Burnt Devotion (21 page)

One small woman with a frame so small she could be a child standing before them in a gown of fire. It was a rippling serpent that moved over her skin like it was nothing then licked over the ground and devoured trees as if they were little more than pieces of tissue.

I could see the fear in their eyes. I could see the reflection of the demon I had become. I smiled, the magic growing as my excitement did, ready to take that last step and destroy Edmund’s final attempt to do away with what he viewed as his enemies.

“Hello, lovelies.” My voice echoed with a dead hollow, the magic rippling through me as though I had become possessed. The fire grew with each word, rattling through the trees as they sparked with flame, the clothing of those that stood closest to me beginning to spark and smoke.

I was nothing except fire.

The fire was nothing except me.

I smiled once more as the flame devoured me, as I screamed in pain and exhilaration, my hands flying toward them as the blaze burst from me. It spread from me in a fan of flame that shook the ground then seeped into the soul in a cylinder of heat that turned everything to ash, that destroyed what Edmund had sent, a warning of what he was truly facing coming right on its heels.

Men turned to nothing more than smoke, trees evaporating from the sheer enormity of the pressurized explosion. With the force of an atomic bomb, it spread away from me, eating the world into nothing but flame, the once proud forest turning black and white with char.

No one would have guessed that an army had stood before us.

No one would have guessed what I had really held inside.

I wasn’t even sure Ilyan had known.

Now he would.

There was a reason I had wanted this power bound. It had never been a danger to me. I had learned to control it beyond all else. However, it was a danger to the world, and if Edmund got his hands on it…

And now he would want it more than before. Now he would stop at nothing to get it.

If he had ever been successful in all the times he had tried, this was what the world would have become—this barren wasteland that I now stood in the middle of, the ring of fire that I had unleashed continuing to burn in a slow moving circle that would smolder until someone mistook it for a forest fire and came to put it out.

I stood amidst the ruin, the black and red burn of the soul, looking at what was left of the world and of people I had known so many years before.

I stared at it, my heart tensing at the reality of what I faced, of what I had done. A regret I had never felt before seeped through me like an unwanted poison, eating at me until I pushed it away. The pain in my soul began to lessen as I stood in the center of it all, the fire that had taken control of my body settling back into my blood as if it was nothing more than a gentle burn.

Still, I didn’t move, my eyes scanning over what I had done, fighting with myself over whether or not I had made the right decision.

Although, there was no turning back now.

With one last look, I turned to run, plumes of blackened soil erupting into the air around me with each step, the golden embers eliminating what tree skeletons remained. I didn’t even look, only ran, letting my magic move into the earth with each step, my ability tracking the line of destruction as well as the quick progression of my friends, the frightful reality of their close intersection twisting through my gut.

My heart sped up to a hectic pace as I ran, knowing that, if they didn’t move faster, the fire would reach them. Then, not only would they see, but they would be in danger of having the same fire burn into them.

Time and fate was not on our side today.

“Run!” I screamed before I had even reached them, my feet moving faster as the disease I had plagued on the earth continued to move, chasing after my friends and threatening to destroy them, as well.

I only hoped they ran fast enough that it didn’t reach them.

That they hadn’t seen what I had done.

That they wouldn’t find out that, this time … This time, I had enjoyed it.

I followed the toe-headed man, my heels unstable against the charred earth we walked over. I fought for stable footing with each step, but I wasn’t going to let that show. I kept my head high, my jaw set as my hair swung behind me, glowering at the golden highlights in the man’s hair as if they had somehow offended me. Of course, I guessed in a way they had.

I knew he was a distant cousin—only the direct bloodline of my grandmother had blonde hair—but I didn’t care anymore. Not with what he was leading me toward, anyway.

Ilyan’s perfectly planned attack had begun moments before Edmund had arrived. I hadn’t had a chance to speak to Edmund before the battle had begun. Before Ilyan and his whore had destroyed the work we had spent almost a year putting together. What was worse, we had failed.

It was that failure that I was on my way to answer for.

I passed the pained and writhing bodies of those who had already faced his wrath, the waste of perfectly good soldiers disgusting me. They screamed as whatever Edmund had done to them raged inside of them, the weaker ones already succumbing to death, their bodies heating and burning as whatever magic had scorched the earth moved in to destroy them to.

I wrinkled my nose at the smell, at the sound, and flipped my hair behind me, staring straight ahead as I blocked the sounds from my ears. If they were going to be weak under my father’s discipline, they could at least do it quietly.

I could already see him, standing on the top of a high outcropping, more than a dozen of his body guards cowering near him as they both tried to do his bidding and feared his wrath. It was a bad place to be, especially now that Timothy and Cail were gone. There was no one left to challenge him. No one to hold him back, not like either of them had.

Now it was only him and I, something I both relished and feared. To be trusted to be so close to him, to his greatness, yet to be close enough to receive the brunt of his frustrations.

My teeth ground together as I began to climb the hill, burning embers of what had once been a forest glowing brightly underneath the thunderheads that still plagued us, their roar incessant as the earth mourned.

I wish it would just shut up.

“Sir,” the man I followed began, his voice shaking as he went down on one knee, ready to announce his arrival and a job well done.

I didn’t even give him the chance. I breezed by him, knocking his unstable figure to the ground with the heel of my shoe, moving right up to where my father stood, his focus scanning over the still smoldering earth.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Ovailia?” He glowered, the depth of his voice filled with more awe than I had heard in all my life. I expected some new woman, a new prize to be standing before him with how he spoke.

It was only devastation, the bright red flames of magic still devouring the tree line far ahead of us.

Of course he would be referring to destruction.

“If you enjoy death.”

My heels sunk into the charcoal below me as I came to stand behind him, the sky igniting with forks of lightning. Bolt after bolt hit the earth as though it was trying to put out the flames; instead, they only grew.

“I am not speaking of the fire,” he soured, his voice trailing over my spine like ice.

I flinched at the sound, almost expecting what was coming, and glared into the space before me.

“I am speaking of the fire magic. I am speaking of the destruction our dear Wyn has caused.”

He might as well have been looking at a woman. It wasn’t the destruction he admired as I had assumed. It was the power. Or, more specifically, the power that laid inside of a woman. A woman I had already known him to lust after for far longer than would have been deemed appropriate.

I rolled my eyes as my chest tensed, my irritation growing as I turned toward my father. The dark curls that had loosened themselves from the slicked-back style he normally had fell over the piercing blue eyes that looked into me the moment I turned.

I flinched at the emotion and hatred behind them. The jolt of my fear was subtle, but still apparent enough he had noticed, a reaction that only caused him to smile more.

“I must have it.” The greed dripped off him as he took a step closer, his bulky frame coming level with mine.

I could not stop the eyebrow from rising or the twitch of my lip as I smiled at him. That was it? After everything, after failing to kill or capture any of them, after losing track of them and losing more than two hundred of the vile bats he had spent centuries creating, he wanted me to capture Wyn, to bring him her heart.

There had to be more. There always was.

My back tensed as I waited, watching him for some sign of what was coming. He only stood in the darkness of his greed. The vile emotion colored his face until, looking into him, I felt like I was looking into my own death.

“I suppose you want me to get it for you.” My tone was harsh, expectant even. I was treading carefully, waiting for the ice of his lies to crack, leaving the painful shards to press against me.

Before the question had even left my mouth, he began to smile, the wicked gleam of his greed stretching his face into a maniacal grin that was more sinister than before. Unbidden fear trickled down my spine, though I kept the malice on my face, unwilling to let him see my reaction.

His smile grew until I could see the rows of his white teeth, his eyes flashing red for the briefest of moments as he took a step closer. Then his hand wound around my waist as he pulled me toward him, the tips of his fingers pressing into the base of my spine.

My shirt lifted at the touch, the icy chill of his fingers pressing into my back, rubbing against the painful scars that ran the length of my spine. I would have tried to move away, to stop what was coming, but there wasn’t any point. He controlled me.

Moreover, after so many years, I had come to love what he had done to me—the pockets of poison that he had placed against my spine and the power they gave me when he released it into my blood stream.

His fingers pressed against the raised skin that ignited in memorized flames as his magic surged through them, filling the scar tissue and releasing the toxins enough to ignite within me, to cause the infectious fire to spread quickly.

A hiss of pain and fear seeped through my clenched teeth at the surge of power, his smile growing as he watched me writhe in a mad attempt to fight the venom, as he held me against him as one would a lover. To him, though, it was only control. It was only for a better view to watch me become what he had created.

My head fell back as the pain grew, the Vilỳ venom and black water seeping into me in an acidic burn.

It was a mixture that he had created just for me, a poisonous concoction he had pooled inside my bones, wrapped in his magic to control, to use me in any way he saw fit. Ilyan had thought it was only a scar, only the cut of a knife that Edmund had carved down my spine, but it was so much more than that.

He released the poison into me as my body became limp in his arms, my eyes staring unfocused at the orchestra of light and sound above us, my mind becoming a numb mass as any scream I might have thought of releasing lodged itself in my throat.

“Of course I want you to get it for me,” he growled, his animalistic voice rumbling in my ear as he pressed his lips against my jaw, the heavy breathing of his anger only increasing the tension in my muscles. “But, if you for one second think that is all I am going to do to you after what you have done today, you are sorely mistaken.”

His words came out like daggers against my skin. Then he shook my limp body violently in his arms before he dropped me, leaving me to crumple to the ground as the caustic poison ran its course. Fire ate away at the soft tissue of my body, leaving me weak and pained as I lay in the ash covered ground, the heat from the earth seeping into me in a slow burn.

My body was in agony from the poison that gripped me, the flames that licked at my body. Pain that would ravage me for hours yet to come. However, if I thought I would be allowed to cower here, waiting for it to leave, I was only expecting more pain.

He towered above me as the deep pants of his voice continued, his already tried patience waiting to snap. “Stand.”

I could have screamed at the order, the pain too much to even fathom. Regardless, I knew I didn’t have a choice.

I cringed and pushed the need to collapse away, pushed the tears and the screams that threatened to break free away, and then pushed myself to standing. Each joint screamed in agony as I straightened myself, my body swaying as I tried to stand before him, the height of my heels only making my attempt more precarious.

“What do you want of me, Father? Name it, and it is yours.” My voice shook through the pain, the irritation I normally had wavering underneath the agony that was making it hard to see straight, to focus on the powerful man I stood before.

His smile returned for only a moment before he moved away from me, leaving me swaying in the ash as the sky ripped apart in light and noise. I didn’t dare move. He hadn’t beckoned me to follow, and approaching him when I wasn’t wanted would only bring more pain.