Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(36)

He lay on the same bed as before with masses of blankets piled and tucked in around him. From where I stood, I could sense the magic tucked between the layers, the healing flowers and water folded into the fibers of the cloth. We had done the same thing to Joclyn after she had broken her back, but this almost seemed to be more, as if the magic within the blankets was all that was keeping him alive.

Looking at the way he sagged and melted into the bed, I wouldn’t say I was that far off. He was tired looking, his hair incredibly unkempt. If he wasn’t sitting there, smiling and talking to me, I would say he was dead already.

“Tatinek seemed to think I would sleep, and so he left me in the dark, something that wouldn’t have been a problem if I had the ability to light my own lanterns.”

“Can Draks not ignite lights?” I asked, fully aware that I had lived under Sain’s green lights for nearly a month.

“Normally, yes, but there seems to be something wrong with my magic. It doesn’t seem too interested in working properly.” He spoke sadly.

The loss of his ability hit me in the gut. I knew what it felt like to lose something so instrumental to your being. It was like losing an arm.

“It seems that whatever the Siln? hit me with did more damage than anyone thought. Of course, I could also be dead, so I must look on the bright side.”

“But she healed you.” I was fully aware of how childish the statement was, but I didn’t care. At this point, I was more interested in keeping the conversation away from the massive saber tooth tiger that was sitting on my chest and bringing it to something light and airy, instead.

Like not dying.

This was not going to work.

“I guess you could say that,” he said as he laughed. “Of course, she saved you, too, didn’t she?”

I could only nod.

The skin around Dramin’s eyes wrinkled as he smiled at me, the emerald green of his eyes dancing a bit in the light. I stared at the color so similar to Sain’s and wondered if that was what Joclyn’s eye color used to be. She had told me once her eye color had changed when she had received her mark, and judging by her family…

Family.

The word seemed dead after yesterday, after watching them all react and fight and throw verbal mud at each other. My brow wrinkled and I took a step away without thinking, the parallels from her family and mine making me uncomfortable.

“Am I to take that as a yes?” he said with a laugh again, pulling me out of my reverie.

I didn’t know what the man found so joyful, but he certainly did smile and chuckle a lot. It was as if he kept all the joy of the world inside of him, and he alone was responsible for distributing it. From the way my body was already feeling light, the dread that had escorted me into the room seeping away, I would have to guess that wasn’t too far from the truth.

“Yes,” I finally answered him, my mind moving too fast to make much sense. “She took the Zánik curse from my body.”

“Ahhh,” he sighed, his body sagging down into the bed. “My little girl is growing up.”

It was said like an overjoyed parent with a subtle hint of mockery like those TV families always had. I had heard the phrase enough that it left me wondering how honest he was being, but looking at the slight smile that lit up his face, I would have to say he was being as honest as they came.

Silence seeped over the room with his comment, his body sinking farther into the piles of blankets that surrounded him as he stared up to the rafters. His eyes were hooded in such a way I couldn’t be sure if he was awake or a sleep. Right then, I wasn’t about to ask, despite knowing I should. I had come to this room for a reason, after all. It wasn’t like me to lose my gumption.

Saber tooth tiger or not.

Of course, it wasn’t like me to start any kind of conversation with, “Hey, I’m sorry I killed your wife and your kids … and well, everyone else, but can we powwow about these awesome dreams I have been having?”

Well, it wasn’t like either of me.

The murderer wouldn’t care. The rocker wouldn’t kill anyone for fun.

“Can I ask you something?” I took another step as he turned to look at me, his face so kind and understanding that some of the tension left my over-taut muscles, my chest deciding it was okay to breathe normally.

“You came here for a reason, after all. But I will not give you sight, little girl. Not because of our past. I just cannot.”

At the mention of our past, everything tightened up again, but not in the dread of what was coming kind of way that had been wrapped around me; in the heart wrenching guilt and vehemence kind of way.

Guilt.

The emotion was so strong I couldn’t stop everything from flowing out of me in a mad rush, as though that one emotion had lifted the floodgates all on its own.

“I’m sorry.” The words weren’t enough. They weren’t powerful enough. They weren’t deep enough. “For what Edmund made me do. For what I chose to do.”

The silence came back as though it lived there. It sat on my chest and sucked my breath away. It made it hard to breathe, hard to look anywhere other than at the kind, old man who lay before me.

His bright eyes focused so intently on mine that they were all I could see. The room evaporated into nothing except smoke and silence and air that was too thick to breathe.

“We all make choices. Every day, we make new ones. And all of those choices are based on what we know to be right and true. It truly is a miracle that our knowledge within this life gets to grow and change. Otherwise, we could keep making the same choices, the same mistakes, thinking they were the right ones.”