Burnt Devotion (33 page)

“Mommy!” Her voice was a yell of excitement and joy. It rang through me as though she was standing right next to me, her arms opened wide, ready to jump on me.

And then I realized why.

I hadn’t felt her magic in centuries, but there it was, embedded in a shard of blood mixed with souls and magic so small I wasn’t even sure Ilyan could have found them. I had only found it because of Rosaline.

She had showed me the way.

Her magic was as beautiful as it had always been, incredibly strong, incredibly joyous. It was like coming home again to feel it so close, yet it was tainted by the other souls that had willingly been given to make the blade, the hatred and malice that ran off them so strong it was like bile against my tongue.

I gasped as though the flavor was really there, my chest constricting painfully as I forgot to breathe, my focus so intent on the task at hand that something so simple had been cast aside.

I inhaled with a gasp as I pushed my magic farther, wrapping it around the tiny shard as though it was precious and cradling the malice alongside the beauty.

With one strong heave, I pulled it free from the softly beating tissue that it had been lodged in.

Ryland’s magic recoiled as the toothpick-sized object was released, his power rebelling against what it was and what it had done to him.

His wasn’t the only one.

Even with the strain of Rosaline’s magic within the precious cargo, it was the malice and the poisoned magic that affected me the most. My ability rebelled against its task, trying to pull away from the heady toxin.

“Mommy?”

Fighting against the heavy hatred that was infecting me, I pulled and carefully twisted the shard from within him, drawing it out from his beating heart and through his body until it began to break through the skin from the inside, a point of pressure that grew outward. His grey-tinged skin tented before it pushed through, a thick ribbon of the brightest blood coming behind.

Blood trailed over his skin, dripping onto the floor in a great pool of red. I didn’t see that, however. I only saw the tip of the blade, the shard of knife covered in the deepest red, jagged and broken as though it was nothing more than sandstone.

I didn’t dare touch it, yet I could not fight the pull to. It was a desperate need that I hadn’t experienced before, as though the blade itself was power, as though it could give that power to me.

I reached forward without thinking, pulling the tiny thing from his body, his blood still warm on the surface as it came free, resting in the palm of my hand in a streak of crimson. Staring at me.

I couldn’t look away from it. I could feel Ryland’s magic work to heal him as my magic began to recoil back into me, the powerful strands shaking inside of me in a fear I didn’t understand.

Yes, I knew I should be afraid of it. Afraid of what it was, what it did. Nevertheless, this fear, this fear was different. It was rooted in possibilities of what was to come. Not that I had any intention of using the thing, but part of me … Part of me couldn’t help wondering what it meant, what would happen if I did.

I shook my head as her laugh sounded around me, the sound echoing in a haunting void that I hadn’t heard before, and I shivered, letting the last of the ill-placed power leave me.

I held a piece of my little girl’s soul in my hand.

That was all.

I felt dirty for thinking of it in any other way, for letting those thoughts infect me as they had.

I sat quite still as I closed my fingers around the precious piece, my fingers soft as I held it close, as I had held her so many times before.

“I’ll set you free, my darling girl,” I whispered, my voice drowned out by the creatures who clawed at the windows, their voices loud in their desperate haste to find entry.

“Everything all right?” Sain’s voice erupted behind me.

I jumped, pulling Ryland’s shirt over the now healed wound, my fist tightening around the shard in panic.

My heart was a thunder inside of me, a slither of secrecy that felt dirty snaking its way over me, a fear I hadn’t expected following behind.

The shard.

I couldn’t let anyone know I had it. They would take it away. They would take my daughter away. They would use her soul against someone else. I couldn’t let that happen.

The tension in my body grew and the fear escalated as I shoved my hand into my pocket, letting the shard stay there in what I hoped would be safety.

“Wyn?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.” My voice sounded dead. “Ry woke up, so I put him back out. I figured that’s better for now.”

I tried to bring as much life back to my voice as I could, but I wasn’t sure it was working. Everything around me was moving in slow motion, my magic flaring abruptly as I over-critically inspected my surroundings. Everything from Thom’s sleeping form to the dust mites seeming untrustworthy.

What was happening to me?

I understood a basic need to protect something so precious. However, paranoia had never been my thing.

I shook my head again and pushed the emotion away, glad when it slipped from me, taking some of the tension with it.

“Dramin’s asleep, too.”

At the mention of Dramin, my mind pulled away from the shard of the soul’s blade, right to the conversation before—the shrouded words Sain had uttered the moment I had walked through the door.

“Does that mean you are going to tell me now?” My voice still shook with residual anxiety as Sain’s focus snapped to me. His eyes were sad as I pulled him right back into the conversation I was sure he had hoped I had forgotten.

“Tell you what?”

“Don’t treat me like a fool, Sain. You may be one of the first, but that doesn’t make you any better than the rest of us.”

“That is a debatable opinion.”

“And yet, you are capable of ‘making mistakes’ like the rest of us.” My voice was laced with teenage angst, but I let it flow, grateful when his eyes narrowed disdainfully at me. “Stop playing games, Sain.”

He continued to glare at me, his eyes harder than I had ever seen them. The same fear was back in his eyes, but I didn’t look away. I didn’t dare.

“I have made a terrible mistake,” he began again, his voice shaking with the same horrified fear that ran over his features. “I thought they were gone … but they aren’t. They are going to find me.”

I waited for him to elaborate, but he just stood there, staring, his hands shaking ever so slightly.

“Who is going to find you?” I was scared to ask, scared of the answer, scared of what it might mean for us, and why he wanted us to run.

“He—” Sain’s words fell from the air as the door below us opened, the yells of the Vilỳs rang clear as the heavy footsteps echoed up the stairwell, large and heavy.

“He’s found me. He’s going to kill us all.” Sain’s voice growled through the dark as the door opened, my magic reacting before I had a chance to stop it.

A ribbon of flame streamed from my hand like someone had embedded a flame thrower inside of me, the powerful attack intercepting the door and turning it to dust.

I expected the attack to move beyond the wood panel, into whoever had entered the dingy space, but it flattened in mid-air as though it had hit a glass pane, the ribbons of heat and flame fanning out into spirals of harmless smoke. The rings dissipated into nothing, revealing the scowling, blonde-haired man behind it.

Well, darn it all.

I should have known better than to react, than to destroy one of our only lines of defenses from whoever came through the door. With how Sain was talking—words of death and destruction and someone coming to “get” us—I was a little too high-strung.

The sounds of the Vilỳ massacre weren’t helping too much, either.

“Wynifred!” Ilyan’s voice was a snap of scolding as he walked into the room with Joclyn right on his heels, her expression torn somewhere between humor and shock.

Part of me wished she would laugh, if only to break the tension. If I laughed, it would be my head, but she could get away with it.

“Sorry, Ilyan.”

He glowered at me as he walked into the room, his eyes scanning over everything quickly as his face continued to darken.

I could only guess how this looked to him—Sain and I facing each other as if we were about to attack, Thom and Ryland unconscious on the floor, and a still fresh pool of blood glittering in the corner.

“What happened?” His accent was thick, and while part of me wanted to recoil in expectation of his temper, the other side only stood up taller, facing him as my eyebrow arched uncomfortably.

“In case you haven’t notice, my lord, the city is under attack by about a million of Edmund’s flying rats. Dramin was bit, Ryland’s a mess, and Thom…” My voice lost its snot as it caught on the emotion in my throat. I stopped, staring at him with wide eyes as everything I had said clicked into place.

“Dramin was bit?” Jos’s voice was a shriek through the dark as her eyes grew bigger if that was possible. I worried for a minute that they would pop out of her head, but she only looked at me, waiting for an answer that I couldn’t give, before she ran into the adjoining room. For anyone else, it was a reaction that might border on insanity, but for her, I was sure her magic had told her exactly where her brother lay.

I expected Sain to follow; instead, he remained across from me, staring at me with that same look in his eyes, the fear and warning playing deep into my soul.

I barely noticed Ilyan rush to his brothers’ side, moving from one to the other as he checked them and tried to heal them while I could only look at Sain. The unspoken message screamed at me from where I stood.

He kept looking from me to Ilyan as though Ilyan was the enemy, as though he was afraid of him.

I have made a terrible mistake.

I still didn’t even know what he had done, but watching him here, I was beginning to piece it together, and I wasn’t too happy with where it was going. Sain looked at Ilyan like Ilyan was who he was afraid of, like Ilyan was who was coming for him.

“Sain? Wynifred?” Ilyan pulled me out of the vice-like stare Sain had trapped me under, the alarm in his voice ripping any doubt I had away. That tone, that fear, was very unlike him. It sent shivers through me.

My magic tugged uncomfortably as I walked toward him, watching his shoulders tense as he pressed his hands against Thom’s. The pulse of magic was so strong I could feel the shadows weave through the room like a radiant heat.

“Ilyan?” My voice shook as I looked down at them, the shake in Ilyan’s hands only pulling me more toward a fear that had been wiped from my mind.

I had been so focused on Sain’s mysterious panic that I had almost forgotten. He had seemed okay when I had checked him, but now, watching Ilyan, I wasn’t so sure.

“What happened?” He didn’t even look at us when he said it. His focus was only on Thom.

My fear increased as my stomach twisted uncomfortably, and my hands began to shake as my voice did. “I saw them right before the Vilỳs attacked—”

“He was hit by a stray attack from somewhere behind us,” Sain interrupted, his voice stronger than it had been for the past few minutes, the gravelly depth catching me off-guard. “I don’t know what it was or where it came from. It looked unfamiliar to me. But he’s been like this ever since.”

I stared at Sain, my mind reeling as I tried to piece together whatever game he was playing at. Nothing really fell into place, though. Everything was too tense—Sain was acting like a loon, my daughter’s voice was talking to me, Thom was injured so badly no one could tell what was going on…

I was going to develop a hump from the tension that was pressing against my spine.

“Is he all right, Ilyan?” I didn’t want to ask the question, but I did, anyway, ice trailing over me as my hands writhed together.

“I’m not sure.” It was an honest answer. I could hear it in his voice. The panic was leaving, yet the fear of the unknown still remained. It snaked through him like acid, pricking against me.

“His magic is fine. He is fine…”

“But you just can’t wake him,” I finished his thought for him as he stood, the sloppy braid that trailed down his back only a foot away from me.

Ilyan nodded, and my stomach dropped. In some ways, I knew I should at least be happy he was okay, but then, why wouldn’t he wake up? I had hoped Ilyan would have been able to ascertain something besides what I had, yet it was the same.

“That doesn’t explain the scabs, though,” I grumbled, my mind still trying desperately to put the puzzle together.

“What scabs?” Ilyan asked in Czech, his voice rumbling with a fear I easily recognized.

“Perhaps scabs is the wrong word.” I said nothing more as I moved to the other side of Thom, his hands soft against mine as I turned them over.

The palms were covered with the same open wounds, each one a perfect circle. The red, angry marks were raw, the flesh looking like it had been burned away, as though someone had dropped acid onto the tender skin and melted it.

Ilyan’s face hardened as he looked at them, his jaw tensing into a tight line. “Přetížení dávka.”