Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(31)

Deceit.

I cringed at the look, fighting the snap and irritation that wanted to come forth. I knew it wouldn’t help, not right now.

I was still fighting between two people and trying to make them blend together.

I was beginning to think I never could.

Two lives, two people, stuck in one body, and while they both felt like me, they were strikingly different. No matter how much egg I added to the batter, they wouldn’t bind.

That would be, of course, if I could cook.

Perhaps that was why I was having so much trouble—my batter wasn’t right. Too much water or oil or whatever you used to make bread.

One side oil, one side water.

I could only see betrayal in her eyes, and it made me realize I needed to tell her.

“I need you to wake everyone, Wynifred,” Ilyan continued, pulling my mind from the explanation I had been about to give and right back to the emergency we faced. “Tell them to strengthen their portion of the shield, and inform them that we will be meeting in the dining hall at ten.”

“Ten? Why so late? If he is coming, we don't have time—”

He stopped me with one look, the expression so familiar it wiped the question from my mind.

He had let me break quite a few of his rules over the last hundred years; fueled by his guilt for what had happened, I was sure. Now that I was back and all my memories returned, though, I wasn’t going to get away with that anymore.

Fine by me. I liked this dynamic a bit more, anyway. He was quite fun to prod at.

“I need everyone there, Wynifred,” he scolded in that same tone, “and I will need to prepare Joclyn to meet Ryland face-to-face. Please tell Sain to do the same.”

I heard the command behind the words, the instruction he couldn’t give in front of Joclyn, because of what it really meant and what we were really facing. Edmund’s perfectly paced game suddenly made sense. It was more than sending Ryland to kill Joclyn; it was putting a weapon right in the middle of us.

No, I corrected myself, my eyes darting to the broken girl in front of me. Two weapons.

Joclyn was one, too, even if she didn’t realize it. They had broken her the same way. I was a fool not to have seen that from the way they used him in Imdalind. I was a fool not to understand.

We all were.

Two men stand, one will fall. Blood will drip. The game is played, and those with the most pawns will take the stage. Take your man and play the game, but be careful where your trust is laid.

Sain had said those words to Edmund, the sight that had been forced from him meaning so much more now from this side of the prison cell. The game was so much more than anyone other than Edmund understood.

Now we knew, and Ryland was here, perfectly placed to play the game Edmund had commanded him.

I swallowed once and curtseyed, the movement feeling awkward without the massive dresses I was used to. “Yes, my lord.”

With one last look at Joclyn and those wide confused eyes, I couldn’t help it, I smiled. I smiled the way I was used to. I smiled the way she had always seen. Then, while the tension in her shoulders lessened, the confusion inside of her only grew.

My heart tensed painfully at the reminder of what I had added to her already full plate.

I would have to tell her.

But now was not the time.

I left the room without another look. The snap of the closing door echoed through the long, stone hallway in a ripple that made me jump, as though the door closing was a snap of a gun and a call to arms.

I guessed in a way it was.

I pulled Thom’s jacket tighter around me then took off down the hall, letting the buzz of their voices fade into nothing as I moved farther away, toward Ryland’s room where Thom and Sain sat with him, trying to calm him down from an attack he’d had only a few hours before.

Getting him settled down from that was one thing, but ready to face Joclyn in a “not a death match” table meeting? I didn’t know if that was possible in such a short amount of time.

I exhaled roughly in spite of myself. We might as well just set up the boxing pit. We had our work cut out for us.

Between Ryland and Joclyn’s hitman personas and Dramin’s endless comatose, I had no clue how we were going to get out of here alive.

Yeah, this should be fun.

At least I would get to kill people.

A smile spread over my face, although the chill of the abbey wiped it from me as quickly as it had come.

I stood still as the gentle breeze moved around me and through my hair, tugging at the jacket as though someone stood right beside me, trying to get my attention. I should have been concerned about where the draft had come from, about the way it wrapped around me, but I wasn’t it.

With only the slightest breeze, all thought of what I had been ordered to do was wiped from my memory, déjà vu taking its place.

It was like the dream, the one that stood somewhere between fantasy and the T?uha, the dream I was still plagued with. I stood in a hallway much like the castle with the cold wind blowing around me. I almost expected the sound of her laugh to ripple beside the breeze and infiltrate my soul.

I shivered, my shoulders tensing in expectation.

But nothing was there.

Nothing except the cold stone and the breeze.

Everything was trapped in a fog as I looked around me, my muscles tensing as a thought that I had been trying to keep away burst through the wall I had built—the image of my daughter dancing through the shadows, making everything seem light for the slightest of moments. I couldn’t help it. I smiled.