Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(18)

I could only stare at him as he spoke, the depth of what he told me sounding more like a prayer than a secret. Part of me was sure it was both. The knowledge felt powerful and scary.

“You mean, all the magic is connected, like some sort of waterfall?” It was the only analogy I could think of through the broken pieces of my mind. A waterfall, a steady flow from the top to the bottom, a ribbon that flows through everyone.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t I know this?”

“I’m not sure even Ilyan knows. And, if he does, he is using it to his advantage. Ilyan is powerful for a reason, you know.”

To protect Jos. The thought was simple enough, a fact I had been told time and time again, but it was one that had always hurt.

I growled as the voice came again, as the anger and madness that came with even thinking about her took over, the pain and anguish of lost love and hatred squashing me.

Protect?

More like steal.

He took her.

I know.

I couldn’t deny it.

Now she hates you.

She deserves to die.

He deserves to die.

I want to…

Stop playing around.

Kill them.

Kill them all.

I tried to fight it. I pressed myself into the wall. I hit myself against it, frantically seeking anything to focus on, to sift through. Regardless, it kept coming while my voice mumbled the same word over my lips as if on repeat, as though I was possessed. Of course, I guess, I was in a way.

I always had been.

“Focus, Ryland.” Sain’s voice tried to break through my insanity, but I barley heard it, barely felt his hand against my shoulder. “You can do this.”

“No … nononono … Kill…” The words kept coming, the image of Joclyn attacking me floating through my mind with more blood and hatred than I was sure had been there a few hours ago when it had actually happened.

“Ryland”—the pressure grew—“you are stronger than it.”

“Nooooooo…” If agony could be put into words, that would be it. It would be the phrase that would encompass my soul and the sound that seeped from me, the echo of a breaking heart. “No.”

“Yes. You can do this, Ryland.”

You can never defeat me.

Never get away.

Do what I ask. Maybe then I will set you free.

Maybe?

Kill them.

“Don’t listen to him.” Sain scooted closer, his fatherly voice a deeper calm than I had come to expect from him.

I looked into the patriarch who sat before me. He was the embodiment of the parental strength I had spent my entire life without, infusing into my soul in such a way that I knew what I had been missing. He was the support I had always wanted and needed, sitting right before me.

“It took Cail centuries to master; me, decades. It can take you weeks. You are stronger than us all.”

“How?” The word sounded as broken as I felt.

“How were you calm before Cail would pull us into the nightmares?”

I knew the answer before he had even finished the question. I knew because he had told me the very first time when I was pulled into the blade, when I had met the man before me and, for the first time in weeks, could think clearly. I had felt like myself. It was the blade. It held what my father had taken from me.

I would always be broken until I got it back.

“I want my heart back. I want my soul back.” The words were more of a sob as I stared at the dim dawn light that had begun to stretch over the ceiling, my heart clenching at the normality, my battered soul wishing the comforting green would never leave.

“You can get it back,” he whispered, pulling my focus from the grey stone. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

I only stared at him with my back pressing roughly into the stone wall behind me as I attempted to drown out the laugh that had begun to filter through me, the joyful strain an overture to the answer I already knew was coming.

The task I already knew I could never complete.

Not like this.

“We will have to get the knife from your father. You will have to face him.” He tried to make his voice lower, as though it would lessen the blow.

It didn’t.

“You will have to fight him.”

“I … don’t … I can’t…”

You’re right. You can’t.

You never could.

And now is no different.

“If you can get me that knife, I can fix everything.”

“I need…” I gasped, my hand pulling at my hair, wishing I could take out enough to take him away.

What do you need?

“I need…”

Say it.

“I need to kill…”

Sain shook his head in disappointment, a move that was so parental I was surprised I reacted the way I had seen teenagers on television do so many times before, considering it was something my father had never done to me. My father’s way of parental scolding was something more along the lines of torture or forced destruction.

“You don’t need to kill Joclyn.”

“I do … I need…”

Kill.

You need to destroy her.

I need to.

What are you waiting for?

Do it.