Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(32)

I smiled, and then I ran.

I ran to her, even though I was still running away from her. I ran to her memory.

The slap of my shoes echoed loudly as I turned a corner, the sound coming to an abrupt halt as I looked to the door that I had tried so hard to forget, the room I hoped time wouldn’t have eaten alive.

Despite meaning to come here, seeing the familiar door was a slap against my chest, and the air was sucked from my chest because of what I was about to do.

Ilyan and his people had begun traveling together after the last massacre in the 1700s. Meaning, in each of his favored places, everyone had their own room. This room, this one was mine. Not the one I shared with Talon, but the one I had kept by myself, the one I had used as my own safe house many times. It was a place that still held the relics to a life I had chosen to forget.

The door creaked as I pushed it open, the dust motes springing to life as the light gust of air moved over them, swirling them through the darkness in inky spirals that made everything feel heavier.

Haunted.

Maybe it was.

I stood there in the doorway of the room, the dull orange glow of my magic flaring on its own, casting burned shadows through the pitch, over the sheet covered furniture, the old Indian rug, and the ancient furnishings.

I stared at it, my heart pulling me to go in and pull the sheets off the life I had left behind.

My magic flared as I took the last few steps, the power closing the door behind me and locking me into the room so filled with dust that everything was grey, the dirt particles looking like a soft blanket of ash over it all.

The room was a shell of what it had been, even though everything was still in the last place I had left it, like the silver hair brush that Cail had given me lying on the table and a petticoat thrown over the headboard. It was like I had walked out on my way to Texas a few days ago. Except, it wasn’t. Everything was covered by dust and sheets. Everything was as forgotten as I had wanted to be.

My heart was thundering so fast I could feel it in my throat, the pulse powerful enough to make it hard to swallow, let alone breathe. Something that was proving to be impossible, anyway, as I pulled the sheet off the tall wardrobe, a pillow of dust flowing into the silent air and falling around me like snow. I felt them fall on my hands, on my arms, on the tip of my nose, but I didn’t look away from that wardrobe.

I stared at it, trying to ignore the way my heart was trying to burst out of my chest like an alien, the way my stomach had twisted itself up so tightly I couldn’t hope to escape even if I tried.

I merely stared, my fingers soft as they traced over the designs that had been carved into it when the French Revolution was all anyone would talk about. Flowers, hummingbirds, a dancing bear.

Shadows of the light my magic cast fell over me as I opened the wardrobe to reveal the carefully hung dresses, a seeming walk through history as the preserved clothing hung as though they had been made only days ago. Red velvets, blue gingham, lace cuffs, and corsets—dresses I had used to entice males for centuries, to visit kings, to murder kingdoms. Dresses that were tailored to fit to my body, accentuating everything.

It wasn’t those I wanted.

I let out a shaking breath as my hand extended while the silence buzzed in my ears until it was all I could hear, the electric buzz vibrating through my skull as I moved the dresses to the side, revealing a large, wooden chest covered in a carved seaside scene.

The waves, the sand, the sun that set off in the distance. It was all the same as Thom had made it. Precise, perfect. It had taken him months to form the perfect replica of the day he had met me at the beach a few months before Rosaline was born. It had been the first time we had felt her magic within me.

He had felt her move.

It was the moment that we had connected, not only to her, but to each other. We might not have been granted marriage, but that had been our ceremony. It was the moment we had created a family.

He had made it for her so she would always know that, even though our family was a little broken, we still were one.

I stared at it, my hand frozen against the soft cotton of the dresses, the light flickering over the surface I had opened so many times since that day.

I wouldn’t open it now.

I didn’t need to.

I could see it all.

The deep blue dress that brought out the darkness of her eyes; the fabric doll Thom had made her for her second birthday, the stitched eyes pulling slightly from where she would rub her nose against them; the white night cap; the petticoats; the flower crown that I had watched her make in my dreams for years.

I knew how they were laid.

I knew how they were folded.

I knew how they felt.

I knew it all.

Because I had cried over that box every day for hundreds of years.

Because I had touched those things as I had longed for her.

Because I knew her.

My hand slid down the fabric of the dress as I sunk to the floor, my legs folding awkwardly beneath me as they forgot how to support me. The weight of my body against the floor sent a plume of dust around me, but I barely noticed.

I only stared at the box while my hands wound together as memory after memory flashed through me, my heart tightening more and more with each one. A pain I hadn’t felt in years built so quickly that, before I knew it, it was seeping from me in a scream that echoed every pain, every heart ache.

It ripped from me and shook the room around me, making layers of dust fall through the air in sheets of grey that slid like snow drifts, piling in mounds around me. The room I was lost in was as lost as I felt.