Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(57)
He shot me a look that had as much question as I felt. Yes, fear hiding in the city did sound a bit crazy … but with everything we had gone through?
I only shrugged my shoulders in response, a fact that he seemed to find quite humorous. His loud laugh echoed around the tension in the cave like a broken cymbal, the sound loud as it broke the fear with its beautiful sound.
“Ugh,” Thom growled from behind me, the first word he had spoken in a while ringing with his typical irritation. “I’m going to start laughing randomly and answering questions from nowhere if you guys don’t knock it off. Why, yes, peanut butter is delicious, thank you for asking.” Thom rolled his eyes in frustration, but everyone else stared at him in utter disbelief.
It wasn’t until Wyn’s high pitched squeal broke against the stone that everyone else began to laugh, the sheer misplaced nature of his comment breaking through the tension.
“Yep, I’m hilarious,” Thom growled, oblivious to his own absurdity. “Is it at least safe to leave the cave? I would really like a shower…”
Ilyan looked at me in question as the laughter faded to nothing, his hand winding around my waist as he pulled me into him. I could hear the question on his mind without him having to even put voice to it.
“I didn’t feel Edmund or any of his men inside the city,” I said, my voice sounding far too loud against the silence of the cave.
“Right.” Ilyan moved away from me and back to the door, looking through the gap once again before turning back to us. “You will need to be under a shield if we wish to make it through the court without attracting too much attention.”
I nodded with all the others, no one daring to second guess his proclamation. If we went out as we were, I was sure some kind of riot would break out. My shirt was still covered in dried blood; Ilyan was prickled in small cuts that, although they had healed, had left trail of dirt and blood behind; Dramin could barely walk on his own; and Ryland … One look at Ryland sent nerves into an electrified storm. The darkness that had taken over his eyes was back, a panicked fear rumbling through him and setting my desperate need to attack back into motion.
I looked away before it took hold, but not before Ilyan caught the whisper of my thoughts in his own mind, his head turning toward his brother before a panic washed over him.
Ryland had told me he was fine, because his father was too far away, because some blade was too far away. He should be fine, since I couldn’t feel Edmund anywhere close. Regardless, he wasn’t. Something was digging into him.
It rooted at the pit of my own stomach, and my magic flew away from me again, soaring through the city as it searched for whatever I had missed. Sure I had missed something.
There was nothing, however.
“The closest safe house is above the clock about ten kilometers to the north. Stay close, but if you get separated…” Ilyan paused, the tension in the cave swallowing the temporary joy as if it had been waiting in the shadows the whole time. “Just make it to the clock.”
Everyone nodded once as they began to break into groups. Wyn moved to Ryland, Thom to Dramin and Sain. It was the same grouping they had adopted for most of our trek through the dark, the bonds forged in hundreds of years or months of surviving that had driven them together.
Ilyan pressed me against him once more, the warm palm of his hand running down my bare arm as he stepped back to the crack in the door, toward the light that seemed noticeably darker. The crowd’s noises lessened.
My body already longed for him as he stood a few feet from me, his back tensing for a moment before his hand wrapped around the massive iron loop. The ancient groan of handle and hinge echoed through the cage as if it was a monster that had been roused from its sleep. I almost expected the thing to erupt into a nightmarish creature as the groan only grew. Ilyan’s magic coaxed it along as the door began to swing open, flooding us all with blinding light as the stone itself bent to Ilyan’s will and allowed us enough space to pass.
We stood in the bright bath of warmth and light, the tattered group of survivors mere steps from our next destination, from the next leg of the war we had to win.
Wyn sucked in breath as the door opened, her eyes flashing with panic before she glanced to me. A mischievous grin tried desperately to meet her eyes, but it didn’t quite make it. It stayed on her lips, the two Wyn’s colliding in the middle.
I looked at her, struck by the humor of yet another silent goodbye before she grabbed Ryland’s hand, and her magic surged through the cave. I was sure she was shielding herself from view, even though the simple magic didn’t seem to work on me. It never had, after all. I guessed there wasn’t any reason for it to start now.
Wyn looked stoically forward, her jaw set in that powerful determination she had been trying to hide from me before she ran from the cave and into the courtyard before us. She and Ryland were followed by the already concealed Thom, Dramin, and Sain.
I stared after them all, past the door and into the courtyard that was so bright it could have been the afterlife for all I knew. The haloed shapes that moved and laughed through the stone space could be nothing more than angels.
It was strangely beautiful—the way the sun moved through the clouds and shone brightly over the blissfully ignorant people that moved through the ancient square. I was sure it would have been beautiful no matter what time of day or situation, but seeing it for the first time, combined with the flood of memories that flowed off Ilyan like a river, it actually felt like home.