’t. Edmund does. The demon that Edmund has placed inside of you does.
You
need to stop listening to him, Ryland. Don’t listen to your father’s voice.” Her words were calm, full of more knowledge and experience than I would have given her credit for.

I stared at her while every part of my body began to shake as the sound of my father echoed in my head. The words that had plagued me so much for the past few months sounded like little more than a broken speaker in my mind.

Kill … now…

Don’t wait.

Kill them all.

No.

You are strong enough.

You can do it.

How did she know? How could she know? Did she hear him, too? Did she hear him yell and scream? Did she have the same memories of pain as I did?

I could tell by looking in her eyes that, even though she knew, it wasn’t the same. Regardless, there was still something else there, some other pain I couldn’t quite place.

You saw her … Don’t listen…

“How?” I asked, the word broken as I forced it past the madness, past the voice that only grew louder.

“How did I know?”

I could only nod, the sagging curls of my hair falling over my face and obstructing my vision. I didn’t bother to move them. I only kept moving, my back slamming into the wall, though my focus didn’t deviate so much as a hair from the girl in front of me.

“Because he’s done it before, Ryland,” she whispered. The gravelly depth of her voice was so different from what I had heard before that it caught me off guard.

“To you?”

“No.” Her voice caught on that one word, the sounds choking in her throat as the emotion pulled at them. It was an emotion so raw and honest it yanked at my soul, bringing some long forgotten memory to life. For whatever reason, the plank became a bridge, one cemented in the knowledge that I wasn’t alone. Someone understood.

I only barely registered that I wasn’t rocking anymore. Despite the voice being a scream, for some reason, I was strong in this moment. It was like before, when Cail had pushed the soul’s blade into us, and we had moved into the waiting place, the only place where my mind was my own.

Though I could still hear the voice, though my body was still tensed and ready to attack, to scream, to yell, to fight, I still felt control. I felt a whisper of who I was now.

Who I used to be had been killed many months ago by the man who gave me life. To give life, only to then take it away seemed to be the sole thing he was good at.

“He did it to Cail before he became what he was. He did it to Mym, your sister. He did it to Rosaline, my...” Her voice caught again.

Thom’s hand wrap tighter around her, bringing her closer, wrapping himself around her in comfort and support.

Lies.

Don’t listen.

You know you need to find her.

Find her before it’s too late.

But Wyn knows something…

Don’t trust her.

But I do…

Don’t be a fool!

Make her pay.

Make them pay.

Make Ilyan pay for what he has done.

What he has taken from you.

I cringed as the voice came again, strong and powerful, and my muscles twitched in fear and anger. My hands moved up to my ears in another desperate attempt to lock him out, but I knew it would only keep him in.

“Don’t listen to him, Ryland.”

Find her.

Kill her.

“Can’t,” I gasped, the word grinding behind clenched teeth. “Too loud.”

Before I knew what had happened, I was rocking again, the back of my head slamming into stone. The panicked whispers of the three people before me ground through the air as the bridge began to disintegrate underneath me. Planks and supports that had seemed so strong only moments before fell away into nothing.

I watched my hair bounce before my eyes, heard words repeat on my lips as they did in my mind, but all I felt was the rhythmic pounding of my back against stone and the hand that wrapped around mine.

The heat of an unfamiliar magic filling me.

I tried to pull away from the painful wave that sparked against my nerve endings and filled me with thousands of pin pricks, each one filled with heat and fire. They ran over my body like thousands of tiny knives, the pain only growing as the heat did, as the hand clung tighter, as I began to scream.

“No!” The word ripped from me as the scream did, as I writhed and tried to fight, but it was no use. The pain continued, the screams continued, the words ‘kill,’ ‘destroy,’ and ‘no’ mixed with my screams until it was nothing but noise. Nothing, but the gasps of those who sat before me, who held me.

And then there was only … nothing.

Nothing except heaving breaths and tense waiting.

My screams stopped as abruptly as they had begun, the voice in my mind silencing into nothing but a memory.

Silence I hadn’t heard for months. Silence that, in many ways, I hadn’t heard my entire life.
He
had always been there, whispering, criticizing, ripping me apart. Now, however, there was nothing.

Nothing but me.

My mind was clear.

Yes, the pain was still there. The painful fire wrapped around inside me as the hand clung to mine. However, compared to the freedom my mind now felt, the pain was bearable. The pain was unimportant.

My eyes snapped up in wonder, moving from the shadowed markings on the hand that held mine to the girl who leaned against Thom in such a weakened state she could barely keep her eyes open.