Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(72)

Any other time, I would chalk it up to him “being a Drak,” but I couldn’t, not this time, not after everything that had happened, not after everything he had done.

He had told us the sight had already happened, and although that hadn’t necessarily made the city safer, he had brought us into this trap without recourse.

He had said he had made a terrible mistake. This was it.

Sain’s voice was an ignition switch, and I reacted, turning to face him with a snap that flared my magic, sparks of fire flying from my fingers as if in warning. However, Sain did not cower beneath me this time. He stood tall, much taller than me, and puffed out his chest as if he was an animal going to battle.

I guessed, in a way, he thought he was.

Let him try.

I would tear him limb from limb.

“What is not the way of the Drak, Sain?” I spat, my voice dripping like bile as I faced him. My patience had evaporated before we had even left the cave less than an hour before.

“We do not reveal what was seen in sight, unless it is asked of us.” His voice was that pompous calm again, the same tone he had used on Joclyn only days before.

I was beginning to understand why she had reacted the way she had. I didn’t think I had ever been spoken to in such a derogatory way. Even when we had run from this city weeks before, he had been kind as he directed me. But this? This reeked of some underlying pompousness that I must have been allergic to.

I was breaking out in hives.

It was the only way I could explain my reaction, the way my skin prickled.

“I am asking.”

It seemed like a simple enough response, but Sain only smiled, the same underlying slime shining through for a moment before it was gone, washed away with the echoes of murder we were surrounded by.

“You did not touch the water, Wynifred.” His voice shook with the same fear I saw in his face, his shoulders sagging more as he began to sink to the ground.

I knew enough about the rules of the Drak and the poison they called food to know what he was talking about. It still didn’t make sense. Not with what he had always done for Ilyan, not with the way his face was twisted and contorted in such a desperate way.

Why wouldn’t he tell me?

The supposed betrayal only ground on me more, my agitation prickling as I stood before him, desperately hoping there was another explanation, but not expecting there to be.

“Do you really think that matters anymore?” I was louder than I should have been, and I knew it at once. The human sounding shrieks of a Vil?s sounded right outside the boarded up window, and I jumped, the scratching of claws coming only moments later as my voice drew them right to us.

I looked toward the sound at the same time Sain and Dramin did, our eyes wide for a moment as we waited to see if the ancient shield Ilyan had placed on this house would hold.

I didn’t dare breath as I waited, staring at the dim light that came through the cracks in the wood planking. Waiting.

My heart was beating so fast my chest hurt with the pressure, and the tension that was wound through my body only made it worse. Normally, I would tell a joke or make some 70s band reference to ease the pressure, but nothing was coming.

I wasn’t sure Vil?s would like Styx, anyway.

“It doesn’t matter,” I answered my own question as I looked back at him, the terrifying sounds of the rat that flew outside the window growing louder, helping to drive my point home. “We just came through a massacre, Sain. Ryland is damned, Thom’s down for the count, your own son was injured, and you are spouting ‘rules of the Drak’?”

His reasoning seemed all the more ridiculous the more I spoke, a fact that he seemed very aware of. His eyes grew wider with each word, his body shaking before me as though he had been struck down by some ten second flu, the symptoms leaving as soon as they came.

I had been letting my fear and panic get the best of me, something that was becoming strikingly obvious was not going to work here.

Not with Sain’s stubborn Drak-ness, another thing that was only becoming more and more irritating the more I got to know him.

Stupid Drak.

I fought the need to roll my eyes and scooted closer to him, unsurprised when he flinched away.

“What do you know Sain?” I barely spoke louder than the rats outside the window, careful to keep my voice calm, although I am not sure exactly how well it worked.

“I know nothing.”

“Bullshit.” I knew I needed to stay calm, but it obviously wasn’t going to work with him. Maybe, if I threw him out the window or dangled him in front of the little monsters, he would talk.

I pinched the bridge of my nose in agitation, hating how quickly the old tendencies came to mind.

I hated more that I could make it work.

I wondered if I could get the same result by making him listen to Bruce Springsteen.

“You obviously know something, Sain. You did something wrong, remember? You saw this and then lied to us that it had already happened, why?”

I didn’t dare look away from him, no matter how much the fear in his eyes was paralyzing me. I watched and waited, silently pleading he would give me the answer I so desperately wanted.

I was foolish to think he would break that easily.

“We need to get out of here.”

The forced calm I had been trying so desperately to cling to snapped in half like a popsicle stick. My magic pulsed, and I could smell the smoke, even if I had no idea what I had set on fire. I really didn’t care anymore.