Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(54)

“Is that what you meant when you said you have trouble remembering who you are sometimes?”

Our pace slowed as she looked at me, leaving an even bigger gap between us and everyone else, their bodies fading into the darkness of the cave as they left us standing in the stale air.

We stood in the dark, staring at each other. Though part of me wanted to race to catch back up, I ignored it. This was something I could tell was needed by the way she looked at me. Her large, dark eyes were filled with enough sorrow to consume the world in grief.

“Yeah,” she whispered, her voice just as broken. “It gets confusing, like two different people are jammed inside of me. Two different lives shoved into a box and locked up, forced to live together but so dissimilar there is no way they can co-inhabit in peace.”

It was like the medical definition of schizophrenia, but so much more real. And she was trapped in the middle.

“It’s not, though…” I began, but she only smiled at me sadly, her hand soft against my bicep.

“Oh, I know. I think I have finally got it figured out. Sometimes, life takes us on bizarre journeys, and sometimes, we just need to go along for the ride.”

“You are as wise as he is.”

“As who is?” she asked, her voice raising an octave in sudden alarm.

“Thom,” I said as I smiled at her, the softness in her eyes only increasing the grin.

It looked like she already knew that.

I opened my mouth to say something more, some wise words or smart comment, but it never made it out.

Everything froze in the darkness that we stood in as Ryland’s voice flitted back to us, the words indistinguishable through the echo of the cave, the damp air sucking out all understanding, though the meaning was as clear as day.

I looked through the dark toward the sound, the faded lights far ahead of us as Ilyan’s emotions hit me, a wall of concern and fear that sucked the joy from the air. He had only been smiling a moment before, which could only mean one thing.

“We’re here.” The words felt dead on my tongue as I began to walk toward the pull of my mate’s magic, toward the light and the voices that were slowly becoming clearer, even though I didn’t want them to be.

“We can’t be here already, can we?” Wyn was obviously as unwilling to accept this harsh reality as I was.

I didn’t blame her.

She had just come through these tunnels from the other direction, and it had taken her a week.

We had been trapped in the dark, endless lengths of the claustrophobic space for only a few days. Trapped with the spiders and the rats and the water that always seemed to be dripping from directly above our heads like the leak had a personal vendetta against us.

While part of me was glad to be free from it, we still didn’t know what waited for us outside of the dark depths of the space. We didn’t know how much truth Sain was telling.

If the Vil?s had attacked yet or not.

We didn’t know if we would be walking into war or ruin.

We could be walking into a trap for all we knew. Although the idea wasn’t pleasant, if another battle was on the horizon, I at least wanted to be prepared for it. That concern was my own, however.

“What is it, Ilyan?” Ryland’s comment found substance as we reached the tense knot of people in front of us. Their bodies were frozen in place as they looked into the darkness.

At first, I thought I was wrong, that we hadn’t made it to Prague, and something else was wrong. My muscles tensed at the thought that anything other than a city could be before us.

That Edmund could be before us.

Then I felt what had caused them to stop, the warm breeze so uncharacteristic of the cave that I knew at once it wasn’t right, that something was before us. Something familiar.

If not to me, then to Ilyan.

Memories of his childhood filled his mind, flitting into mine like paper airplanes sent off course. The fleeting images only cemented as the smell of warm cinnamon bread and ancient wood traveled on the back of the breeze. The heady aroma reinforced in my mind what was before us, waiting ahead of us in the dark.

I was right.

We were here.

Prague.

Somewhere before us, in the darkness of the cave, was the city that Ilyan had been raised in, that Ilyan had led. That Ilyan loved.

His home.

Our home.

More importantly, it was the city I had seen destroyed in a sight no more than four days before. I had seen the sky darken, Vil?s devouring the city in clouds of black as they bit the mortals with their kisses, all in an attempt to create an army. Or so I assumed. It was an attack Sain had sworn had already happened, whereas I knew it had not.

In mere steps, we would know who was right, if Sain was telling the truth. If the sight was right at all. That alone was enough to make my blood turn to ice, the possibility of my father’s betrayal only growing. Combine that with the connection Ilyan had with the city, and it was no wonder the possibilities had thrown him into a stony silence.

“Ilyan?” I asked aloud, the sound of my voice in his ear pulling him from his trance for a moment.

His eyes darted to mine, the brilliant blue filled with the tense fear that had plagued him for so long. I also saw something that I hadn’t seen before, something that was stemmed in a history I knew at once I could never fully grasp.

It will be okay, I spoke the words into his mind, the fearful torrent of his magic calming as his lip twitched.