Burnt Devotion
Authors: Rebecca Ethington
Burnt Devotion
Rebecca Ethington
The Imdalind Series
BOOK ONE:
Kiss of Fire
BOOK TWO:
Eyes of Ember
BOOK THREE:
Scorched Treachery
BOOK FOUR:
Soul of Flame
BOOK FIVE:
Burnt Devotion
BOOK SIX:
Dawn of Ash
Text Copyright ©2015 by Rebecca Ethington
The Imdalind Series, characters, names, and related indicia are trademarks and © of Rebecca Ethington.
The Imdalind Series Publishing rights © Rebecca Ethington
All Rights Reserved.
Published by Imdalind Press
No Part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For Information regarding permission, write to:
Rebecca Ethington – permissions@ Rebecca Ethington.com
Copyediting by C&D Editing
Production Management by Imdalind Press
Cover Design by Stephanie White and Steph’s Cover Design. Based on a design by Sarah Hansen @Okay Creations – Used with Permission.
Cover Photo by Phoebe Brimhall
Cover Model Mary Hohl
ISBN (print) 978-0-9914313-9-7
ISBN (ebook) 978-0-9914313-8-0
Printed in USA
This Edition, March 2015
To My Kids
Who are strong
WYN
RYLAND
WYN
OVAILIA
JOCLYN
WYN
OVAILIA
RYLAND
SAIN
One
The abbey was ahead of where we stood in the Spanish forest, the old stone peeking out from over the tops of the trees. It was the last leg of our escape from the dungeons of Prague, from Edmund and the massacre that had occurred there. The last few steps until we reached Ilyan, until we could tell him what had happened.
What Ovailia had done, how she had betrayed us all.
Crumbled brick that I had seen a million times before was illuminated by the bright lightning that cracked above us. The decrepit building looked like the Taj Mahal after what we had escaped from.
Now, we only needed to get to Ilyan before it was too late.
Although, judging by the masses of Edmund’s army that surrounded the ancient space, we might already be.
Figures.
I get my memories and the fire magic back in time to wipe out an army. Part of me wouldn’t have it any other way.
Bring it on.
Even if I wasn’t looking forward to telling Ilyan what had happened to Prague, to his people, I needed to get to the abbey. While necessary, it wasn’t a conversation I was looking forward to having. Neither was the “Oh, by the by, I have all my memories back, and your best friend is dead” conversation.
My heart pulsed painfully at the imagery of Talon’s hand against mine for the last time, of Rosaline, of everything that I had chosen to forget.
“We are almost out of time.”
I tried to restrain the eye roll at Sain’s raspy voice, the overwrought words pulling my focus toward the decrepit man who still looked like he was locked in a dungeon.
“We must move quickly.”
I could only nod at his statement. It was the same one he had made since the lid of Ilyan’s tomb had enclosed us into the tunnel system under Prague that we had used to get this far. He had said the words every night as I tried to sleep, each day as we walked. Each time the phrase rolled off his tongue, his eyes moved over the lines that covered the left side of my body. The deep, jagged edges that were now an even harsher reminder of my past, of what my father had tried to do to me, of what Cail had tried to stop.
The Zanik curse, the worst form of punishment for our kind. It had been embedded within me after my father had discovered my centuries of treachery, for all the work I had done with Ilyan in an attempt to destroy Edmund.
It was to be the ultimate form of torture. If only my brother hadn’t been able to stop it, to bind it into my skin.
Seeing as I had killed my father, I would have assumed the marks to leave—as Cail had promised—but still, they remained, staring at me as dark as the sins that lined my soul.
I let the warning in Sain’s words whisper through the chilled air; however, I refused to look at the marks as he did. I refused to look at those lines and see the same fear, the same warning that his Drak blood seemed to be screaming at him. I refused to acknowledge the warning that had hidden itself underneath the repetitive phrase.
Something is wrong.
Even though he hadn’t told me what, I could feel it in the way the magic pulsed in the Abbey, the way that the weak magic flared and the strong pulsed. It wasn’t a castle full of strength and power that I had been expecting. Something was off.
Something is wrong.
I pushed the parallels from my mind as the world rumbled with the baleful sound of thunder. Not willing to accept that Joclyn—that anyone—within those walls was injured, that they were little more than sitting ducks…
For once, I wasn’t sure if the addition of my magic would tip the scales in their favor.
It was a blow to my pride that I wasn’t interested in accepting. Nor would I.
Lightning ripped above us, the thunder following right behind in a blast that echoed the power of the earth, the sound causing all the Trpaslík in the camp before us to jump.
They were the last of Edmund’s men who separated us from the tall bell tower of the Abbey, our destination.
“We are almost out of time,” Sain gasped again.
I only nodded, my breath shaking as I pulled him from the security the trees provided and into the drunken hoards that Edmund controlled. Our heavy footfalls sounded loud and abrasive in the still air, the obnoxious laughter we were surrounded by barely enough to cover the sound of crunching leaves and snapping twigs beneath us. I supposed it was good they couldn’t hear that, anyway.
The trees ahead of us flashed white as the sky did, showing the line of refuge only moments away. I reached toward them, expecting the thrill of calm that our destination promised, the relief of security. The moment my fingers made contact with the jagged edges of the tree’s bark, however, my magic pulled in the opposite direction.
An electric shock of heat snapped through my already tense muscles. Pressure swelled like a massive balloon, it pressed against my bones, against my lungs, through my skull. I gasped at the sensation, my body following the movement even though I took in no air. I gasped again as the pressure grew, even though my magic tried to fight against it, to stop whatever was happening to me. It was no use. I couldn’t focus beyond the tension. Beyond the pain.
Beyond the reality that I was not ready to face.
My eyes opened wide in horror as I stared at the dark, jagged lines that graced my skin. The marks that had been so commonplace for the last hundred years stood out like flames against my pale skin, flames that licked and moved against the skin.
Moved.
I kept the scream inside, kept my breath steady and fought against the pressure that consumed me, the pain that, try as it might, my magic couldn’t defeat.
I had felt fear before—fear when I was chained in the bowels of Imdalind, fear when I had worked as Ilyan’s liaison for two hundred years. Regardless, this fear … This fear was bound in agony and heartbreak. It rumbled through the earth with such supremacy that I was amazed I hadn’t felt it before, that I hadn’t understood. Sain hadn’t been speaking of the battle that was coming. He hadn’t been warning me of the camps that surrounded us.
He had been speaking of me.
I
was almost out of time.
“
If I can only bind the curse, not send it into Edmund, and I die before my father, then the curse will be unbound, and it will be unstoppable. Wynifred will die. To save her life, my father must die first.
”
Thunder drowned out the whisper of my voice as I repeated the words that my darling brother had said so many centuries before, the day he had made the promise to keep me safe, the day Ilyan had made the promise to keep him safe.
Neither had happened.
Now Cail was dead. Dead before my father.
Dead before Ilyan could save him.
And the curse was unbound, and now I was to die like all the others.
But how?
I had killed my father, bound the stone into his belly, fused his throat shut, and thrown his body into the pit where I had lost the only man who had ever truly loved me. He should be dead. The curse should have unbound itself days ago. I should have been set free, which could only mean one thing.
Cail had been wrong.
Even if Timothy was the first to die, I would still die. The Zánik curse would always unbind itself, and I would be cursed to face the traitor’s death, the most painful demise that my kind offered. To literally be burned from the inside out.
The thought, the knowledge of what was about to happen to me, wound up my spine in a ribbon of horrific, agonizing fear that I didn’t want to accept, that I didn’t want to acknowledge.
I called out in a shadow of pain as I collapsed against the tree, my hands wrapping around the rough bark as I tried to support myself, my whole body seizing under the attempt.
Turning toward the old man, seeing his dark eyes, the sadness of what was going to happen, I froze, my eyes wide as I begged for an explanation I knew he couldn’t give me, help I knew he couldn’t offer.
He looked at me with sad eyes that echoed the truth I now understood. I was going to die. And, judging by the dark, hooded look he gave me, he had known all along.
“We are running out of time.”
“Sain?” My voice was a gasp as I reached toward him in a plea for help I knew he couldn’t give me.
My fingers were distorted and broken as the lines snaked over my skin in haunted movements, a heat that I hadn’t expected seeping from the waving lines, seeping into me.
We stood in an unmoving standoff as the answer neither of us wanted to accept passed between us. There was nothing he could do.
I felt it—the pain, the agony—as it dispersed over my body, the once bound curse seeping it’s toxin into me, slowly killing me with the curse that I had willingly carried around for centuries. I tried to fight it, to press my magic against it, but I already knew it was no use.
“Sain.” The word was a whimper, a plea, a promise. It was a sound ground in agony. The last word I would speak before the heat grew into an agonizing peril, before my legs gave out underneath me, and my vision faded to black.
I wasn’t sure if I had fallen. I wasn’t sure if he had caught me. For all I knew, I had fallen through the earth and was trapped between layers of rock and stone.
Within moments, the world around me had become nothing except pain and pressure. Heat wound its way through me like knives and rope. I couldn’t tell where I was. I couldn’t distinguish my body from the pain, my voice from the screams, my thoughts from the heat.
The curse had covered every part of me. It had taken me away until all that was left was the curse.
There was only heat.
There was only pain.
There was only death.
I was the curse. I was the pain. There wasn’t a
me
anymore.
There was only Zánik.
I tried to fight it, to bring my magic forward, to control my own power against the agony that raged through me, yet nothing was there. The ability—the magic that had always been so powerful, had always been so capable at destroying—had, in essence, been destroyed.
I tried to find something to focus on. My breathing, my body, my soul, but I didn’t seem to be anymore.
“We need to get you to Joclyn,” the words flitted to me through the darkness I was trapped in, the voice distorted by my own screams, by the boiling water that I was surrounded by. Heat and darkness and what my mind tried to acknowledge as television static were all I knew. Static that cut in and out like the signal was broken, but the only station that was coming in was that of my own agonizing shouts.
I didn’t want to listen, anyway.
I didn’t want to see.
If only I could get away from it. If only I could escape the pain that had trapped me in a place that was only pain, where mind and body didn’t matter anymore. I had lost them somewhere along the way.
Strangely, I didn’t care, either.
If I couldn’t feel them, it made the pain less. It made it so the heat could devour me. I almost preferred it that way.
Somewhere, deep inside, something screamed that was giving in, that was letting the curse destroy me. That I was better then this. I also knew I didn’t have much of a choice, though.
Not anymore.
Focusing on the static, I let it seep into me and devour me. My screams cutting in and out like a bad signal, the only sound I could hear.
Until something else joined them.
The sound of voices.
Other voices.
Familiar voices.
They cut through the static in languages I didn’t comprehend, even though I knew I should. I knew the knowledge of them was inside of me. I just couldn’t access it.
“I thought you didn’t like to wake the dead?” I jerked at the sneer, my body twisting as someone shook me. The sudden realization of a world outside the static-filled room felt strange and foreign.
However, alongside the pain, I could feel the hand of someone wrapped around my arm, throwing me around like I was made of nothing more than fabric and a little bit of stuffing.