Soul of Flame (Imdalind Series #4)(64)

I dropped my hands as I forced myself to look away from him, my eyes darting around the room as I tried to process the denial I had just experienced. Wyn stood by the door, her lips a hard line as she watched, the confusion on her face as clear as I was sure it was on mine. Thom’s joy had been temporarily trumped by his standby scowl as he tried to make sense of the anger that had taken over such a joyous moment.

Ilyan stood a few feet away from me, his arms folded across his chest as he towered over all of us, watching me. He didn’t flinch when I looked at him, making it clear he was not going to step into this verbal assault I had gotten myself into. His eyes met mine and his lip twitched into a small smile, the love that shone through his eyes seeming to recharge the control over my madness that my father’s disappointment had weakened.

“Tell me why, Sain.”

“You healed him because of your own fear, Siln?, because of your regret at what you did to him. You acted on a selfish, mortal desire, nothing more.”

A selfish, mortal desire. No. It was so much more than that. I attempted to keep the anger I had so recently controlled in check, but I already knew it was a lost cause. It boiled inside of me, looking for a way out.

“I saved my brother’s life. I did what was right,” I said in a growl. I did not need to explain myself, not to him.

“No. You have changed the forces of the sights with a childish choice. You have destroyed us.”

I had wanted an answer, but instead I only got more questions, and judging by the way everyone’s eyes narrowed toward Sain, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one.

“What are you saying?” Wyn’s voice shook from where she stood by the door, her query putting voice to what everyone else was thinking.

“You change the sights, you change the world. Is it that hard to understand?” Sain spoke to everyone around us before glaring back at me as if I was the one who had asked the question, the one who had changed the world.

“Why haven’t I been told of this before?” Ilyan asked, his voice rumbling in anger.

“Not all the knowledge that the Drak possess is meant for you, Ilyan.”

“So I am noticing.” Ilyan’s anger washed through me as he scowled at Dramin before his eyes glanced back to Sain. “I am king of this people, Sain. I should know…”

“And I am of the first! I will keep from you what I deem.”

“You will keep nothing from me!” Ilyan roared, the defiant glare that Sain had born into him melting away.

“The sights of my people are infallible; it is the choices of others that burn them away.”

“Are you meaning to say that we could fail? That the fight, that all of this… is for nothing?” Ilyan’s voice roared through the room, his anger so volatile that I flinched.

“Anything is possible now, My Lord,” Sain said, the glare of his eyes darting toward me again. “If this is to be one of the Zlomeny, there will be a sign that it has broken, but for now all is still in place.”

“That really doesn’t comfort me, Sain,” Ilyan growled as he moved closer to me, his hand pressing against mine for the briefest of moments before it was gone.

Ilyan’s rancid anger remained heavy in me as he moved away. I fought the urge to reach out and hold him, to push my magic into him and calm him, but Ryland’s head had jerked up at Ilyan’s close proximity to me, his supposed ownership flashing in his eyes. It was better not to try his patience right now—the emotions in the room were high enough as it was.

“I am sorry, My Lord, but I cannot control the foolish changes others would make.” The timber in Sain’s voice changed as he spoke, his eyes burning right back toward me. “Their magic should have told them as much.”

“My magic told me to heal him!”

“No Drak magic would do such a thing.”

“What do you want from me?” I screamed as I rushed toward him.

I didn’t know what he expected of me. I wasn’t even sure what I expected of him, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t this man, who looked so much like my father and spoke in that calm determination that cut through me. It wasn’t this Drak who expected impossible things from me.

“I expect you to do as my bloodline demands of you!” Sain yelled, his voice darkening as his eyes did, the green fading to the black of sight. I cringed against it, not wanting to hear what was coming. “In the end, when the sky rains fire, a new life will rise as another falls, and in your hands is our salvation.”

My breath caught in my chest as his eyes lightened. I could feel my magic grasp at the sight he had just given, desperate to understand it. I held it back though, I didn’t care. Not right then. I don’t think I would have cared if the sight had told me exactly how to kill Edmund. I didn’t want to hear it. Not from him.

“It is your destiny.”

“I will decide my own destiny,” I growled through gritted teeth, my eyes digging dangerously into his before I turned away, unwilling to see any more.

“Is that why you are treating her like a pariah, Tatínek? Because it is her destiny?” Dramin’s voice was soft from behind me.

“She should know of our ways, accept them, and become better than us. If she is to become all that I have seen, then it is the only way,” Sain growled. I could tell just by listening to the tone in his voice that he believed that. That he doubted nothing.