Soul of Flame (Imdalind Series #4)

by Rebecca Ethington

  Our eyes met in silence, neither knowing what to say before she broke the stare, her hands writhing in her lap, her thumb continually rubbing over a scar on her hand that I hadn't seen before.

  “He hurt us, too, Jos,” she whispered, as if that made it all better, yet it didn’t. It only confused me more.

  I thought I had understood all about turning the other cheek and being understanding and forgiving, though I had never assumed I could feel so much bitter hatred as I did for Cail.

  “Then why do you want to avenge him? Because he was your brother?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I don’t see what’s complicated about it,” I said, my voice hard and angry as I stared her down. “He trapped me in his mind, tried to kill me. I c-can’t-t cl-lose my eyes w-with… with-out… without-t—”

  I stopped abruptly, my nerves tingling at the memories as the insanity tried to take over. I pushed it away only to have my vision sway, the familiar swimming in my head rushing through me. My hands flew to my head as I pressed against my scalp, trying to block out the sight, my chest heaving as I tried to will some of the sweet-smelling fumes from the bathroom into my lungs.

  I am bigger than it.

  I breathed deep as Wyn placed her hand against my back, the warmth shocking as the heat of her magic warmed my skin. I gasped at the feeling, the difference from the icy cold I had felt before alarming.

  “It’s okay, Jos,” Wyn soothed as she rubbed my back. I focused on the touch—on the memories of before—and felt the anxiety seep away into nothing. “I know. I know what he can do. I’ve known my whole life. He beat Talon and tortured Ryland until he broke while the only thing that kept Ryland together was Sain. I think Sain is the only thing that is still keeping him together.”

  I knew I shouldn’t be surprised. I had seen the way my dad had comforted Ryland, the look of pity on his face as Ilyan dragged me away. I guess now I understood it. I had tried to kill his precious prince.

  I gritted my teeth and looked away from Wyn, my eyes falling on the small sliver of glinting red that shone through the feathers. I wanted to take it and throw it against the wall, shatter it into a million pieces. I didn’t need a piece of Ryland’s heart anyway.

  “Well, then maybe he can be Ryland’s dad,” I hissed the words out, the anger that I thought had left me coming back so fast I wasn’t sure where it had been hiding.

  “Jos?” Wyn asked, her voice so soft I barely heard her.

  I clenched my teeth as I breathed in shakily, trying to control the anger, but once again, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I closed my eyes as I pushed it away, only to have the image of Ilyan’s face after I had snapped at him coming right to the surface. I gasped at the image, the anger leaving as a shard of my broken heart stabbed uncomfortably through my chest.

  “I’m s-sorry… I sho-ouldn’t have said-d that. It’s j-just… after last night… when I tried to kill Ryland. He didn’t help me. He went to Ryland,” I said, my voice choking through the emotions.

  “I know,” she admitted, the response taking me off guard. I had almost expected her to erupt at my blatant admission of my attempt at Ryland’s life. “I wanted to go help Sain calm him down after Ilyan dragged you off.”

  “You helped Sain?” I asked as I leaned toward her, the words accusatory and harsh, but I didn’t try to hide it.

  “Yeah, Jos, we are like bosom buddies now,” she said as she winked at me, her face breaking into a wide smile that I wasn’t sure how to interpret. I narrowed my eyes at her in question, but she just sighed and leaned against the wall. “It’s hard to keep Ryland calm after everything they did to him. Sain spent so much time with him, so he’s the only one who can keep him calm…”

  I looked away from her, my jaw tensing as I threw myself onto the hard floor, the feathers billowing around me instead of cushioning my fall as I had hoped.

  I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. It felt like I was in some kind of Ryland intervention, and she was getting out all the reasons why I should forgive him and go back to the way things were. I just didn’t want to hear it. It wasn’t like I didn’t care because part of me still did. Part of me wanted him to be happy, just not in the way he wanted. I couldn’t be with him, not anymore.

  It was like when you had a reoccurring dream of falling. Every night for months you fell off the same building. You were screaming, and no one could stop you from the impact that would wake you up in a cold sweat, your chest heaving. It happened for years, and then, one day you would find yourself face to face with that building. You wouldn’t go in. No one would.

  Just like I couldn’t look at Ryland the same way. Even for those brief moments when my mind was clear, I couldn’t see beyond the nightmares that he had given me.

  Sometimes you just fall out of love. Sometimes you can’t be with someone who hurts you.

  “Your dad loves you, you know,” Wyn whispered into the silence.

  I sighed at her words, but I didn’t move from where I lay among the feathers.

  “He has a funny way of showing it. The only thing he has really said to me is that I am supposed to save the world.”

  I cringed at the thought, not liking the reminder of the fight that was knocking down our door. I could still feel the angry pulse of the Trpaslíks, reminding me that as soon as tomorrow, I could be forced into a battle I wasn’t ready to fight. That I knew I would lose without Ilyan.

  “That’s the Drak in him talking.” She said it like that made it all better, and I guess to her it did. Not to me.

  To me, I was still harboring that image of my father that I had been clinging to from when I was five. The dad who would give me pony-back rides, chase bugs with me, and read me bedtime stories. I knew it wouldn’t be the same, but I had at least expected him to care more about me than about my abusive ex-boyfriend.

  “Yeah, well, I have Drak in me, too, but you don’t see me telling Ilyan to bring me crumpets,” I said, trying to ignore the guilt that mixed with the gentle swoop in my stomach as I said his name.

  “Ah… so that’s why he tore apart the chapel. Ilyan hates crumpets.” Wyn laughed as she came to lie down next to me, her body pressing against mine as her movement sent feathers flying over me. I hacked and sputtered as they flew over my nose and tried to wiggle into my mouth.

  Wyn laughed and pushed more toward me, but the attempt at playing was only halfhearted. My soul was too sore for me to focus on much else.

  I gasped as the words came to mind, the realization almost so simple I felt stupid for not realizing it, and even more stupid for not having done something to stop it. Ilyan held part of my soul and I part of his.

  No wonder everything hurt.

  Ten

  I lay with Wyn among the feathers, the gentle breeze from the windows picking them up and swirling them over our heads in a blizzard of stars and cotton down.

  We hadn’t said a word for the last few minutes. We had merely lain in silence as I continually searched for Ilyan, my magic stretching as I sought out his magic, his soul. I searched for any sign that he was still alive, but I felt nothing. The thought only frightened me more, yet I kept it locked up, too scared to put words to my fears.

  I exhaled deeply, my chest shaking with the threat of tears as the air left me. I had hoped the haze of sadness that lay over me would have gone, but I was still trapped underneath it.

  “You are supposed to tell me this stuff, Jos,” Wyn whispered into the silence, her hand moving to wrap around mine. “I’m your best friend; we are supposed to eat ice cream, watch movies that make us cry, and talk about how dumb boys are.”

  “There is no ice cream,” I said sullenly, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat it if it were available.

  “True, but I’m here, and I’m even better than ice cream.”

  “That’s the weirdest thing you have ever said,” I replied without looking at her, my lips turning up whether I wanted them to or not.

  “Yes, but it’
s still true, so let’s talk about boy problems,” she said it as bright as day, but I could hear the pain behind her voice, my heart breaking at the thought that she wanted to help me with Ilyan while she had lost her mate only days before.

  It didn’t help that I could see her, staring at me, waiting for an answer.

  I exhaled shakily, the pain in my chest seeming to grow with each breath.

  “I upset him. I said things I shouldn’t have said…” I purposefully whispered in the hope she wouldn’t be able to hear me—that I wouldn’t have to explain—but Wyn obviously wasn’t going to let me get away with that.

  “Everyone does things when they are scared,” Wyn said, her voice breaking into a deep parental tone that I was not used to hearing from her. “It’s normal. It’s a defense mechanism, projecting your fears out in anger…”

  I sighed and looked away from the ceiling to meet her head on, almost daring her to continue, but instead she stopped, her words trailing away to nothing.

  “A defense mechanism? Who are you?” While it wouldn’t be out of character for a two hundred year old immortal to say things like that, it was out of context for my nerd chic best friend. The whole thing caught me off guard.

  “I’ve watched quite a few people over the years, Jos.” She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling; obviously, it was her turn to avoid me.

  “What? In the last six months?” I asked, prodding her side with my finger, causing her to jump and move away at the contact.

  “Everyone has fights,” Wyn said as she carefully scooted back over to lie next to me. “It doesn’t matter if you have been together for five months or five hundred years. No relationship is perfect, and expecting it to be is setting yourself up for disaster.” Her voice rumbled through me, the sound low enough that it was more like a gentle hum in the silence of the room.

  Even without the happily married parents as an example, I knew she was right; that everything was fixable. I didn’t know if it was because it was the first time something like this had ever happened to me, or because Wyn had referred to me as being in a relationship with Ilyan, but her words caused my soul to ache and yearn in a deep need I had never felt.

  “What did you say to him, anyway?” Wyn whispered, her apprehension at asking making me a bit uncomfortable. “That his hair was ugly? He smells like rotten fruit?”

  I laughed at the absurdity of her suggestions, a momentary joy spreading through me as I lay next her, my body settling into the cold stone and feathers as well as the warmth that Wyn radiated. I knew I couldn’t put it off; I knew I had to tell her what had happened. I had to let the words fly out into the air, let the pain and sadness go with them. At least that was my hope.

  “Ilyan told Ryland that he was saving me for him, that Ry could have me. Like I’m a cow.” I said it all very fast, my face beginning to burn in threat of tears the second that first word was out. I held the ugly tears in stubbornly, however. I didn’t want to cry, not anymore. I wanted to fix what I had done, and I was fairly certain that crying wasn’t going to do that.

  “Did you really think that Ilyan would let a guy who keeps trying to kill you take you?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you so mad about?” Wyn asked, the smile on her face leaking through as she bounced her shoulder, playfully jostling my head around. I scowled and moved away to glare at her, wishing I could find the humor in the situation that she had, but it just wasn’t there. She was obviously missing the biggest problem, the thing that ground at my stomach.

  “I’m not property, Wyn. You can’t buy and sell me.”

  “Did you let him explain?” Wyn propped herself up on her elbow as she looked down at me, her body hovering over me like a helicopter. I don’t know if it was her dark eyes or the close proximity, but I suddenly felt like I was underneath a magnifying glass.

  I hadn’t let him explain; he had tried, but I hadn’t let him get the words out, and even if I had, I knew that I wouldn’t have listened. My stubborn anger was already begging me not to listen to Wyn.

  I sighed and looked away from her, knowing that would be all the answer she needed.

  “Můj majetek se proto rozšířila tento den dní, moje srdce roste v zemi a způsobu. Pozemky jsem chodil, se navždy, vázané na můj kamarád přede mnou.” Her voice was a whisper of magic that prickled over my spine and I turned back toward her in a rush, my magic desperate to hear as much as I could.

  She sat still, her face soft, her eyes closed as the words that were familiar and precious to her flowed off her tongue like a song. Her magic swelled as she spoke, the warmth of Talon’s magic surging through her briefly before it settled back down.

  “What does that mean?” I whispered, my magic still pulsing as the sky rumbled, disrupting the calm in the air that Wyn’s words had brought.

  “It’s a line from the bonding ceremony, the part of the Zȇlství that Ryland conveniently skipped over, you know, after he forgot to ask you if you wanted to be bonded,” Wyn said with an exaggerated eye roll. “Mates are supposed to braid each other’s hair and bind their hands in oils. The Drak’s share Black Water for whatever reason, and then those words are spoken. The first lines happen to be, ‘My property has expanded this day of days.’”

  Wyn sighed as she came to lieback down beside me, the uncomfortable twisting of my stomach increasing. “He doesn’t view you as property. It’s just the line—tradition. It means something else to us than it does to you. It’s something that Ilyan, as King, has held dear for centuries.”

  “I’m a terrible person,” I groaned as I rolled into Wyn, burying my face into her shoulder. The full weight of what I had done hit me, coming down on my chest like an anvil. I gasped for breath, the heaviness of my regret suddenly making it impossible to breathe.

  “No, you’re not,” Wyn began, the lighthearted tone in her voice making it clear she didn’t understand. “You are just overwhelmed, stuck in a new world with a dad who gets confused about his role in your life, a best friend who has a whole other life that she—…”

  “No, I mean I am a terrible, bottom-of-the-rung, absolutely horrible human being,” I interrupted.

  Before I knew it, the hateful tears were falling down my face again. “I told him I didn’t care who he was; he wasn’t King anymore because everyone was dead…”

  “No wonder he had a fit,” Wyn whispered after my words faded away, her dark tones making it clear how much of a mistake I had made.

  I sat up, curling my legs into my chest as I hid my face in my knees. Piles of feathers billowed up into the air at my movement, a cloud of white surrounding me as I let the feathers fall on top of me. I had never wanted to disappear as much as I wanted to right then.

  “Listen,” Wyn whispered as she sat up next to me, her hand moving to rub over my back. “Ilyan may not take the formalities seriously all the time, but he can’t help who he was raised to be. You undermined that. It didn’t help that he lost his best friend, either. Talon was more than just his friend; he helped to keep Ilyan’s temper in check.”

  Wyn’s words trailed down my spine in a wicked prick of pain. I knew that what I had said was wrong, but hearing exactly why was a very broad slap to the face. I wished I knew where Ilyan was. I yearned to hug him and apologize. Even if I could, I wasn’t sure of what the outcome would be anymore. I wasn’t sure I deserved to be forgiven. The things I had said… The way I had behaved… It was inexcusable.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked softly, her hand coming to a stop against the middle of my back.

  “I don’t know.” I pushed the long strands of black hair out of my eyes as I turned to look at her. “Grovel at his feet and beg forgiveness.” I tried to laugh as I spoke, but it didn’t quite work, and so I pressed my forehead back into the hard joints of my knees.

  “I’m sorry, Ilyan,” I groaned, knowing he couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t even feel his presence near me enough that I could push the words into his mind. I was trapped in my room, with
words that meant so much to me that I could hardly breathe, without a way to get the message to him.

  “I’m sorry, too, Joclyn,” his voice was a soothing balm right to my soul. It cut through me and I jerked up, my breathing picking up to see him standing in the doorway.

  His hair was longer than I had ever seen it, stretching to about halfway down his back and over his torn and filthy clothes. His blood-shot eyes were soft as they searched into me, pulling out the love and happiness that I had thought I had lost and bringing them right to the surface.

  He stood still as I looked at him, the air heavy with expectation. I could hear the beating of my heart in my ears and feel the breeze as it blew the feathers over the floor like the waves of the sea, but nothing else existed beyond the two of us.

  My heart pounded as I tried to find some footing, my mind desperately trying to figure out what to say while my core just begged me to run to him.

  “Well, don’t let me interrupt such a silent reunion,” Wyn said as she moved past Ilyan toward the door, her hand on the doorknob before she spoke again. “Be nice to each other.”

  The door clicked shut and I ran to him blindly, well aware of the joyful tears that were flowing down my cheeks. He wrapped his arms around me as I made impact with his chest, his wide hands pressing me against him as I breathed deeply, the familiar scent of his magic moving into me.

  I could hear the beat of his heart in his chest, my own frantic pulse moving to keep time with his. I buried my face into his neck as he held me, the warmth of his magic tucked away just under the surface of his skin. I pressed my hand to his neck, letting my magic flow into him, glad when he accepted it, my soul relaxing at the renewed contact. His warm breath moved over my cheek as he brought me closer to him. One hand tangling in my hair until it reached my neck, his magic soared into me at the skin contact. I sighed with the warmth that flooded into me, the anxiety and anger that had been plaguing me disappearing almost immediately.