Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(17)

“Ryland?” Sain asked again, his voice filled with the same depth I had heard so many times before. “No one is here. It is only you and I.”

He’s lying.

Ilyan is here.

Not far away.

Close enough to kill.

Kill.

You can still hear him.

You can reach him.

He’s not far …

No! I can’t. I won’t. I won’t.

It’s just me and Sain.

That’s a lie.

I’m here, too.

No!

You’re never alone, my son.

You’re not here. You’re not real.

It’s just me and Sain, same as it was before.

I jerked to Sain again, the constant pull of my fingers through my hair lessening for a moment as the reality of what he had said seeped in.

No one else was here.

I’m here.

I pushed the voice from my mind, battling against the pressure it filled me with. Instead, I focused on Sain, determined to overcome and find a way out of the prison my father had created for me.

“How did you know?” I asked, surprised at the clarity of the words that bled from me.

“I know because I’ve lived through what you have.” Sain’s voice was dark, the gravely base filled with more pain than I had ever heard from the old man.

He leaned toward me slowly, the dim green light that surrounded us cutting across the dark shadows of his face and casting him in monstrous shadows.

I pressed myself into the stone as he moved closer and laid his hand on my shoulder in the same pressure that always pulled me back from the monsters Cail had kept me controlled under. Glad when it did the same this time, I exhaled, the painful burn of my oxygen-deprived lungs all but gone now.

“The voice you hear? I heard it, too. I hear it, too.” If I had been surprised at what Wyn had told me before, it was nothing compared to this, nothing compared to the way my eyes widened and jaw tightened.

See? He lies to you, too.

They all lie to you.

All of them.

The voice was a growl of accomplishment that I couldn’t even find it inside of me to rebut.

After all this time, it was right.

Why hadn’t he told me before? We had been imprisoned together. He had helped me pull away from the beast I had been infected with. Why had he said nothing then?

Part of me knew it shouldn’t matter. Within the larger field of what we had been dealing with, this small piece of information was as inconsequential as bread, and yet … it felt like a betrayal. He had known what they were doing to me, and he had never once said the same had been done to him.

I could feel my blood boil as the betrayal grew into something more. I clenched my jaw together as if that alone was enough to keep it from exploding out of me.

“Why … why… didn’t you tell me … you knew?” I growled, my voice rumbling no matter how hard I tried to control it.

Sain didn’t flinch at my outburst. He didn’t even seem to acknowledge me while the heat of my magic grew while my chest started heaving in panicked breaths. I hadn’t even realized I was heaving, that my hands had resumed their constant pulling, my scalp filling with the painful pricks of pressure at the action.

He lied. He lied!

“He can’t have,” I answered the voice aloud, even though I hadn’t meant to. The desperate need to fight to keep Sain as the savior he had been to me was strong.

He lied.

“No … please no.”

“Ryland.” I heard Sain’s plea, but I didn’t look up at him. It was taking all my willpower to keep the voice at bay, to keep hold of what little sanity I had left.

“Ryland.” The pressure of his hand against mine increased, the comforting weight enough to break through the weight. Albeit, barely.

“It wasn’t my choice not to tell you. My sight did not show me of what was to come until now.”

“Do you always follow what your sight says?” My question was more in irritation than honesty. I already knew the answer. I had asked him the same thing more than once, and the answer had irritated me more every time. Something Sain very well knew, which is why he only laughed at me, the sound deep and abrasive.

More lies.

No, not lies. He’s telling me the truth.

Lies.

Don’t waste your time with him.

Kill him, too.

I flinched at the voice, barely able to maintain control of my mind, despite the constant onslaught.

“My father … he controls…” The broken words were all I could hope to get out through the schizophrenic conversation that was rattling inside of me.

It was the same as always—broken words, broken mind.

Luckily, Sain caught my meaning as perfectly as he always had.

Through the broken pieces of my reality, I had watched my father control Sain’s sight again and again, even before we knew what Joclyn really was. Although, he still “saw,” much of what he was given was now controlled by my father.

“I control my sight more than you know.”

I hadn’t expected that response. I heard the voice scream inside of me before it silenced to a hum while I tried to understand what he was saying, understand the nuances behind it.

“What do you mean?”

“I am the first of my kind, the first to control my power. All the power of the Drak flows through me. I see what all others see and control the flow of that magic. It is the same with your father. He is the first of the chosen children, his first mate the immediate descendant of the first of the Sk?íteks. All the magic of the Chosen flows through him. It is why he is so powerful.”