Burnt Devotion

by Rebecca Ethington

  At the mention of our past, everything tightened up again, but not in the dread of what was coming kind of way that had been wrapped around me; in the heart wrenching guilt and vehemence kind of way.

  Guilt.

  The emotion was so strong I couldn’t stop everything from flowing out of me in a mad rush, as though that one emotion had lifted the floodgates all on its own.

  “I’m sorry.” The words weren’t enough. They weren’t powerful enough. They weren’t deep enough. “For what Edmund made me do. For what I chose to do.”

  The silence came back as though it lived there. It sat on my chest and sucked my breath away. It made it hard to breathe, hard to look anywhere other than at the kind, old man who lay before me.

  His bright eyes focused so intently on mine that they were all I could see. The room evaporated into nothing except smoke and silence and air that was too thick to breathe.

  “We all make choices. Every day, we make new ones. And all of those choices are based on what we know to be right and true. It truly is a miracle that our knowledge within this life gets to grow and change. Otherwise, we could keep making the same choices, the same mistakes, thinking they were the right ones.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You killed my family, Wynifred.” His words were harsh, and they cut through me like the blunted knife they were. Slow, painful, caustic. I let them. After all, I deserved it.

  It didn’t help that the brightness in his eyes had left, the softness of his face hardening to steel. “You massacred my wife right in front of me. I felt her soul disconnect from mine as her blood sprayed over my face, and it has haunted me for centuries.”

  I couldn’t say anything. There were no words. If sorry was not enough, then there was nothing within our language that would cover the sins I had committed, that could seek forgiveness and hope to receive it.

  I didn’t deserve it.

  It was more than that, however. It was the way he spoke, the words he chose. It was the same as my own little love that had been destroyed right before me, the warmth of her blood haunting me for nearly as long if not longer.

  “I know.” It was only two words, and it was not enough, but it said so much more than he could ever guess.

  “He did the same to you.”

  I could only nod, trying to keep the memory out of my mind even though it was already there, playing on repeat.

  “Is that when you knew? When your knowledge began to change?”

  “It was before. When I felt her move inside of me for the first time.”

  “When life became something real.”

  Something real.

  It was only two words, but with those two words, the world froze around me. My body became ridged. I didn’t think I could move if I tried. I didn’t see Dramin anymore, even though he was only mere feet from me. I knew he was there, but I was seeing the beach. I was seeing Thom in his ugly hat. I was seeing life and love and remembering that moment so clearly—the feeling of another person inside of me, of tiny hands and legs pressing against me.

  I had disposed of life for centuries before that moment, and every time I had thought nothing of it. People that, in some cruel way, had become nothing more than a pig on a slaughtering block. However, feeling my daughter, that child, a person, growing, moving, becoming inside of me, had made it real.

  Life had become real.

  It had become more than sprays of blood and hearts in boxes.

  It had become something I wanted to protect.

  Something worth protecting.

  I could only nod in agreement, my mind numb as it tried to recover from the realization that I had been spoon-fed.

  “Do you regret it?” My head snapped to him at the calm whisper. I hadn’t even realized I had looked away.

  “Regret what?”

  “What you have done,” he clarified, his eyes kind through the pain I could see behind them. “What you chose to do?”

  “More than anything.” Once again, words were not enough to convey what I felt.

  “Then you may ask your question.”

  It wasn’t an act of forgiveness, for I wasn’t sure I would ever gain that from him, but it was an open door, some kind of acceptance I wasn’t sure I would ever understand. I wasn’t about to ignore the opportunity or abuse the privilege.

  I took a step closer, wishing I could sit on the bed beside him, something about him seeming grandfatherly and kind, but I knew we weren’t there yet.

  “I have been having dreams—”

  “Of your mate?” he interrupted me, his voice shrouded with a hard edge that for the first time of all of my existence made me doubt myself.

  I could only nod.

  “Are they a Tȍuha?” he asked, the question I had come to ask him sounding fickle as it was sprouted back to me.

  Anger erupted inside of me, but I trapped it inside, my shoulders stiffening as my magic heated into a flame. I squished my face together in concentration as I tried to understand what he was asking. How to rephrase my question.

  “They feel like a Tȍuha. We are in the same place, and he’s there. It doesn’t feel like he’s gone … like he’s still somewhere in the world connecting with me. But I know he’s gone. I can feel his magic inside of me. I…” My words stumbled to a stop as the memory became too much, as the haunted cry rang through my memory again. I wished I had never come here. If it was just Talon ... if the Tȍuhas were real, I would need to find him. But Rosy … She was there, too.

  I looked away from him, listening to his rattled breathing as I fought the need to run, feeling my muscles tense and pull as my jaw moved itself into a hard line, the same shield I had used to ignore the pain before sliding into place.

  “I see my mate every night when I sleep.” I tensed at his voice, the calm admission one I hadn’t been expecting “I see her in the forest that we spent every one of our Tȍuhas walking through. We talk, she holds my hand. And, for years after her death, I was sure they were real. I was sure that it was really her.”

  I couldn’t help looking at him. I couldn’t help hoping it was real, right up until the end when what little joy I had found burst in jagged shards of pain again.

  “It wasn’t?” I could barely get the words out.

  “No. I was too blind to see that it was only my memories replaying. It was only my mind pulling at what I knew to be there and creating a shadow.”

  He looked at me from where he lay, the dim light from the lanterns flickering around us, and this little piece of what we were, this common ground, cemented itself between us in a thread whether we wanted it to or not.

  “But, why…?” I asked the question, even though I knew the answer. Well, at least I thought I did.

  His answer was nothing like I had been expecting. Nothing like what I had wanted to hear

  “Because part of your soul is missing, and each night when you sleep, you search for it. You search so hard that you create something that is not there, if only to keep you going.”

  My soul. For years, I had been searching for my soul. Even before Talon’s death, even before I regained my memories. My soul was still searching for what had been ripped from it in years of dreams and nightmares as I watched Thom and Rosaline move through my subconscious.

  And now, now without Talon, my dreams were left to dwell in the parts still missing and the parts now gone. Talon had been taken from me by the same man who had taken my daughter, the girl whose laugh and cries were forever embedded in my soul. All I had now was Thom, the one man stoically missing from the dreams, and only because he was right in front of me.

  I was right; losing parts of who you were and then being forced to relive them was like a special place in the underworld reserved just for me.

  “Purgatory.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  I hadn’t even realized I had said the word aloud.

  “I had that thought, being there. Being trapped with … him.” And her … but I wasn’t going to say
that. Not aloud and certainly not to him. “That it was purgatory. Being with someone that you want so dearly, but not.”

  Dramin looked into me with the same look Sain always had, the intense stare that Draks always had, except something was missing. A light or intensity that I hadn’t paired with the intense look before was missing. I didn’t shy away from him as I normally would have. I looked at him as a deep groan seeped past his lips, and he rolled over, patting the bed beside him.

  I hesitated for only a minute before I closed the gap between us, my body tense with nerves as I sat beside the one person I had harmed possibly more than any other in this building.

  “In a way it is,” he whispered, his weak hand patting my knee comfortingly. “Being forced to relive what you can no longer have is a form of torture I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Not even on you.”

  A laugh flared from me at the admission, in the snotty tone I had used for so long heavy, only to have it fade into the child-like roar that I preferred. In a way, it was ridiculous.

  “Thank you, I guess.” The words were swallowed by the humor.

  “You are welcome, I guess,” Dramin said, his inflection matching mine as he patted my knee once more. “Besides, I am putting my life in your hands tomorrow. I must learn to trust you.”

  I stiffened at the reminder. Part of me filled with dread, while the other half was ready to run into the forest and begin the massacre. As much as I hated the ‘two-sided’ nature of myself right now, I also knew it wasn’t going to go away. It was best to try to get used to it, especially if I didn’t want to be known as a head case.

  “Does that mean you forgive me, then?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “I didn’t say that.” He rolled back onto his back with a groan, his face as calm and unresponsive as an old man reading the newspaper. “It means I must learn to trust you.”

  Well, when you put it like that…

  I wasn’t sure if Dramin was kidding, being serious, or somewhere in the middle. By the amount of laughter he had infected the room with and the way his eyes shone, somewhere in the middle suited me just fine.

  Even if I would never gain his forgiveness, I would gain his trust, and in oh so many ways, that was enough for me.

  I stood without a word, grateful when he didn’t say anything to stop me, and softly padded toward the door, my magic flaring as I turned the lights off, hoping it was the right thing to do.

  “Go dream of your mate, little girl,” he whispered from somewhere in the dark behind me. “And I will dream of mine.”

  I froze, staring into the dark room, wishing there was something to say. Something that could make everything better.

  I think that was part of the problem.

  There wasn’t.

  And there never would be.

  Nine

  “Let me go!” His voice was the bang of a gun in my ear, the close proximity of the shout making the sound even louder as it echoed through the kitchen where we waited for Ilyan and Joclyn.

  “No, Ryland!” I growled as loud as I dared and tried to grab his arms again, to push my magic into him enough that I could forcibly calm him down.

  He merely kept fighting me, his body thrashing as whatever demons his father had impregnated him with grew stronger.

  The closer Edmund came, the worse he got and the more this battle that we were minutes away from entering seemed like an impossibility.

  The thought was full of anticipation and dread, but I ignored both, trying again to control Ryland as his hand latched onto my plate and sent the last of my cantaloupe salad flying.

  “Great,” I groaned as Thom finally moved to help me, the added hands giving me enough leverage that I was able to find skin, my magic moving into him in a rush of heat and ice that calmed him immediately.

  “No!” he called out again, but his interjection was half-hearted. His voice sunk as he did, right into the battered bench between Thom and I. Then his hands fell into the untouched plate of food before him, sending tomatoes rolling.

  “That was fun,” I sighed, my own body collapsing while I remained careful to keep skin contact with the boy in question.

  “For who?” Ryland’s voice was more like a whimper, the dejected growls barely audible.

  I could only look at him. I didn’t know what to say. What did you say?

  Watching him writhe as he fought his father’s control after everything he had gone through was heart wrenching. Everything felt tight, everything hurt every time I watched him. I wished I could fix it, but even the shield over his heart wasn’t enough. He was still infected.

  “I know, Ry,” I sighed as I leaned my head against his shoulder, my hand tightening around his in what I would hope was a show of comfort. “I know.”

  Ryland stiffened underneath my touch, his body tensing in fear and mine followed, suddenly worried about how he would react, realizing that this type of contact was as foreign to him as it was to me. However, he relaxed only a moment later, his head laying itself over mine as Sain burst back through the entry to the old stone kitchen. Dramin perked up from where he sat at the round table across from us at the return of his father.

  “He’s coming.” Sain had more irritation in his voice than was possible for him. From what I had noticed, he usually kept that disappointment reserved for Joclyn.

  But I guess Jos and Ilyan kind of went hand in hand now.

  “At least, I hope he is. I don’t want to have to go back down there a third time.”

  “He will come, Father. Have faith in our king.” Dramin’s voice was calm from where he sat across the kitchen. His focus was on one of the two mugs that sat before him and not on us.

  “I will have faith in him when he starts making choices that are more conducive for all of Imdalind.” Sain’s voice held scorn, something Dramin firmly ignored, while Thom grunted loudly from the other side of Ryland, his dreads swinging as he threw his head back and laughed.

  I flinched at the sound, the hostility behind what used to be so joyful throwing me off.

  “Yes, because your choices are so effective for everyone,” Thom exclaimed loudly, his voice echoing around us like a bass drum.

  “I speak only for the Drak.”

  “I speak only for the half breeds, and they don’t seem to be complaining,” Thom growled, the bench we sat on shifting as he stood. Ryland and I rocked so abruptly that Ryland jerked, his voice moving into a howl of fear that wrenched through my muscles and sent both men rushing to his side, whatever face-off that had been about to take place forgotten.

  We needed to get out of here, start moving, start fighting. The tension in this abbey was growing far too quickly. The violent waves of magic from the armies that surrounded us were affecting us all.

  “I was afraid of this,” Sain’s voice was low as he stood over Ryland, his hands on his shoulders as he, too, tried to comfort him.

  “You mean that he would turn into an uncontrollable weapon right as we are about to leave?” I couldn’t keep the snottiness out of my voice, a fact Thom seemed to enjoy as he laughed darkly beside me.

  Everything about what Edmund had done seemed far too perfectly planned right then, and our escape appeared that much more impossible.

  No matter how much I loved a challenge, this one was not one I was looking forward to. I cared for these people too much. I needed to protect them.

  Even Dramin.

  If only to prove to him that I was worth it. That I was sorry.

  “I’m sitting right here,” Ryland sighed, his voice broken as he dropped his head into his hand, the long strong fingers of his free hand pulling at his curls roughly. I clung to the other one more tightly.

  “Sorry, Ry.” It was all I could think to say.

  My voice was a whisper against Ryland’s labored breathing, Dramin’s pained exhales, and the exasperated sighs of both Sain and Thom. The quiet of the room was almost as loud, as if each of us were voicing our unsaid fears and worries that were more like a plague.

&
nbsp; The words came to me on instinct, as they always did. Perhaps it was because I had sung the song to Joclyn only hours before or because I had just woken up from yet another dream with Talon, but they were there. The words were a calm comfort to me, a pleasant reminder of so many positive memories.

  “I know you feel these are the worst of times, I do believe it’s true…”

  “What?” I smiled at Thom’s question, at his lack of knowledge of something that, to me, was such a common base.

  “It’s a song from this band I like—”

  “Styx, I know. I lived through the 70s and 80s, too. Although I preferred Queen.” He smiled as I did, my mind trying to wrap around the millions of possibilities that one statement could hold for me.

  I opened my mouth to ask as Ilyan and Jos walked in, and anything I had been planning to say was instantly gone. Gone as if it had never happened, as if the air had been sucked from the room.

  Yes, he was the king. Yes, she was my best friend. It should have been a boring normal entrance, except it wasn’t. Not by the way they stood next to each other, not by the way his hand rested protectively on her back.

  My eyes were wide as I stared at them, fighting the smile at what was as clear as day, even without the long, golden ribbon that trailed from Ilyan’s hair.

  It should have been normal.

  Everyone who came from Imdalind knew of the length of the royal line, of the ribbon and what it meant. However, for Ilyan to wear it somewhere it could be seen and for Joclyn to be wearing a hoodie that covered what was normally an absolute mop of long, black hair … It wasn’t normal.

  I knew at once what it meant. Just as everyone else did, it seemed, guessing by the amount of wide eyes I was surrounded by.

  I guess my meddling hadn’t been in complete vain.

  A wide grin spread over my face, my heart seeming to swell at what I saw. After everything she had to face and what Edmund had done to her, I was happy for her.

  I was happy for them both.

  Ilyan had waited so long for her, and after talking to her, I knew she loved him. It was beautiful.