Burnt Devotion

by Rebecca Ethington

  Greed.

  Although why I saw it in him right at that moment, I wasn’t sure.

  “Before you ask, he is here, and while currently unconscious, he will be waking soon. You should ask him then.”

  I nodded once, understanding finally dawning on me. He still had them, too. These dreams, these Tȍuhas, whatever they were. They plagued him as they did me.

  I was sure they plagued Dramin, as well.

  Even if the son of the man before me didn’t have the answers, at least he would have a clue.

  I only needed to ask him.

  I only needed to face another of my past sins.

  And I would.

  Seven

  I could tell by the look in Joclyn’s eyes as we stood in the dimly lit room she shared with Ilyan. I could tell by the confusion that stared back at me as we stood face to face as though we were preparing to duel. She didn’t recognize me.

  She didn’t see me, not in the way she knew. Even though I was standing right in front of her.

  I pushed my hands into the pockets of Thom’s leather jacket, my eyes unwavering from the confusion in her wide, grey eyes, the silent plea for understanding going relatively unnoticed.

  I had come to this room the moment I had felt the swell of Edmund’s magic as I scanned the forest. I had come to report to the king, to Ilyan, in the same way I had for centuries when I had worked as his spy. It had never crossed my mind that Joclyn would be the one to open the door, that she would be sleeping next to him and would see the other side of me, the side that neither of us had known existed when we had first met.

  She still didn’t.

  I had tried to tell her so many times before. A few days ago, as we lay in the feathers that lined the floor of this room, I had been so close to telling her. However, her heartbreak had been too much. The demons Edmund had infected her with had made it so I didn’t trust how she would react. I didn’t want to put another burden on her plate; therefore, the words hadn’t come. They had stayed trapped in the feathers, and now it almost felt too late.

  Joclyn stood in the middle of Ilyan’s room with the overly baggy pajama pants I was sure were Ilyan’s hanging on her hips, the dim light making her features seem darker. We looked at each other while Ilyan shuffled around that massive map of his as he processed the new information I had come to give him and Joclyn had confirmed. The magic in the forest had changed. Edmund might well be there. It was huge and frightening, but right then, that was the last thing on my mind. On Joclyn’s mind.

  Right now, the question of who I was seemed like a much bigger demon.

  I hadn’t seen anyone look at me like that for a while. I hadn’t seen that look of fear mixed with a disgust I could never understand. But now, seeing that same look coming back to me from someone I cared about, I got it.

  I finally understood.

  It was more than fear, more than confusion. It was the look you gave someone you did not like, someone who had hurt you. Before, it was a look that I treasured, because it meant I was striking fear in those I was about to kill, in those who were my subordinates.

  It meant I was doing my job.

  I never saw that look in Thom, because Thom liked who I was. And after, with Talon, I was a different person. I was happy, and for whatever reason, that joy spread. That was who Joclyn knew, that was who her best friend was. Unlike any time before, she saw what I truly was. She saw the real me. She saw the woman who struck fear and disgust. She saw the blood on my hands and the murder behind my eyes. She saw what people had seen for centuries, and she didn’t like it.

  My best friend didn’t like it.

  She didn’t like me.

  I had hurt her.

  I had hurt her by not telling her, by trying to protect her and giving her space to defeat whatever Edmund had done to her. What I had thought was support had only been betrayal.

  Deceit.

  I cringed at the look, fighting the snap and irritation that wanted to come forth. I knew it wouldn’t help, not right now.

  I was still fighting between two people and trying to make them blend together.

  I was beginning to think I never could.

  Two lives, two people, stuck in one body, and while they both felt like me, they were strikingly different. No matter how much egg I added to the batter, they wouldn’t bind.

  That would be, of course, if I could cook.

  Perhaps that was why I was having so much trouble—my batter wasn’t right. Too much water or oil or whatever you used to make bread.

  One side oil, one side water.

  I could only see betrayal in her eyes, and it made me realize I needed to tell her.

  “I need you to wake everyone, Wynifred,” Ilyan continued, pulling my mind from the explanation I had been about to give and right back to the emergency we faced. “Tell them to strengthen their portion of the shield, and inform them that we will be meeting in the dining hall at ten.”

  “Ten? Why so late? If he is coming, we don't have time—”

  He stopped me with one look, the expression so familiar it wiped the question from my mind.

  He had let me break quite a few of his rules over the last hundred years; fueled by his guilt for what had happened, I was sure. Now that I was back and all my memories returned, though, I wasn’t going to get away with that anymore.

  Fine by me. I liked this dynamic a bit more, anyway. He was quite fun to prod at.

  “I need everyone there, Wynifred,” he scolded in that same tone, “and I will need to prepare Joclyn to meet Ryland face-to-face. Please tell Sain to do the same.”

  I heard the command behind the words, the instruction he couldn’t give in front of Joclyn, because of what it really meant and what we were really facing. Edmund’s perfectly paced game suddenly made sense. It was more than sending Ryland to kill Joclyn; it was putting a weapon right in the middle of us.

  No, I corrected myself, my eyes darting to the broken girl in front of me. Two weapons.

  Joclyn was one, too, even if she didn’t realize it. They had broken her the same way. I was a fool not to have seen that from the way they used him in Imdalind. I was a fool not to understand.

  We all were.

  Two men stand, one will fall. Blood will drip. The game is played, and those with the most pawns will take the stage. Take your man and play the game, but be careful where your trust is laid.

  Sain had said those words to Edmund, the sight that had been forced from him meaning so much more now from this side of the prison cell. The game was so much more than anyone other than Edmund understood.

  Now we knew, and Ryland was here, perfectly placed to play the game Edmund had commanded him.

  I swallowed once and curtseyed, the movement feeling awkward without the massive dresses I was used to. “Yes, my lord.”

  With one last look at Joclyn and those wide confused eyes, I couldn’t help it, I smiled. I smiled the way I was used to. I smiled the way she had always seen. Then, while the tension in her shoulders lessened, the confusion inside of her only grew.

  My heart tensed painfully at the reminder of what I had added to her already full plate.

  I would have to tell her.

  But now was not the time.

  I left the room without another look. The snap of the closing door echoed through the long, stone hallway in a ripple that made me jump, as though the door closing was a snap of a gun and a call to arms.

  I guessed in a way it was.

  I pulled Thom’s jacket tighter around me then took off down the hall, letting the buzz of their voices fade into nothing as I moved farther away, toward Ryland’s room where Thom and Sain sat with him, trying to calm him down from an attack he’d had only a few hours before.

  Getting him settled down from that was one thing, but ready to face Joclyn in a “not a death match” table meeting? I didn’t know if that was possible in such a short amount of time.

  I exhaled roughly in spite of myself. We might as well just set u
p the boxing pit. We had our work cut out for us.

  Between Ryland and Joclyn’s hitman personas and Dramin’s endless comatose, I had no clue how we were going to get out of here alive.

  Yeah, this should be fun.

  At least I would get to kill people.

  A smile spread over my face, although the chill of the abbey wiped it from me as quickly as it had come.

  I stood still as the gentle breeze moved around me and through my hair, tugging at the jacket as though someone stood right beside me, trying to get my attention. I should have been concerned about where the draft had come from, about the way it wrapped around me, but I wasn’t it.

  With only the slightest breeze, all thought of what I had been ordered to do was wiped from my memory, déjà vu taking its place.

  It was like the dream, the one that stood somewhere between fantasy and the Tȍuha, the dream I was still plagued with. I stood in a hallway much like the castle with the cold wind blowing around me. I almost expected the sound of her laugh to ripple beside the breeze and infiltrate my soul.

  I shivered, my shoulders tensing in expectation.

  But nothing was there.

  Nothing except the cold stone and the breeze.

  Everything was trapped in a fog as I looked around me, my muscles tensing as a thought that I had been trying to keep away burst through the wall I had built—the image of my daughter dancing through the shadows, making everything seem light for the slightest of moments. I couldn’t help it. I smiled.

  I smiled, and then I ran.

  I ran to her, even though I was still running away from her. I ran to her memory.

  The slap of my shoes echoed loudly as I turned a corner, the sound coming to an abrupt halt as I looked to the door that I had tried so hard to forget, the room I hoped time wouldn’t have eaten alive.

  Despite meaning to come here, seeing the familiar door was a slap against my chest, and the air was sucked from my chest because of what I was about to do.

  Ilyan and his people had begun traveling together after the last massacre in the 1700s. Meaning, in each of his favored places, everyone had their own room. This room, this one was mine. Not the one I shared with Talon, but the one I had kept by myself, the one I had used as my own safe house many times. It was a place that still held the relics to a life I had chosen to forget.

  The door creaked as I pushed it open, the dust motes springing to life as the light gust of air moved over them, swirling them through the darkness in inky spirals that made everything feel heavier.

  Haunted.

  Maybe it was.

  I stood there in the doorway of the room, the dull orange glow of my magic flaring on its own, casting burned shadows through the pitch, over the sheet covered furniture, the old Indian rug, and the ancient furnishings.

  I stared at it, my heart pulling me to go in and pull the sheets off the life I had left behind.

  My magic flared as I took the last few steps, the power closing the door behind me and locking me into the room so filled with dust that everything was grey, the dirt particles looking like a soft blanket of ash over it all.

  The room was a shell of what it had been, even though everything was still in the last place I had left it, like the silver hair brush that Cail had given me lying on the table and a petticoat thrown over the headboard. It was like I had walked out on my way to Texas a few days ago. Except, it wasn’t. Everything was covered by dust and sheets. Everything was as forgotten as I had wanted to be.

  My heart was thundering so fast I could feel it in my throat, the pulse powerful enough to make it hard to swallow, let alone breathe. Something that was proving to be impossible, anyway, as I pulled the sheet off the tall wardrobe, a pillow of dust flowing into the silent air and falling around me like snow. I felt them fall on my hands, on my arms, on the tip of my nose, but I didn’t look away from that wardrobe.

  I stared at it, trying to ignore the way my heart was trying to burst out of my chest like an alien, the way my stomach had twisted itself up so tightly I couldn’t hope to escape even if I tried.

  I merely stared, my fingers soft as they traced over the designs that had been carved into it when the French Revolution was all anyone would talk about. Flowers, hummingbirds, a dancing bear.

  Shadows of the light my magic cast fell over me as I opened the wardrobe to reveal the carefully hung dresses, a seeming walk through history as the preserved clothing hung as though they had been made only days ago. Red velvets, blue gingham, lace cuffs, and corsets—dresses I had used to entice males for centuries, to visit kings, to murder kingdoms. Dresses that were tailored to fit to my body, accentuating everything.

  It wasn’t those I wanted.

  I let out a shaking breath as my hand extended while the silence buzzed in my ears until it was all I could hear, the electric buzz vibrating through my skull as I moved the dresses to the side, revealing a large, wooden chest covered in a carved seaside scene.

  The waves, the sand, the sun that set off in the distance. It was all the same as Thom had made it. Precise, perfect. It had taken him months to form the perfect replica of the day he had met me at the beach a few months before Rosaline was born. It had been the first time we had felt her magic within me.

  He had felt her move.

  It was the moment that we had connected, not only to her, but to each other. We might not have been granted marriage, but that had been our ceremony. It was the moment we had created a family.

  He had made it for her so she would always know that, even though our family was a little broken, we still were one.

  I stared at it, my hand frozen against the soft cotton of the dresses, the light flickering over the surface I had opened so many times since that day.

  I wouldn’t open it now.

  I didn’t need to.

  I could see it all.

  The deep blue dress that brought out the darkness of her eyes; the fabric doll Thom had made her for her second birthday, the stitched eyes pulling slightly from where she would rub her nose against them; the white night cap; the petticoats; the flower crown that I had watched her make in my dreams for years.

  I knew how they were laid.

  I knew how they were folded.

  I knew how they felt.

  I knew it all.

  Because I had cried over that box every day for hundreds of years.

  Because I had touched those things as I had longed for her.

  Because I knew her.

  My hand slid down the fabric of the dress as I sunk to the floor, my legs folding awkwardly beneath me as they forgot how to support me. The weight of my body against the floor sent a plume of dust around me, but I barely noticed.

  I only stared at the box while my hands wound together as memory after memory flashed through me, my heart tightening more and more with each one. A pain I hadn’t felt in years built so quickly that, before I knew it, it was seeping from me in a scream that echoed every pain, every heart ache.

  It ripped from me and shook the room around me, making layers of dust fall through the air in sheets of grey that slid like snow drifts, piling in mounds around me. The room I was lost in was as lost as I felt.

  I didn’t stop the emotion.

  I didn’t think I could if I tried.

  I let it come.

  I let myself feel it.

  Never before had I let it out. I felt the pain of Rosaline’s murder. I felt the agony of Talon’s death, the betrayal of Thom leaving me behind, the heart stuttering loss of my brother who had been the only support I had known for my hundred years. I felt the stabbing loss that Joclyn had given me, that one look saying more than she could ever know. Not because it showed me what I was, what I had become, but because it showed me what I had given up.

  I felt the pain for the first time as something snapped inside of me. A weight that I had carried around for centuries slipped away into the piles of dust that surrounded me. I let it fall away, and I let myself become stronger than it.
/>
  What Edmund had done was unforgivable. What I had lost was insurmountable. However, by holding it inside and letting it fester, I had forgotten the person Thom had taught me to be. I had forgotten my child.

  I had become something else.

  I was more than pain. I was more than bloodshed. I was more than joy. I was more than the confusing bits that made up who I was. Those were part of me, yes, and some day, I would explain all those parts to Jos.

  I let the agonizing wail fade to nothing as I stood, my eyes scanning through the orange bathed room in search of the one thing I would take from this place. It was the only thing I wanted.

  I moved through the ghostly forms of furniture, through the rooms of the small apartment as I ripped off sheets, as I opened boxes and drawers and wooden chests in a mad rush to find it. The need only grew with each step, the dust filling the air so heavily I could barely breathe.

  I didn’t care.

  I needed to find it.

  “Wynifred?” Thom’s voice drifted from behind me in a wall of worry that froze me in place, my hands hovering over the lid of a heavy, wooden chest I didn’t remember.

  I tried not to let his tone dig into me, tried not to let the deep concern that lined his face bring about the confusion I had been fighting.

  It did, anyway.

  It did because it was the same calm face he had always had with the same calm eyes I had fallen in love with all those years ago. The look pulled at my heart, the broken shard completely raw and jagged after losing Talon, the shards trying so hard to place themselves back together. The emotion only grew the more that I was around him.

  I pressed my lips together in an attempt to keep the emotion inside and went back to digging through the belongings I had hidden in the back of the room.

  “What are you looking for?” Thom tried again, the soft sound of his footsteps echoing around me as he moved closer.