Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(5)

How could I choose? You couldn’t choose to live through this, through this curse. I was going to die. There wasn’t a choice, only a reality.

“Just keep trying,” Sain’s voice cut through the distanced thoughts, attempting to bring me back into reality. I remained staring at Talon’s shadowed form, the distorted body shifting as it moved forward, as a hand reached toward me through the fog that clouded him.

He extended his hand toward me, his fingers moving through the cloud and becoming more than a shadowed distortion. They became real. They were skin and callouses and a scar I recognized at once.

They became Talon.

I looked up to him, expecting to see his smile, but he was still cast in static. His body was out of focus, as if I couldn’t see him quite right, as if my eyes weren’t powerful enough to see.

“Do you remember when we took her to the beach?” I could barely hear Thom now, even though his voice was deep and loud in my ears. It was almost like it couldn’t move through the fog I was now surrounded by.

“You have to choose,” the deep voice came again, rumbling through me. While clear in meaning, it was still confusing to me. I wanted to tell it I didn’t have a choice, that someone had already made it for me. I couldn’t seem to find the words, though.

It didn’t matter, anyway.

Talon was before me, his hand extended toward me, beckoning me home.

I began to reach toward him, my body feeling light and warm as I moved, the pain of the curse almost gone now. I wanted to rejoice that it was gone, that I had left it behind. Left life behind. However, I couldn’t. Despite the warmth being a soothing balm to the pain, there was something off about it, something foreign.

Something was wrong.

Something was pulling me back.

No, not something—someone.

“N-n-need m-more.” I recognized the voice at once, even through the broken stutter and the fear that trembled underneath it.

It was Joclyn.

It was her magic that I felt move through me.

It was her power that was trying to heal me, to save me,

I looked up to Talon, to his body that was so clear I could reach out and touch him. I wanted to.

I also knew that I couldn’t, not yet.

Sain had seen this. He had seen every bit of this. His need to get me to Joclyn had been so sure, right from the start. It wasn’t merely to say goodbye, either. They still needed me.

What was more, I still needed them.

I still needed to live.

“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t get any more out than that.

He smiled, wide and clear, as if he knew what he had done, as if he had been planning it for years and was proud of it. Seeing that look, seeing the playfulness in his eyes, a look that was so distinctly him I couldn’t have a hope of recreating it within my subconscious, I knew it was him. I knew it was real.

All of it.

“Be happy, Wyn,” he whispered, his voice soft in my ear as Rosaline’s laugh echoed around us, the sound bringing joy and hope to me unlike any time before.

Light and warmth seeped into me then, moving through me in a wave of calm that took the heaviness of the dream away.

I stayed still as the warmth left my skin, a chill moving over me. The smell of damp air and sandalwood permeated everything around me.

I tried to turn toward Talon, to move a little, but the lightness in my body had departed, leaving me with the heavy weight of exhaustion and residual pain. I knew at once I wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon.

A deep groan escaped my lips. The irritation of being trapped as well as being weak a death sentence. At the sound of my irritation, a relieved gasp filled the air around me, a gasp that was not mine.

My eyes snapped open in alarm at the sound, my heart beating a million miles an hour as they worked to adjust to the dimly lit space. The heavy buzz of agitated voices filled the air as my eyes went to the man who hovered above me, his cheeks stained with tears and long ropes of his hair pulled away from his face.

“You’re awake,” he gasped as the loud buzzing of voices disappeared into nothing. His lips twitched into a smile so rare I was sure no one had seen it in centuries.

I stared at him—at his eyes, his dimples, and the face that I had memorized hundreds of years before. My heart pulsed once in an emotion so strong it almost felt out of place given what I had left, what had happened, and the way my soul and heart and life had been split into two pieces of me.

Be happy, Wyn.

“Thomas.”





Two


I had fallen asleep clinging to his hand, our fingers intertwined in a hold that was more friendship than passion. It was a grasp that was exactly what we both needed—a hand to hold, a reminder that someone was there.

When I woke, his hand was still there, the calloused skin rough and slightly sweaty from holding onto me for so long.

The room glowed with a few lanterns that were scattered over my desks and tables. The flashes of lightning blended with a slight orange glow, giving everything a haunted look and far too many shadows for my liking. Seeing Dennis DeYoung and the rest of Styx with half illuminated faces was a bit too much for me. Nothing should be allowed to mar his beautiful face, strictly speaking.

I stared at the poster as the abbey roared with the incessant thunder that the pained soul of the earth was reigning on us. I looked at all of them, at the necklaces that hung from the ceiling, and the brightly colored walls. My eyes moved from place to place as my mind slowly began to wake up. Everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours came back so quickly it began to mash together.