Burnt Devotion (16 page)

Family.

The word seemed dead after yesterday, after watching them all react and fight and throw verbal mud at each other. My brow wrinkled and I took a step away without thinking, the parallels from her family and mine making me uncomfortable.

“Am I to take that as a yes?” he said with a laugh again, pulling me out of my reverie.

I didn’t know what the man found so joyful, but he certainly did smile and chuckle a lot. It was as if he kept all the joy of the world inside of him, and he alone was responsible for distributing it. From the way my body was already feeling light, the dread that had escorted me into the room seeping away, I would have to guess that wasn’t too far from the truth.

“Yes,” I finally answered him, my mind moving too fast to make much sense. “She took the Zánik curse from my body.”

“Ahhh,” he sighed, his body sagging down into the bed. “My little girl is growing up.”

It was said like an overjoyed parent with a subtle hint of mockery like those TV families always had. I had heard the phrase enough that it left me wondering how honest he was being, but looking at the slight smile that lit up his face, I would have to say he was being as honest as they came.

Silence seeped over the room with his comment, his body sinking farther into the piles of blankets that surrounded him as he stared up to the rafters. His eyes were hooded in such a way I couldn’t be sure if he was awake or a sleep. Right then, I wasn’t about to ask, despite knowing I should. I had come to this room for a reason, after all. It wasn’t like me to lose my gumption.

Saber tooth tiger or not.

Of course, it wasn’t like me to start any kind of conversation with, “Hey, I’m sorry I killed your wife and your kids … and well, everyone else, but can we powwow about these awesome dreams I have been having?”

Well, it wasn’t like either of me.

The murderer wouldn’t care. The rocker wouldn’t kill anyone for fun.

“Can I ask you something?” I took another step as he turned to look at me, his face so kind and understanding that some of the tension left my over-taut muscles, my chest deciding it was okay to breathe normally.

“You came here for a reason, after all. But I will not give you sight, little girl. Not because of our past. I just cannot.”

At the mention of our past, everything tightened up again, but not in the dread of what was coming kind of way that had been wrapped around me; in the heart wrenching guilt and vehemence kind of way.

Guilt.

The emotion was so strong I couldn’t stop everything from flowing out of me in a mad rush, as though that one emotion had lifted the floodgates all on its own.

“I’m sorry.” The words weren’t enough. They weren’t powerful enough. They weren’t deep enough. “For what Edmund made me do. For what I
chose
to do.”

The silence came back as though it lived there. It sat on my chest and sucked my breath away. It made it hard to breathe, hard to look anywhere other than at the kind, old man who lay before me.

His bright eyes focused so intently on mine that they were all I could see. The room evaporated into nothing except smoke and silence and air that was too thick to breathe.

“We all make choices. Every day, we make new ones. And all of those choices are based on what we know to be right and true. It truly is a miracle that our knowledge within this life gets to grow and change. Otherwise, we could keep making the same choices, the same mistakes, thinking they were the right ones.”

“What are you saying?”

“You killed my family, Wynifred.” His words were harsh, and they cut through me like the blunted knife they were. Slow, painful, caustic. I let them. After all, I deserved it.

It didn’t help that the brightness in his eyes had left, the softness of his face hardening to steel. “You massacred my wife right in front of me. I felt her soul disconnect from mine as her blood sprayed over my face, and it has haunted me for centuries.”

I couldn’t say anything. There were no words. If sorry was not enough, then there was nothing within our language that would cover the sins I had committed, that could seek forgiveness and hope to receive it.

I didn’t deserve it.

It was more than that, however. It was the way he spoke, the words he chose. It was the same as my own little love that had been destroyed right before me, the warmth of her blood haunting me for nearly as long if not longer.

“I know.” It was only two words, and it was not enough, but it said so much more than he could ever guess.

“He did the same to you.”

I could only nod, trying to keep the memory out of my mind even though it was already there, playing on repeat.

“Is that when you knew? When your knowledge began to change?”

“It was before. When I felt her move inside of me for the first time.”

“When life became something real.”

Something real.

It was only two words, but with those two words, the world froze around me. My body became ridged. I didn’t think I could move if I tried. I didn’t see Dramin anymore, even though he was only mere feet from me. I knew he was there, but I was seeing the beach. I was seeing Thom in his ugly hat. I was seeing life and love and remembering that moment so clearly—the feeling of another person inside of me, of tiny hands and legs pressing against me.

I had disposed of life for centuries before that moment, and every time I had thought nothing of it. People that, in some cruel way, had become nothing more than a pig on a slaughtering block. However, feeling my daughter, that child, a person, growing, moving, becoming inside of me, had made it real.

Life had become real.

It had become more than sprays of blood and hearts in boxes.

It had become something I wanted to protect.

Something worth protecting.

I could only nod in agreement, my mind numb as it tried to recover from the realization that I had been spoon-fed.

“Do you regret it?” My head snapped to him at the calm whisper. I hadn’t even realized I had looked away.

“Regret what?”

“What you have done,” he clarified, his eyes kind through the pain I could see behind them. “What you chose to do?”

“More than anything.” Once again, words were not enough to convey what I felt.

“Then you may ask your question.”

It wasn’t an act of forgiveness, for I wasn’t sure I would ever gain that from him, but it was an open door, some kind of acceptance I wasn’t sure I would ever understand. I wasn’t about to ignore the opportunity or abuse the privilege.

I took a step closer, wishing I could sit on the bed beside him, something about him seeming grandfatherly and kind, but I knew we weren’t there yet.

“I have been having dreams—”

“Of your mate?” he interrupted me, his voice shrouded with a hard edge that for the first time of all of my existence made me doubt myself.

I could only nod.

“Are they a Tȍuha?” he asked, the question I had come to ask him sounding fickle as it was sprouted back to me.

Anger erupted inside of me, but I trapped it inside, my shoulders stiffening as my magic heated into a flame. I squished my face together in concentration as I tried to understand what he was asking. How to rephrase my question.

“They feel like a Tȍuha. We are in the same place, and he’s there. It doesn’t feel like he’s gone … like he’s still somewhere in the world connecting with me. But I know he’s gone. I can feel his magic inside of me. I…” My words stumbled to a stop as the memory became too much, as the haunted cry rang through my memory again. I wished I had never come here. If it was just Talon ... if the Tȍuhas were real, I would need to find him. But Rosy … She was there, too.

I looked away from him, listening to his rattled breathing as I fought the need to run, feeling my muscles tense and pull as my jaw moved itself into a hard line, the same shield I had used to ignore the pain before sliding into place.

“I see my mate every night when I sleep.” I tensed at his voice, the calm admission one I hadn’t been expecting “I see her in the forest that we spent every one of our Tȍuhas walking through. We talk, she holds my hand. And, for years after her death, I was sure they were real. I was sure that it was really her.”

I couldn’t help looking at him. I couldn’t help hoping it was real, right up until the end when what little joy I had found burst in jagged shards of pain again.

“It wasn’t?” I could barely get the words out.

“No. I was too blind to see that it was only my memories replaying. It was only my mind pulling at what I knew to be there and creating a shadow.”

He looked at me from where he lay, the dim light from the lanterns flickering around us, and this little piece of what we were, this common ground, cemented itself between us in a thread whether we wanted it to or not.

“But, why…?” I asked the question, even though I knew the answer. Well, at least I thought I did.

His answer was nothing like I had been expecting. Nothing like what I had wanted to hear

“Because part of your soul is missing, and each night when you sleep, you search for it. You search so hard that you create something that is not there, if only to keep you going.”

My soul. For years, I had been searching for my soul. Even before Talon’s death, even before I regained my memories. My soul was still searching for what had been ripped from it in years of dreams and nightmares as I watched Thom and Rosaline move through my subconscious.

And now, now without Talon, my dreams were left to dwell in the parts still missing and the parts now gone. Talon had been taken from me by the same man who had taken my daughter, the girl whose laugh and cries were forever embedded in my soul. All I had now was Thom, the one man stoically missing from the dreams, and only because he was right in front of me.

I was right; losing parts of who you were and then being forced to relive them was like a special place in the underworld reserved just for me.

“Purgatory.”

“I’m sorry?”

I hadn’t even realized I had said the word aloud.

“I had that thought, being there. Being trapped with … him.” And her … but I wasn’t going to say that. Not aloud and certainly not to him. “That it was purgatory. Being with someone that you want so dearly, but not.”

Dramin looked into me with the same look Sain always had, the intense stare that Draks always had, except something was missing. A light or intensity that I hadn’t paired with the intense look before was missing. I didn’t shy away from him as I normally would have. I looked at him as a deep groan seeped past his lips, and he rolled over, patting the bed beside him.

I hesitated for only a minute before I closed the gap between us, my body tense with nerves as I sat beside the one person I had harmed possibly more than any other in this building.

“In a way it is,” he whispered, his weak hand patting my knee comfortingly. “Being forced to relive what you can no longer have is a form of torture I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Not even on you.”

A laugh flared from me at the admission, in the snotty tone I had used for so long heavy, only to have it fade into the child-like roar that I preferred. In a way, it was ridiculous.

“Thank you, I guess.” The words were swallowed by the humor.

“You are welcome, I guess,” Dramin said, his inflection matching mine as he patted my knee once more. “Besides, I am putting my life in your hands tomorrow. I must learn to trust you.”

I stiffened at the reminder. Part of me filled with dread, while the other half was ready to run into the forest and begin the massacre. As much as I hated the ‘two-sided’ nature of myself right now, I also knew it wasn’t going to go away. It was best to try to get used to it, especially if I didn’t want to be known as a head case.

“Does that mean you forgive me, then?” I couldn’t help asking.

“I didn’t say that.” He rolled back onto his back with a groan, his face as calm and unresponsive as an old man reading the newspaper. “It means I must learn to trust you.”

Well, when you put it like that…

I wasn’t sure if Dramin was kidding, being serious, or somewhere in the middle. By the amount of laughter he had infected the room with and the way his eyes shone, somewhere in the middle suited me just fine.

Even if I would never gain his forgiveness, I would gain his trust, and in oh so many ways, that was enough for me.

I stood without a word, grateful when he didn’t say anything to stop me, and softly padded toward the door, my magic flaring as I turned the lights off, hoping it was the right thing to do.

“Go dream of your mate, little girl,” he whispered from somewhere in the dark behind me. “And I will dream of mine.”

I froze, staring into the dark room, wishing there was something to say. Something that could make everything better.

I think that was part of the problem.

There wasn’t.

And there never would be.

“Let me go!” His voice was the bang of a gun in my ear, the close proximity of the shout making the sound even louder as it echoed through the kitchen where we waited for Ilyan and Joclyn.