Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(29)

“Good morning, Wynifred.” Sain’s voice was soft beside me, and the last fragments of the dream faded away with the calm words.

Muscles ached in a dull throb that tensed through my weak body as I turned to him. Even though it had been a few days since Joclyn had removed the curse from my body, I still ached, like a body flu mixed with a muscle transplant surgery. I was sure the fact that everything in this abbey was a veritable soap opera didn’t help, either. Then again, if it was a soap opera, it would have been at least mildly humorous.

There wasn’t really anything funny about the dangers that had taken up residence both inside the abbey and out.

Sain sat in the old chair near my bed with a wide grin plastered to his face as he slowly sipped on the disgusting filth both he and Joclyn now called food. My stomach twisted a bit at the memory of Joclyn, sitting surrounded by all those feathers after her fight with Ilyan, shaking and broken as she drank the Black Water.

It was truly bizarre how everything had changed for the both of us. Too much change, too fast. Jayne would want to blow something up. I would, too.

“Good morning.” My voice was stuck in its ‘I just woke up and need water’ gasp, something which Sain took note of as his smile widened, and he walked away from me, toward the wide table where a couple of plain, ordinary, everyday water bottles sat.

“Sorry, it’s just me today. Thom is on watch, so I volunteered to take his place. It seems you were talking in your sleep, and he preferred some time away.” Sain handed me the water bottle as I slowly pushed myself to sitting, the aches rippling over me with a deeper intensity with the movement.

While they were definitely not as bad as they had been when I first woke up a few days ago, my stint to visit Joclyn last night hadn’t really taken them away, either. Less Mack truck, more elephant gun to the chest now. Either way, everything still hurt.

I knew I should have been upset that I was still being babysat, especially with Ryland fighting with his own mind. I couldn’t be, though, not with the tiny bit of information Sain had let slip and with what I knew it must mean, especially with the dream I had woken from.

“I was talking in my sleep?” My voice sounded flat.

“Yes, seemed to upset Thom some.”

Ugh. I knew why, and it only upset me more. My blood pumped in disappointed irritation.

“I wonder why that would be.” Sain spoke calmly, despite the fact that his eyes dug into me with the same intensity I had always hated from Draks. Even as a child, the way they looked into me creeped me out. I was so glad my best friend was going to start doing that, too.

Sarcasm is a beautiful thing.

“You tell me.” Yes, I was surly, but I had every right to be. Thom should know better after everything and all the centuries that had passed since I had seen him, the many lives I had been weaving my way through.

He should know.

It made me upset that he had gotten wrapped up in the “what ifs” that even I was still fighting with.

“I have no need to tell you what you already know.”

That did it.

Draks and their endless open thoughts and all-seeing ventures. He might as well be wearing purple robes and carrying around a crystal ball.

I slammed the water bottle down on the side of the bed with a thunk, droplets flying from the lip from the force. Sain moved away from them as if they were poison, his lip curling into a sneer of disgust.

“He was my husband, Sain. My mate for over a hundred years. I can’t walk away from that and back into a life I willingly left behind.” I tried to keep the snottiness out of my voice, keep the murderess at bay, but she came out anyway. As sour as the day I was born. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“You know as well as I that your heart is fighting the same way his does. Do not place all the blame on him.”

And there it was—the words that weighed me down and made it hard to breath, the truth that stopped me in my tracks and froze my anger in place. I was fighting the same thing.

Part of me expected what Thom did—to move forward without question. The other part of me knew that couldn’t happen. Not because of the death, not because of the memory, not even because of the life I had led without him, but because of the dream I had awoken from and the gentle way it pulled at my soul with all the possibilities of what it might mean.

“Sain?” I asked, my voice faltering a bit with nerves at what I was about to ask. “Can you still have T?uhas after your mate has passed on?”

“I wouldn’t know…” He didn’t even look at me as he said it; he only clutched the mug to his chest, his voice sounding a million miles away as he stared out the window at something I couldn’t see, at a life I could never comprehend.

I stared at him, waiting, trying to squash the irritation and the snide comments away. I knew that, the longer he waited, the higher the chance I would demand an answer, and that was something I wasn’t really interested in doing.

Then it hit me. His bonding, his mate, his T?uhas, they had been stolen from him. What was more, as much as he insisted that he no longer loved Ovailia, I knew better as much as he did. Love didn’t simply go away. It was always there. It was just that sometimes it was hidden, sometimes it was more pain than passion. That love, that connection, and that T?uha had been stolen from him, and there had been no death there.

I regretted my question at once, my breath shaking with exhale before I aggressively drank from the water Sain had given me while my forehead furrowed in agitation.