Crown of Cinders (Imdalind Series Book 7) (21 page)

“
I
feel
like I’m hugging a dead chicken,” I said, happy to be in his arms despite missing the usual bulk of his muscles.

“Sorry about that, Wyn. I was too busy not dying to find time to hit a gym.” He chuckled, the laugh rippling over me.

The sound was a familiar blanket that wrapped around me, rattling against the wreckage that was still scattered over Thom’s room. It attempted to scare away the memory of what had happened hours before, but there was too much.

Ilyan had tried to cover it up, cleaning it the best he could, but the destruction was still scattered over the floor, stained on the floor, smeared on the walls.

For the briefest of moments, however, I forgot all of that. Thom forgot all of that. And the room was happy, familiar. Then the laugh ended, and death enveloped the darkness again, leaving us lying on his bed, wrapped together in our bubble, savoring the last shard of joy that existed in the cathedral.

By some Míracle, Thom was alive. Dramin’s magic had freed him from whatever Ovailia had done to him. It was the last act Dramin would ever do—saving his best friend’s life.

At least, that was the best guess Ilyan had been able to come up with. Nothing else made sense, which was probably why I was having trouble accepting that all of this was real and not some drug-induced hallucination.

I lived during the 70s, you know.

I mean, not in that way, but I
get
it.

Cuddled together on his bed, we lay in the dark. Our fingers danced above our heads, twisting and tangling over each other as though we weren’t certain if we should hold hands or not. I didn’t know if I wanted to or if that small movement would kill the dream.

I guess it didn’t do to live in fear.

“You can hold my hand, you know,” I teased, poking him in the side with my free hand. “It’s not going to eat you.”

“It might. You don’t know,” Thom retorted, twisting his fingers through mine again before letting them go. My heart stuttered at the brief pressure. “It looks lethal.”

“Thom,” I moaned, fully aware that it was something I had picked up from Jos. Thom knew it, too, and he laughed, both of us shaking from his chuckle as it rippled within him.

“Besides, I’m too mesmerized by your new adornment.”

“It’s a hole, Thom,” I sighed, moving my hand up so what little light we had in the room shone through it and over us. “Not an adornment.”

“But it could be.”

It was my turn to laugh, the sound strained with emotion and slightly out of place. “You sound like Joclyn. She wants me to put a spy glass in the—”

“And you haven’t yet?” Thom asked, attempting to shift his weight enough to see me and failing, falling down to the bed with a grunt and a sigh. “What is wrong with you?”

“Something drastic, obviously.”

“Obviously.” He chuckled, the fluid dance of our hands stopping as his fingers trailed up my arm, the touch soft on my skin, tickling against my neck and jaw bone. “I guess we’ll have to fix that.”

“I don’t see how you plan on doing that.” I teased.

“I think I’ll find a way,” he snickered, moving himself so close to me that I could only see the bright blue of his eyes. I stared at the color, desperate for a breath I couldn’t get, for his lips were already locked on mine, his hands already twisted around my waist as he pulled me against him. The light pressure of his fingers made me shiver as they trailed up my spine before fanning over my neck, locking me in place.

My gut twisted from the touch. Regret, want, and guilt wrestled with each other. They twisted together until my heart pushed them away and rejoiced in this moment, in this kiss that one very loud part of my soul had desired for centuries. We hadn’t shared a kiss like this since before our daughter had been taken from us.

The kiss was pain and sadness, but it was also beautiful and wanted.

My magic reacted to the touch, flaring and burning inside of me. I could barely breathe as he held me against him, his lips strong as they grabbed at mine, pressed against me. One after another, deeper and deeper, he smothered me with them, moving them over my jaw and down my neck.

The heat of my magic erupted as he continued, the fire burning me as it tried to reach him. The sensation was familiar, one that I had missed for centuries. It was different than with Talon. The magic was different, the feeling different, but I still wanted it.

I didn’t care that I could barely breathe. I didn’t care that my mind was screaming for oxygen and my magic for escape.

I wanted more of this … more of him.

I had forgotten how much I had missed and loved this. I had forgotten how good of a kisser Thom was. Forget letting him run his thumb over my hand … That wasn’t enough anymore.

With a sigh, he pulled away, leaving me lying against him, heaving, my lungs finally receiving the air they were so desperate for. Thom’s hand was tight against me, keeping me pressed into him as he, too, heaved. The heat of his skin lessened, and the sound of his heartbeat rattled in amped up excitement.

“Either you enjoyed that, or you are going into cardiac arrest,” I teased, my voice windswept.

“I was wondering why my arm was numb,” he teased back, shaking it above us. “I guess that’s why I kissed you—reflex from all the extra blood that’s pumping through me.”

“Ha! Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it!”

“Oh, I’m not pretending. I did enjoy it.” Thom gave me with that same deep, smoldering look he had for so long. His eyes melted me as his magic pressed into me.

Yep. I was forgetting to breathe again, which was fine by me. I didn’t need oxygen as long as I was kissing him. So I did, pulling him into me and running my hands over his shoulders and arms.

A deep groan of pleasure came from his throat as I moved to kiss his jaw. His breath was hot on my face as the sound escaped, his body shivering underneath me.

My magic heated, pressing against me in such a desperate need to reach him that Thom gasped and removed his hand from my bare back.

I was that hot.

“I think…” I gasped as I pulled away, but his arms were so tight I couldn’t move very far. Fine by me. “I need to amp up my kissing game if I am going to be any kind of match for you in the future.” I was so out of breath I was surprised I got the words out or that they were even coherent. I might have said something about spaceman underpants for all I knew.

“What do you mean?”

“Thom …” I hesitated, clearing my throat dramatically as I sat up to look at him, hoping it would take my butterflies away. Nope. It made them worse. “You are an extraordinarily good kisser.” My voice cracked. What was I, twelve? How on earth did my voice crack? “I mean, you were good before … but you must have been practicing or something.”

“No practice, just patiently waiting for you.” He smiled, moving closer.

I knew what was coming.

“You mean…” Everything was tight and twisted in nervousness and excitement, making the snark all that much harder to process. The hard drive in my brain must have been shutting down. “All of that is natural talent?”

“As natural as a poison ivy rash.”

“Ew.”

“You know you love it,” he said with his own sass. “I think we should do that again.”

“I’m not saying no,” I replied, moving away enough that he got the hint, “but I think we should take a break. That is, of course, unless you want third-degree burns.”

My magic was a little too hot, fire sweltering over my skin.

“Hmmm, I think I’ll pass on that.” He smirked, tucking me under his arm in an attempt to keep me safe or warm or something. I didn’t need any of those, but I wasn’t about to complain. “We’ve had enough death and maiming around here. Let’s give everyone a rest.”

It was a joke, but I still stiffened underneath him. I still felt that sharp, stabbing pain in my chest, the same one I’d had when they had removed Dramin’s body from the room. The old man had been such a fixture that I couldn’t believe he was now gone.

Maybe I didn’t want to.

I wondered how Jos was doing.

The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, my gut twisting into the dance of the butterflies.

I needed to see her.

“I didn’t even get to say good-bye,” Thom began, his arms still tight around me as he pulled me right back to the consuming sadness, the bitter reality smacking me upside the face.

I hadn’t realized that Thom had been deprived of that moment. It was an unfair truth that tickled my nose. Dammit, I didn’t want to cry.

“I didn’t expect to wake up to this,” he choked out with tears.

The longing in his voice burned my eyes with grief.

“To death?”

He nodded, his hand pressing against my spine, holding me close as he moved his thumb over my skin.

“To betrayal,” he amended. The word, while harsher, fit a bit more.

I wrinkled my nose at that, knowing how painful the truth in those words must be to him.

Thom had woken up to nothing more than a bad dream. Worse still, he had to hear of everything secondhand and accept that his best friend, Sain, had turned on us all. He had to accept that the man Thom had been hidden away with for hundreds of years, the one who was more of a friend than he would like to admit, was gone.

“We can still say good-bye,” I said, trying not to think of what that really meant. I sat there, letting the silence and the pain in my words linger in the air like a vile perfume, infecting us. Then, with an exaggerated exhale, I twisted against Thom’s chest, wishing there were anywhere else to look other than at empty beds and bloodstained floors.

“I know,” Thom finally said, his voice too soft for him, broken by too much emotion.

Sitting up in surprise, I looked at him lying there all weak and limp, his eyes clearly glistening with foreign tears. “Are you crying?” I asked, my mind running over every possible reason for them, from internal bleeding to possession to memory loss.

My heart beat more loudly with each one before he smiled, the wide grin out of place with the tears.

“Wait. Are you possessed?” I asked, my voice shaking with my own tears as his began to flow. “Because I have seen
The Exorcist
; I am fully schooled in what to do.”

“I’m not possessed,” Thom said with that gruff voice of his, his still strong chicken arms pulling me back into him, holding me against his chest. “I am allowed to be sad, Wynifred.” His voice rumbled through his chest and into me as I lay there, listening to his heart, feeling his magic press against his skin, my own warming within me at the close proximity. “Besides, I have cried before.”

I knew that. I had seen him. I had seen him cry and sob when it had happened, when she had been taken from us. Both then and in the months after.

The temporary comfort I felt vanished, the imagery of that moment, of those tears, hitting me hard in the chest. Her cries echoed inside my head, even without the blade, and I jerked.

Thom tightened his arms around me in what I knew he thought was a show of comfort. However, I was suddenly feeling very trapped.

“I saw her, you know,” he said, breaking the silence, digging the blade I knew I had been stabbed with a little deeper, carving out my heart bit by bit.

I was sure the bottom of my soul was falling out.

That sounded a bit like an Iron Maiden song. They were not my favorite.

“I saw her while I was stuck … wherever I was.” A seriousness that was unfamiliar to him took control of him, and I tensed, my heart beating so fast now that everything was going numb, the world around Thom and me spinning.

I ignored it, though, keeping my focus on the way his hand felt against my back, on the sound of his heart. Everything around us was going topsy-turvy, but those were constant. Now they needed to stay that way.

“I would hear your voice, feel your magic, feel your hand against mine, and then I would dream of you and Rosy and even Cail. But not psychopath Cail. Cail the way he used to be. Cail when he was my friend—”

“It was the blade,” I said, staring at an old brown stain on the sheet that was stretched over Dramin’s part of the room, the white cotton splattered with red.

The imagery was too much, and I sat up, hovering over him, swallowing in a desperate attempt to get the lump out. Part of me wished I could stick the information in his head like Jos and Ilyan were able to. This whole show and tell thing was a tad bit painful.

I was covered in badges of survival, covered in reminders of everything I had done.

“You got a piece of the blade?” he asked, and I nodded.

His face lit up as he pushed himself into a sitting position, the bed creaking as he leaned against it.

I wanted to tell him to lie down or even force him to. What I was about to tell him was going to be a sucker punch, not the story of success that I already knew he expected it to be.

From the moment we had watched Rosaline die, from the moment we had watched Edmund create the jagged piece of blood and stone from the purity of her soul and the magic in her blood, it had been our task to retrieve that monstrous thing.

To retrieve it and to free her.

After so long, I had found a piece.

“I don’t have it anymore.”

Sucker punch! Achievement unlocked.

His face fell, his brow furrowing in what I knew at once was more anger than disappointment.

I sighed. I never really liked facing Thom when he was angry. I would rather charm a cobra.

“I found it inside of Ryland,” I plowed on before more rage could explode out of him. “I removed it when we escaped the massacre, right at the beginning. It’s probably the only reason he’s not such a mess anymore. Edmund was using it to control him.”

“Edmund was using it …”

I nodded. My lips were a tight line as his jaw snapped closed, the hollows of his cheeks more pronounced than ever.

“I should have known better, Thom. I was stupid. If Edmund was using it that way, I should have known what was coming for me.” I sighed, the sound loud and long as I attempted to expel the extra stress that was building up in my gut.

It didn’t help.

“I could hear her voice all the time: during the day, while I slept. But it wasn’t some pretty song or memory; it was her death … always her death. I used to get dreams about it before, but then I didn’t know what they were. I didn’t know what I was seeing. Talon always told me it was another life …” I smiled, the honesty in what he had said hitting me. “This was so much worse than that.”