Burnt Devotion (10 page)

Either way, having him help me would put him in the path of both outcomes.

Kill him.

I will.

I pressed my hand against the roughly hewn door, the grain of the wood rough underneath my fingers and my forehead that was pressing into it so hard it was beginning to hurt. I let the pain come as another reminder that I was alive and could feel, and she was there, right out of my reach.

Ilyan had come to me not long after we had last spoken with a proposition heavy in the air.

Joclyn wanted to speak to me.

It was dangerous and scary, but I also wanted it. Especially with Ilyan’s promise of being able to bind my mind and heart enough that I wouldn’t hear the voice. I would be able to talk to her the way I used to. I could talk to my friend.

Even if it was through a door.

Sain’s breathing was loud from beside me, and the subtle movements from where Joclyn and Ilyan stood on the other side of the door were a deep echo in the stone hallway we stood in.

In the back of my mind, I knew I should be more upset over the shadows of sounds that reached me. I knew the monster my father had placed within me should come alive and growl in violent vibrations of property and proprietary that I didn’t completely agree with.

Nothing happened, though.

Nothing except a deep numbing that drowned my emotions in an oddly comfortable fog.

This time, I heard the sounds, and to me, they were nothing more than the whispers of my best friend.

Unlike any time I could remember, I was free.

The sounds of my father’s taunts were now only shadows, dull mumbles of sound that, if I didn’t know any better, I would easily have mistaken for nothing more than a buzzing in my ears.

Still, I heard it in the back of my mind, waiting to burst out of me. Waiting to take control.

I was running out of time.

Running out of this precious sanity that I had been given, this clarity I had sought for so long. I didn’t want to waste a moment.

“I miss my best friend,” I broke the silence that had shrouded the start of our conversation with the words that in some ways had been trapped inside of me for weeks, possibly months. “I miss laughing and joking. I miss you.”

I waited for her to respond, my heart a thunderous pulse in my throat as the fear began to grow. Sain’s breathing became a heavy metronome that kept time at a much higher pace than I would have liked.

“I miss you, too, Ry,” The weighty breath I had been holding released at her reply, the distanced sound of the monsters inside of me growling in anger, while my heart swelled in release. “But I don’t think I can—”

“I know,” I stopped her before she had a chance to continue, my voice a despondent lull.

No matter how much it hurt, I knew what I had to say. I had to release her from the emotional prison I had trapped her in. I knew we couldn’t be together, not anymore.

The monsters inside of me growled louder at the realization, the hum of Edmund’s voice breaking free. I cringed, and Sain pressed his hands against my back on instinct.

“I have something for you, Ry. Something that might help.” She spoke before I had the chance to recover fully, her voice distorted through the wood.

“Jos?” I asked in confusion, my ear pressing against the door in a fervent need to hear her more clearly. “What?”

“It’s your necklace…”—her voice was so soft—“on the floor.”

Words so simple, so soft. A voice that I had treasured for so long. Right then, though, I only felt ice and frustration at hearing it.

My hand began to shake against the door, and my body tensed as the voice broke through the barrier of my mind in a malicious laugh. I shook my head in an attempt to expel the sound, my muscles tensing violently as I pressed my forehead against the door. Then my eyes fell on the swirl of a silver chain and the deep red of the diamond glinting in the dim light of the hallway.

The light from the sconces flickered against the surface as I fell to my knees, my fingers twitching in a desperate craving, not for the necklace, but for what was inside.

My heart thundered at seeing it there, the smooth surface seeming to answer to the call. My hand drew itself toward it on its own with a zealous need I didn’t think I would ever experience flooding me.

It was mine.

However, it was also a gift I had given her, one that might give me back a bit of my sanity. I couldn’t think like that, though. It wasn’t mine anymore.

“I can’t take this back, Jos. It’s a piece of me, remember.” I could barely get the words out, the frantic desire for what was enclosed within the diamond was so strong.

“I know.” Her voice broke, and I tried to shield myself from the pain that followed. “But I need you to. I need you to take your heart back, Ry. It doesn’t belong to me anymore.”

She doesn’t want you anymore.

With her rejection, the barrier slipped away from my mind, the voice erupting in a violent shift that rippled through my body and brought physical pain. My muscles tensed, my heart beat amplified, and even the wood beneath my fingers seemed to be moving.

I tried to control it. I tried to fight it, to find the barrier and shift it back into place, but the voice was too loud, the anger all-encompassing.

She probably didn’t even want you in the first place.

Don’t say that.

She kept it close only to give it back when it would hurt you the most.

She wants you to fail.

Ilyan wants her to fail.

No, Ilyan is my family
.

He only told you that to get what he wants.

Her. He wants her.

They are both liars.

No!

The word spouted in my head as I flinched, my hands pressing into the wood of the door so roughly I was sure it was going to move through the thick slab. I almost wanted it to. I wanted to hurt her.

“Did Ilyan tell you to say that?” The words ground their way out of me on their own, the voice deep with a hatred that was filling me.

Before I had even stopped speaking, Sain’s hand was pressed against my back, his magic a dead weight against my soul as it began to fill me.

“Focus, Ryland,” Sain whispered, his voice a soft anchor that I tried to cling to. If only it was enough.

“I will not focus,” I knew I was speaking too loud, but I didn’t care. “She’s giving back something that means so much! You have no idea what I went through.”

I know what you went through.

Make her pay.

I lifted my hand in an attempt to pound my fist against the door, the tense ball shaking with anger that only kept growing as the voice did. I was one quick motion away from shattering the door into a million splinters, my magic surging with the powerful energy that would be needed for such a feat.

Make her pay!

Yes.

My fist fell toward the door, only to be stopped by Sain’s soft hands. His touch gentle even though it was strong enough to stop me in my tracks. I froze in place as he moved to stand before me, my breathing a torrential heave as his soft eyes dug into me.

Don’t let him stop you.

Now is your chance!

I know.

She promised she wouldn’t give it back.

And now she is breaking that promise.

Now. Do it now.

“I was in that dungeon, too, Ryland.”

Simple words that meant so much more than I was sure even he understood. The words weren’t enough to slip the bind back in place, but I could feel it shift. I could feel the muscles in my arms and back relax, my breathing becoming mellow.

If only the voice would fade away again and give me back my mind.

“I saw what they did to you, Ry,” Sain continued, his voice a hushed whisper so as not to carry through the door. “They did the same to me so many times before.”

He’s lying.

No, he’s not.

Even though the voice was growl, I knew at once it was wrong. I had sat with this man only a day before and spoke of the terrors that we both had faced. I had seen the shadow of torture in his eyes, and I saw it now.

“She wants to give it back, Sain,” I said, disappointed that the growl still ran through it in a heavy vein. “After all I went through for her in order to
give
it to her, she wants to give it back.”

The tension in my back increased with every word, the painful pressure of heartbreak growing until I was certain I was about to be ripped apart.

“No, Ryland, she wants to help you.”

“How do you know?” I roared, my shout ricocheting off the stone walls of the alcove we stood in, the sound loud in my own ears. “You don’t even like her.”

Sain’s face blanched for the slightest moment, his eyes darkening before they shifted. I had expected the black of sight, but instead, they faded to a green, a darkness in them I hadn’t seen before chilling me.

“She is the Silnỳ.” I expected more, but that was all he said. Although, the odd statement somehow only confused me more, the voice within me calmed as if it somehow understood exactly what he meant, even if I didn’t.

“Ry.” Joclyn’s voice pulled me from the confusion. If only it could have pulled me from the madness.

“And she is a Drak,” I hissed in a whisper as Sain’s magic pulsed strongly through me. “A worthless Drak who cannot keep a promise.”

“Listen to what she has to say, son,” Sain whispered as he took another step toward me. “Don’t listen to the voice in your head. Not now. Not yet.”

I stared at him, waiting for him to say more, waiting for the voice to rampage through me, but they seemed to have slunk back into the shadowed corners of my mind. The murmurs were louder than before, but at least they weren’t destroying me. At least I could still be here with her.

Focusing on the clarity of my mind once more, I leaned against the door as I breathed and tried to think of something to say, some way to answer that wouldn’t leave me battling the same demons.

“I want you to have your heart back.” I tensed as her voice came through the door again, my heart beating in a panic at what was coming. “Not because I don’t love you, but because I do, just not in that way.”

Her words froze as my eyes snapped open, and the words that I had tried so hard to say to her came back to me in a whisper that rang with so much truth that, in that moment, I was sure the voice, the monsters, the torture, and everything were nothing more than a memory.

“I want you to have your heart back because I don’t want you to hurt anymore. I want you to feel like yourself.”

I stared at the wood, my mind feeling sluggish as my heart rate accelerated.

I wanted the same thing.

I wanted to tell her that.

I wanted her to understand.

I don’t want to hurt anymore, just as I don’t want her to hurt anymore.

Without the voice, without the madness, it was all I wanted. It was all I wanted to give her.

My fingers tensed against the wood as I looked down to the necklace, down to the spirals of the silver chain and the deep red of the stone.

I picked the necklace up carefully, my hand shaking as I wrapped the fine chain around my clumsy fingers, careful not to let the stone touch my skin. Not yet, not when I wanted the contents of the stone to return to me so badly.

It looked so much different than it had the day I had purchased it from the overly snot-nosed salesmen at the jewelry store in New York. It was still the same diamond, still the same necklace; it just held something inside of it, is all.

I had traveled to the city with Cail the summer before I had given it to her. We were following a lead to what we had hoped would be Ilyan’s capture while taking a few select souls from their homes and into the dungeons where my father conducted his experiments.

It was something I had done a hundred times before—tried to capture my brother, taken innocents and given them to my father.

I had never enjoyed it, though.

How could I?

Regardless, I didn’t have a choice. I was trapped.

As much as it made my stomach turn, I had gone through the motions. I had done everything as I was asked so as not to uncover my father’s wrath, despite my mind being full of my best friend and the summer following when she would be pulled from me forever.

I had a foot each in two different worlds—the one I wanted and the one I was forced to live with.

Perhaps that was why the store had called to me.

I could see the blue frontage from the hotel room. I saw it as we walked from place to place. I saw it in my mind as I took life after life. The more I thought of the world renowned name, the more the idea began to cement itself in my mind.

A simple gift holding the most precious thing I had to give her. Something that, even though she would not realize it at the time, was more than a simple token of my affection. It
was
my affection.