Burnt Devotion

by Rebecca Ethington

“Her blanket,” I said, knowing I didn’t have to elaborate.

  Thom said nothing. I only heard the sharp intake of his breath before he walked beside me, walking right up to an old trunk that had been hidden in the back, the top lifting before he had even reached it.

  “I had the other one on my bed in the cave in Italy,” Thom said as he lifted the old blanket from the trunk, the heavy woven fibers as bright as the day the travelers had given them to her. The nomads had doted over her hair and the way her internal flame glowed. “To always keep her close. Keep you close.”

  His voice was soft as it rolled into me. I collapsed into him, and his arms enfolded around me as he covered us with the old blanket, wrapping the edges around us and trapping us together.

  “I know it’s hard,” Thom whispered, “but I will help you through this.”

  “I thought I had it all figured out. I knew who I was when I ran from Edmund, but now there are friends who don’t know who I am, and my heart feels torn in two.”

  “Can I fix it?” His hand moved up my back as he held me against him. The question was a deep rumble of sincerity that I had always known from him. The question, the motion, was almost like stepping back in time.

  The thought, while true, was slightly ridiculous.

  “What?” I couldn’t keep the awkward chuckle out of my voice no matter how hard I tried.

  “This ripped heart that you speak of.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible, Thom. You are part of the problem…” I felt his chest harden, the muscles tensing underneath me at my admission. I tried to move away, but he held me tightly against him, his magic flaring against my skin in warning to not move.

  I could tell he wasn’t mad, perhaps only hurt.

  I still owed him honesty, something, given the subject matter, that made me uncomfortable.

  “I’m still in love with you.” A sharp intake of breath made me almost lose track of what I needed to say to him. Almost. He needed to hear me out. “But I am also still in love with Talon. My heart hasn’t quite gotten the memo about having lived two different lives.”

  “Your heart is smarter than your head, then.” It was a whisper in my ear, the warm air of his breath rushing over my neck. “They weren’t two different lives. It was just one life. Love as many people as you want.”

  The words were truth. They were honest. They were a stab in the gut and an echo of a memory of two teenage girls laughing on the floor of a punk rock bedroom. Styx had been playing in the background, and my own voice had broken over the music with advice that at the time seemed insignificant. But now?

  “It’s okay to love. I think it makes you a better person. At least then you know what it feels like to love instead of living without ever knowing. I love a lot of people I know will never love me back, but I am happier because of it.”

  I had been speaking of my brother, of my father; however, hearing those words roar through my head now, I knew it was so much more than that.

  “I know. I wish that would take away the anxiety, the way everything feels like it’s crawling around inside of me.” It was so much more than that, but they were the only words that fit.

  “Are you saying I need to find you something to kill?” It was then his arms loosened enough to let me look into the face that was more a part of my memory than any other. Even when I had forgotten him, even when Ilyan had taken that life from me, he still had been with me in my dreams. I guessed, in a way, he had always been there.

  “Something like that.”

  Thom chuckled at me, his voice low and deep as it rolled over my skin and rumbled through me. I clung to him at the sound, at the movement, which only made him laugh more.

  “I think I can arrange that. Give me a few days.”

  I knew I should laugh, but I couldn’t make the sound come. I couldn’t dispel the anxiety that had taken up residence in my chest.

  He was right. I really did just need to kill something.

  It was what I had always done, after all. Why should now be any different?

  “Wynifred, you have always had a habit of overthinking things and taking the smallest bit of information then dwelling on it until it sits on your chest, and you can’t breathe.”

  I had related it to a saber tooth tiger earlier. I guessed I wasn’t as far from the truth as I had thought.

  Sometimes, it scared me how well Thom knew me.

  “Stop it.” The kindness in his voice was gone now.

  I flinched, pulling away from him and expecting a demon; instead, I only found the gruff man before me smiling, his tiny dimple peeking out behind his wild hair.

  “Stop overthinking. Your heart and your mind know what to do. They know who you are. They know what your answer is.” His voice was a whisper, while I wasn’t even sure I was breathing. “Trust it.”

  I merely stared at him, at the dimple, at the dreads, at the shallow scars on his chin and…

  “Thom,” I began, but he only smiled, his hands pressing me against him again as he stopped what I was about to say with that gruff irritation of his.

  “Don’t say I’m wise,” he growled. “I don’t think I could take it.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. He just didn’t realize he always had been.

  Eight

  “For Sdens.”

  The room was dark and quiet as I continued the ritual toasting before the battle. Even though Jos and Ilyan had left, even though Thom had fallen asleep hours before, I still continued. Tomorrow’s battle with Edmund loomed closer with each drink.

  I could hear the crickets through the partially opened window, the sound vaguely familiar as it rumbled under the buzzing that filled my ears. I knew I should sleep—my body wanted sleep—but I couldn’t, not yet.

  I still had too many names to go through before we ran into Edmund’s army tomorrow. Before the possibly deadly attempt to get everyone out of Risoseco and to Prague began. Although, I wasn’t sure how wise that would be, especially considering the Vilỳ based bloodbath Jos had apparently seen alongside her father a few hours before.

  I didn’t want to believe it.

  Still, I couldn’t get the dead sound of her voice out of my head, the way her eyes had gone black.

  I shuddered as everything spun and rocked and jerked as I sat, struggling to keep my body upright while pouring glass after glass.

  All the bottles except for this one were empty. Of course, I wasn’t drinking them anymore. Regardless, I continued the pouring motion, anyway, like one of those weighted birds old men kept on their desks.

  Pour. Name. Pour. Name.

  Up and down.

  Over and over.

  I needed a top hat.

  My voice cut through the darkness as I listed off every person I had killed, every person I had wronged. As I sealed my fate with the admission of my sins and grievances.

  If only the heavily fermented drink was enough to wash them away.

  I was sure the people who had first built this abbey would think so. Either that, or they would hang me, my sins too great for any form of redemption.

  “For Dramin.” My tongue slurred around the words, and Thom exhaled in such a way that, if I wasn’t sure from the snoring that he was already asleep, I would have thought he had heard me.

  But there was only silence.

  Me and the crickets.

  I sighed, and this time, I downed the drink, the liquid pouring down my chin as it burned my throat, the taste more like acid than liquor. I didn’t care. It didn’t really matter, anyway. I was already far too inebriated for my own good, the bad combination of emotional turmoil and sleep deprivation only heightening the effects.

  It was an interesting sensation—losing control.

  I had seen the youth of society do it enough as I dragged Talon from concert to concert. I guessed it was my turn.

  I faux-poured again, the glasses slamming against each other as my hand shook. Even though nothing came out of the bottle, I still followed the action. I sti
ll stared at the now empty glass, my mind feeling blank and hollow as I tried to think of the next name, the next person I had sold bits of my soul to betray. However, nothing was there anymore. The massive list had disappeared with the mention of that one name.

  It was only Dramin now.

  Perhaps it was because he was here, in this abbey, that his name and what I had done to him stuck with me. All the other faces had gone, leaving me with nothing other than the withered, weak, old man who had woken up only hours before. His body, while appearing young, was so weak from whatever was destroying him that he looked to have lost some of his immortality.

  I hadn’t even known that was possible, but having seen him, I guessed it was.

  I focused on the glass, though I didn’t see it, my mind still buzzing with the thought of the man whose life I alone had destroyed, the man who wouldn’t even look at me. The man who Sain had said would know the answer to my question.

  I was going to find out, now.

  My steps were loud slaps through the silence as I moved to the door, my need to know driving me on. I had never been one to back down from getting the answers I needed. This time was no different. I needed to know about the dreams, about the Tȍuha, even if I had to face Dramin.

  Even if I had to face what I had done to him.

  The hallways were far too dark, and with my heightened senses being dulled by the last few hours of drinking, it was difficult for me to see much of anything. This was what mortals must feel like in an old building. Creaks were louder, shadows longer, and everything was dark. I couldn’t be sure, but I swore there was a hunched man following me.

  No wonder horror movies were so popular.

  I had never seen the pull, but now that I was in one, I didn’t know if I wanted to keep going or press pause and find a way to escape.

  The sound of my steps was hollow in my ears as I turned the last corner to face the old, weathered door and the room I had vacated only hours before.

  I stared at it, my ears perked for signs of life, for conversation, for anything that would give me cause to turn around and avoid this conversation altogether. I already knew I couldn’t, though. As much I was dreading it, it wasn’t really an option anymore. If the few of us who were in this abbey were all that was left of Ilyan’s people, then Dramin would be the only one who would have the answers I needed.

  My hand was a metal weight as I placed it against the door, the wood rough against my palm, my fingers dragging against it as I pulled it into a fist. All I could hear was the fearful beat of my heart as I hesitated, every muscle twisting and winding in anxious nerves.

  The sound of the knock was an explosion of sound. It was a shot of a gun, and I stiffened, my confidence snapping into place as I waited. The tension that ruled my body only grew as his voice called back.

  “Enter.”

  It was one word, but it was all that I needed. My back straightened as I walked into the darkness of his room, my forehead wrinkling in agitation as I let my eyes adjust.

  Towering bookshelves lined the walls, their height seeming taller than they had in the light. Everything appeared elongated and stretched in the darkness, as if the room itself would swallow me whole.

  “Hello?” For a brief moment, I wasn’t sure if he was even in there, a thought that made me shiver in agitation.

  “Ah,” he sighed, the sound more like a deflating balloon than a person, “I had a feeling it would be you.”

  Of course he did. Darn Draks and their infallibility. If I had been accompanied by Captain Mal, he would have had the same reaction. If he knew who that was, of course. Well, and if he was real, but I wasn’t going to get hung up on logistics.

  He was real enough.

  “You saw me coming, I take it?” He laughed at my question, and my shoulders stiffened, my feet stopping their slow advance as I froze in the middle of the room, my eyes scanning the dark until I found the withered, old shape that I was sure was him, his chest rising and falling calmly.

  “No, my father told me of your conversation yesterday. He warned me that you would be visiting.”

  “Warned.” I guessed I deserved that, all things considered. “Is it okay that I am here?”

  “Of course, but if you wouldn’t mind turning on a light? As much as I enjoy chatting in the dark, I like to see the people I am to be friends with.”

  His comment caught me off guard, the light, calm nature of his voice seeming so out of place that my alarms were screaming trap before I could calm them. No matter what I had heard about this man, no one could easily turn things around after what I had done to them.

  No one.

  Except Talon.

  After all, I supposed Talon had done the same. I had killed his sister, yet somehow…

  My breath shook on an exhale at the thought, the reminder for what I had come here to do in the first place a dead weight in my gut.

  My magic flared on its own as my pulse accelerated, and the few lamps that were littered throughout the room caught as the fire magic washed over them, giving life to the dry and dead wicks for the first time in what I could assume had been decades. Judging by the state of the room, it might have been longer.

  Those earthen mugs were everywhere along with books piled and disheveled. I had been so preoccupied with restraining Ryland and memorizing battle plans earlier that I hadn’t really paid much attention.

  His room looked like the disheveled library of a mad scientist, something you would see on an old TV show. I didn’t know why, but it made me comfortable, almost like I was walking onto the set of a show I used to love.

  “Much better,” he sighed, and my focus snapped to him, my body still stuck in the middle of the floor as if I had been glued there.

  He lay on the same bed as before with masses of blankets piled and tucked in around him. From where I stood, I could sense the magic tucked between the layers, the healing flowers and water folded into the fibers of the cloth. We had done the same thing to Joclyn after she had broken her back, but this almost seemed to be more, as if the magic within the blankets was all that was keeping him alive.

  Looking at the way he sagged and melted into the bed, I wouldn’t say I was that far off. He was tired looking, his hair incredibly unkempt. If he wasn’t sitting there, smiling and talking to me, I would say he was dead already.

  “Tatinek seemed to think I would sleep, and so he left me in the dark, something that wouldn’t have been a problem if I had the ability to light my own lanterns.”

  “Can Draks not ignite lights?” I asked, fully aware that I had lived under Sain’s green lights for nearly a month.

  “Normally, yes, but there seems to be something wrong with my magic. It doesn’t seem too interested in working properly.” He spoke sadly.

  The loss of his ability hit me in the gut. I knew what it felt like to lose something so instrumental to your being. It was like losing an arm.

  “It seems that whatever the Silnỳ hit me with did more damage than anyone thought. Of course, I could also be dead, so I must look on the bright side.”

  “But she healed you.” I was fully aware of how childish the statement was, but I didn’t care. At this point, I was more interested in keeping the conversation away from the massive saber tooth tiger that was sitting on my chest and bringing it to something light and airy, instead.

  Like not dying.

  This was not going to work.

  “I guess you could say that,” he said as he laughed. “Of course, she saved you, too, didn’t she?”

  I could only nod.

  The skin around Dramin’s eyes wrinkled as he smiled at me, the emerald green of his eyes dancing a bit in the light. I stared at the color so similar to Sain’s and wondered if that was what Joclyn’s eye color used to be. She had told me once her eye color had changed when she had received her mark, and judging by her family…

  Family.

  The word seemed dead after yesterday, after watching them all react and fight and throw verb
al mud at each other. My brow wrinkled and I took a step away without thinking, the parallels from her family and mine making me uncomfortable.

  “Am I to take that as a yes?” he said with a laugh again, pulling me out of my reverie.

  I didn’t know what the man found so joyful, but he certainly did smile and chuckle a lot. It was as if he kept all the joy of the world inside of him, and he alone was responsible for distributing it. From the way my body was already feeling light, the dread that had escorted me into the room seeping away, I would have to guess that wasn’t too far from the truth.

  “Yes,” I finally answered him, my mind moving too fast to make much sense. “She took the Zánik curse from my body.”

  “Ahhh,” he sighed, his body sagging down into the bed. “My little girl is growing up.”

  It was said like an overjoyed parent with a subtle hint of mockery like those TV families always had. I had heard the phrase enough that it left me wondering how honest he was being, but looking at the slight smile that lit up his face, I would have to say he was being as honest as they came.

  Silence seeped over the room with his comment, his body sinking farther into the piles of blankets that surrounded him as he stared up to the rafters. His eyes were hooded in such a way I couldn’t be sure if he was awake or a sleep. Right then, I wasn’t about to ask, despite knowing I should. I had come to this room for a reason, after all. It wasn’t like me to lose my gumption.

  Saber tooth tiger or not.

  Of course, it wasn’t like me to start any kind of conversation with, “Hey, I’m sorry I killed your wife and your kids … and well, everyone else, but can we powwow about these awesome dreams I have been having?”

  Well, it wasn’t like either of me.

  The murderer wouldn’t care. The rocker wouldn’t kill anyone for fun.

  “Can I ask you something?” I took another step as he turned to look at me, his face so kind and understanding that some of the tension left my over-taut muscles, my chest deciding it was okay to breathe normally.

  “You came here for a reason, after all. But I will not give you sight, little girl. Not because of our past. I just cannot.”