Crown of Cinders (Imdalind #7)(41)
I doubted he would have shoved anyone’s foot in his mouth, but he would most certainly have something to say about it.
That was the pain in loss—the silence that he had left behind.
We sat in that silence, the flicker of lantern light dimming as the occasional chuckle became farther apart.
“Do you ever scream really loudly, just to see if it will wake him up?” Joclyn asked out of nowhere.
“I can’t say I ever have,” I said. Despite the idea crossing my mind a few times, I wasn’t about to admit that to her.
For all I knew, she was going to try it, anyway. He did look like he was sleeping. At least, he would if I didn’t know for a fact that he slept all curled together with his butt in the air.
You walked in on him once, and you never forgot the imagery, even if it had been forty years ago.
This was a much better look for him.
“I think I’m ready to try again,” Joclyn whispered.
My heart skipped a beat as she pulled us back to the conversation we had been avoiding since Ilyan had left us for some much-needed sleep a few hours ago.
I needed sleep, too. However, I wasn’t quite willing to admit to her how much mortality I had regained.
Tensing, I leaned forward, my hand soft against her knee, pulling her focus back to me. Eyes glistening in the dim lamp light we sat in, I had been ready to give her a slight nod to prod her forward and support her. With that look, though, everything stopped, and my heart became a heavy weight in my chest.
“I want to use Thom,” she said, her eyes alive with a frightening plan. My stomach spun as I realized what she was referring to. “He’s connected to his father. He’s connected to Ovailia. His sights might be able to get me past the barrier since that girl showed up and chased them all away, anyway. I need to see into Imdalind. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Joclyn,” I stopped her, everything twisting around me in a tangle of fear and anger. Knowledge of the girl and why she was here temporarily took away my fear for what she had planned. “He’s not with us. You can’t.”
“I’ve seen the burn on Ilyan’s arm,” she interrupted, looking away from me and back at Thom’s still body. “I know how you tried to see using me. I know how Ilyan pulled me out of that hell.”
“Thom is not trapped in a dream, Siln?.” The use of the title made her flinch, but I plowed on, keeping my hand against her knee, visibly shaking, the reverberation of my heart making it hard to control. “He is sick.”
“So was I. So were you. So was Míra. There was sight in all of us.” Leaping from the bed, she stood, hesitant to move closer, as though she were afraid to wake him.
“There is sight in all of us,” I corrected her with the familiar phrase all Draks were raised with, knowing it was fodder for her.
Sure enough, she turned back to me, that familiar coy smile on her face, one so similar to one of my younger daughters that it was hard to breathe. Her face was so clear in my mind. I didn’t know how I had missed the similarity between Joclyn and Tearney, all except for the eyes.
“You always told me to follow my magic, brother. You always told me never to second-guess. It saved you. It knew about Sain. It brought Ryland back. And it’s telling me that there is something inside of Thom that I need.”
One last glance and I knew couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t say anything that would hinder her plans. I didn’t want to. She was right.
“If I leave you with anything in this life, I am glad it’s that,” I mused, my heart tensing at the truth Joclyn still didn’t know. “I am happy you listened.”
“I do that sometimes,” she teased, grabbing a stone mug almost as old as I from my bookcase before carrying it toward her brother-in-law. Her dark hair fell down her back, the golden ribbon snaking over the floor.
Sitting up farther, I threw my blankets off, dangling my legs over the side of the bed as my heart pounded and pulsed. I needed to go to her, to help her, to join her.
However, with the way she held herself, the way she looked at him, she didn’t need me. She knew what she was doing, her magic guiding her.
Her hands gentle, she lifted the blanket from over his feet, folding it away to reveal the yards of bandage wrapped skin that covered him. A single stretch of unscarred flesh was visible above his ankle, skin that would be burned and scalding in minutes.
The deep sound of Thom’s breathing was the solitary sound as she stood, frozen before him, the mug and her hand inches away from their mark. Inches from sight.
I tensed, forgetting how to breathe as I waited for her to connect with his Drak, to connect with his time.
Eyes focused on Thom, she poured the murky water into her palm, letting it flow over her skin like rain before it dripped onto the floor in puddles at her feet. The sound filled the room before she pressed her palm against the skin on Thom’s ankle, connecting her magic, her flesh with his.
Heart pounding from the memory of the strength of those connections, longing for the return, I gasped as she did. The frantic intake of air was so loud I expected Thom to sit up from the pain. Yet he remained still, as dead and lifeless as he had been for months, not even a flinch from the magic that now infiltrated him.
“Joclyn,” I gasped, knowing she couldn’t hear me.
Her eyes were already wrapped in the pitch black of prescience, staring into the future with a power and regality that I had seen from the moment I had laid eyes on the panicked child in the snow.