Burnt Devotion (14 page)

I guessed in a way it was.

I pulled Thom’s jacket tighter around me then took off down the hall, letting the buzz of their voices fade into nothing as I moved farther away, toward Ryland’s room where Thom and Sain sat with him, trying to calm him down from an attack he’d had only a few hours before.

Getting him settled down from that was one thing, but ready to face Joclyn in a “not a death match” table meeting? I didn’t know if that was possible in such a short amount of time.

I exhaled roughly in spite of myself. We might as well just set up the boxing pit. We had our work cut out for us.

Between Ryland and Joclyn’s hitman personas and Dramin’s endless comatose, I had no clue how we were going to get out of here alive.

Yeah, this should be fun.

At least I would get to kill people.

A smile spread over my face, although the chill of the abbey wiped it from me as quickly as it had come.

I stood still as the gentle breeze moved around me and through my hair, tugging at the jacket as though someone stood right beside me, trying to get my attention. I should have been concerned about where the draft had come from, about the way it wrapped around me, but I wasn’t it.

With only the slightest breeze, all thought of what I had been ordered to do was wiped from my memory, déjà vu taking its place.

It was like the dream, the one that stood somewhere between fantasy and the Tȍuha, the dream I was still plagued with. I stood in a hallway much like the castle with the cold wind blowing around me. I almost expected the sound of her laugh to ripple beside the breeze and infiltrate my soul.

I shivered, my shoulders tensing in expectation.

But nothing was there.

Nothing except the cold stone and the breeze.

Everything was trapped in a fog as I looked around me, my muscles tensing as a thought that I had been trying to keep away burst through the wall I had built—the image of my daughter dancing through the shadows, making everything seem light for the slightest of moments. I couldn’t help it. I smiled.

I smiled, and then I ran.

I ran to her, even though I was still running away from her. I ran to her memory.

The slap of my shoes echoed loudly as I turned a corner, the sound coming to an abrupt halt as I looked to the door that I had tried so hard to forget, the room I hoped time wouldn’t have eaten alive.

Despite meaning to come here, seeing the familiar door was a slap against my chest, and the air was sucked from my chest because of what I was about to do.

Ilyan and his people had begun traveling together after the last massacre in the 1700s. Meaning, in each of his favored places, everyone had their own room. This room, this one was mine. Not the one I shared with Talon, but the one I had kept by myself, the one I had used as my own safe house many times. It was a place that still held the relics to a life I had chosen to forget.

The door creaked as I pushed it open, the dust motes springing to life as the light gust of air moved over them, swirling them through the darkness in inky spirals that made everything feel heavier.

Haunted.

Maybe it was.

I stood there in the doorway of the room, the dull orange glow of my magic flaring on its own, casting burned shadows through the pitch, over the sheet covered furniture, the old Indian rug, and the ancient furnishings.

I stared at it, my heart pulling me to go in and pull the sheets off the life I had left behind.

My magic flared as I took the last few steps, the power closing the door behind me and locking me into the room so filled with dust that everything was grey, the dirt particles looking like a soft blanket of ash over it all.

The room was a shell of what it had been, even though everything was still in the last place I had left it, like the silver hair brush that Cail had given me lying on the table and a petticoat thrown over the headboard. It was like I had walked out on my way to Texas a few days ago. Except, it wasn’t. Everything was covered by dust and sheets. Everything was as forgotten as I had wanted to be.

My heart was thundering so fast I could feel it in my throat, the pulse powerful enough to make it hard to swallow, let alone breathe. Something that was proving to be impossible, anyway, as I pulled the sheet off the tall wardrobe, a pillow of dust flowing into the silent air and falling around me like snow. I felt them fall on my hands, on my arms, on the tip of my nose, but I didn’t look away from that wardrobe.

I stared at it, trying to ignore the way my heart was trying to burst out of my chest like an alien, the way my stomach had twisted itself up so tightly I couldn’t hope to escape even if I tried.

I merely stared, my fingers soft as they traced over the designs that had been carved into it when the French Revolution was all anyone would talk about. Flowers, hummingbirds, a dancing bear.

Shadows of the light my magic cast fell over me as I opened the wardrobe to reveal the carefully hung dresses, a seeming walk through history as the preserved clothing hung as though they had been made only days ago. Red velvets, blue gingham, lace cuffs, and corsets—dresses I had used to entice males for centuries, to visit kings, to murder kingdoms. Dresses that were tailored to fit to my body, accentuating everything.

It wasn’t those I wanted.

I let out a shaking breath as my hand extended while the silence buzzed in my ears until it was all I could hear, the electric buzz vibrating through my skull as I moved the dresses to the side, revealing a large, wooden chest covered in a carved seaside scene.

The waves, the sand, the sun that set off in the distance. It was all the same as Thom had made it. Precise, perfect. It had taken him months to form the perfect replica of the day he had met me at the beach a few months before Rosaline was born. It had been the first time we had felt her magic within me.

He had felt her move.

It was the moment that we had connected, not only to her, but to each other. We might not have been granted marriage, but that had been our ceremony. It was the moment we had created a family.

He had made it for her so she would always know that, even though our family was a little broken, we still were one.

I stared at it, my hand frozen against the soft cotton of the dresses, the light flickering over the surface I had opened so many times since that day.

I wouldn’t open it now.

I didn’t need to.

I could see it all.

The deep blue dress that brought out the darkness of her eyes; the fabric doll Thom had made her for her second birthday, the stitched eyes pulling slightly from where she would rub her nose against them; the white night cap; the petticoats; the flower crown that I had watched her make in my dreams for years.

I knew how they were laid.

I knew how they were folded.

I knew how they felt.

I knew it all.

Because I had cried over that box every day for hundreds of years.

Because I had touched those things as I had longed for her.

Because I knew her.

My hand slid down the fabric of the dress as I sunk to the floor, my legs folding awkwardly beneath me as they forgot how to support me. The weight of my body against the floor sent a plume of dust around me, but I barely noticed.

I only stared at the box while my hands wound together as memory after memory flashed through me, my heart tightening more and more with each one. A pain I hadn’t felt in years built so quickly that, before I knew it, it was seeping from me in a scream that echoed every pain, every heart ache.

It ripped from me and shook the room around me, making layers of dust fall through the air in sheets of grey that slid like snow drifts, piling in mounds around me. The room I was lost in was as lost as I felt.

I didn’t stop the emotion.

I didn’t think I could if I tried.

I let it come.

I let myself feel it.

Never before had I let it out. I felt the pain of Rosaline’s murder. I felt the agony of Talon’s death, the betrayal of Thom leaving me behind, the heart stuttering loss of my brother who had been the only support I had known for my hundred years. I felt the stabbing loss that Joclyn had given me, that one look saying more than she could ever know. Not because it showed me what I was, what I had become, but because it showed me what I had given up.

I felt the pain for the first time as something snapped inside of me. A weight that I had carried around for centuries slipped away into the piles of dust that surrounded me. I let it fall away, and I let myself become stronger than it.

What Edmund had done was unforgivable. What I had lost was insurmountable. However, by holding it inside and letting it fester, I had forgotten the person Thom had taught me to be. I had forgotten my child.

I had become something else.

I was more than pain. I was more than bloodshed. I was more than joy. I was more than the confusing bits that made up who I was. Those were part of me, yes, and some day, I would explain all those parts to Jos.

I let the agonizing wail fade to nothing as I stood, my eyes scanning through the orange bathed room in search of the one thing I would take from this place. It was the only thing I wanted.

I moved through the ghostly forms of furniture, through the rooms of the small apartment as I ripped off sheets, as I opened boxes and drawers and wooden chests in a mad rush to find it. The need only grew with each step, the dust filling the air so heavily I could barely breathe.

I didn’t care.

I needed to find it.

“Wynifred?” Thom’s voice drifted from behind me in a wall of worry that froze me in place, my hands hovering over the lid of a heavy, wooden chest I didn’t remember.

I tried not to let his tone dig into me, tried not to let the deep concern that lined his face bring about the confusion I had been fighting.

It did, anyway.

It did because it was the same calm face he had always had with the same calm eyes I had fallen in love with all those years ago. The look pulled at my heart, the broken shard completely raw and jagged after losing Talon, the shards trying so hard to place themselves back together. The emotion only grew the more that I was around him.

I pressed my lips together in an attempt to keep the emotion inside and went back to digging through the belongings I had hidden in the back of the room.

“What are you looking for?” Thom tried again, the soft sound of his footsteps echoing around me as he moved closer.

“Her blanket,” I said, knowing I didn’t have to elaborate.

Thom said nothing. I only heard the sharp intake of his breath before he walked beside me, walking right up to an old trunk that had been hidden in the back, the top lifting before he had even reached it.

“I had the other one on my bed in the cave in Italy,” Thom said as he lifted the old blanket from the trunk, the heavy woven fibers as bright as the day the travelers had given them to her. The nomads had doted over her hair and the way her internal flame glowed. “To always keep her close. Keep you close.
”



His voice was soft as it rolled into me. I collapsed into him, and his arms enfolded around me as he covered us with the old blanket, wrapping the edges around us and trapping us together.

“I know it’s hard,” Thom whispered, “but I will help you through this.
”



“I thought I had it all figured out. I knew who I was when I ran from Edmund, but now there are friends who don’t know who I am, and my heart feels torn in two.
”



“Can I fix it?” His hand moved up my back as he held me against him. The question was a deep rumble of sincerity that I had always known from him. The question, the motion, was almost like stepping back in time.

The thought, while true, was slightly ridiculous.

“What?” I couldn’t keep the awkward chuckle out of my voice no matter how hard I tried.

“This ripped heart that you speak of.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, Thom. You are part of the problem…” I felt his chest harden, the muscles tensing underneath me at my admission. I tried to move away, but he held me tightly against him, his magic flaring against my skin in warning to not move.

I could tell he wasn’t mad, perhaps only hurt.

I still owed him honesty, something, given the subject matter, that made me uncomfortable.

“I’m still in love with you.” A sharp intake of breath made me almost lose track of what I needed to say to him. Almost. He needed to hear me out. “But I am also still in love with Talon. My heart hasn’t quite gotten the memo about having lived two different lives.”

“Your heart is smarter than your head, then.” It was a whisper in my ear, the warm air of his breath rushing over my neck. “They weren’t two different lives. It was just one life. Love as many people as you want.”

The words were truth. They were honest. They were a stab in the gut and an echo of a memory of two teenage girls laughing on the floor of a punk rock bedroom. Styx had been playing in the background, and my own voice had broken over the music with advice that at the time seemed insignificant. But now?