Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(73)

I let it burn for a moment before extinguishing the old dresser, leaving the pleasant smell to linger in the air, something the Vil?s liked, as well, and their attempts to find a way in became more vigorous.

“Excuse me?” I was sure my voice had hit an octave that wasn’t natural, but I really didn’t care anymore. “Answer the question, Sain.”

“It’s not safe.” The suggestion was not only ridiculous, but an obvious side-step. The knowledge only beat against me more.

“Nowhere is safe!” Another rat bird joined the first as I roared, and both Sain and Dramin flinched. I looked to Dramin, part of me desperately hoping he would back me up, but he only looked at me with the same plea I had seen before, his body sagging farther against the wall as he tried to stay upright.

Fine. I would do this on my own.

“Ilyan told us to come here. He will be here. We aren’t going anywhere.” I was firm.

Why couldn’t he answer the freaking question?

“We need to leave,” he repeated the same phrase like someone had skipped back a chapter. The inflection and everything was the same. Everything except my reaction.

My anger turned into a smolder, a flame that licked against my insides. It was like the anger of before that threatened to explode at any time, yet this one would burn. I wasn’t going to let this go on anymore. I wouldn’t.

“Answer the question, Sain. What did you do? What did you see?”

“We need to leave.”

When it came again, I reacted, lunging toward him before he had a chance to move away, my tiny hands wrapping around his arms and holding him in place. My sheer strength kept him there, millimeters from me, as I locked my magic inside of myself, afraid of what it would do to him. I was sure, by the pain in his face, that he could feel the heat against his skin. He could feel the warning.

Let it burn him.

I needed my answer.

“Knock it off, Sain,” I growled, fully aware my voice was feral from behind the clench in my jaw. “We can’t go anywhere. Even if you saw something, we are still stuck in this tiny room full of invalids. I can’t wake Ryland up without risking him bringing the whole building down; Dramin can barely move, let alone walk; and Thom … Thom. What did you do, Sain?

“We need—”

“No!” I snapped, cutting him off with a crack that mixed with the screams from outside, the rats that still clawed at the window. He flinched from the outburst, and I was certain I had accidently pushed some magic into him, but I really didn’t care anymore. “No more. You need to tell me. I can see in your eyes that something happened. I don’t care about your asinine rules. I respect them, but if you keep this up, more people are going to get hurt. Someone is going to die. This time, you have to tell me. I’m not going back out into that massacre with this many useless bodies unless you talk. So talk.”

Sain stared at me unblinking, his body frozen where I held him before me. The dim light of the room wavered around us as we stood, surrounded by screams and the scratches, in a room that was as much like a prison as the one we had met in.

A prison that had forged a bond, a trust, that I don’t think anything could break, even though I was starting to question it. The Eagles broke up for a reason, after all.

“Talk, Sain.” My voice was soft, a fact he noticed right away, his body relaxing under mine as my hands dropped. He looked to his son as if seeking approval, though his face was full of a plea for forgiveness.

“The sights are broken, Wynifred,” he whispered the same thing he had said before, but this time, it rippled through me with a much deeper understanding. “I have seen things since the earth was nothing but a barren waste and men and magic existed in peace. Millennia of sight. And only now do things break. Things that I have seen centuries before are now nothing but a Zlomeny. Things seen are now broken with lies. I saw the city under attack, yet it was not. Nothing is certain anymore.”

He looked away from me to Dramin, his eyes hooded with guilt as I waited, listening to the fading sounds of battle that still waged outside.

A shiver moved over my spine, the fear of the uncertain feeling rawer than I think it ever had.

My life had always been influenced by the Drak. For hundreds of years, Sain had guided my movements as Edmund’s assassin, and even after he had gone, we still relied on the sights he had left us with. Prophecies that one after another had come true. Infallible truths that we had followed. Even with Ilyan, we followed his sight, knowing, without question, what would happen.

Now, there was question.

Now, there was fault.

“What happened to Thom, Sain?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question, but it had slipped out, anyway. My heart tightened with the pressure of what had happened to him, needing to know. Part of me whispered that, if he finally told me, perhaps I could rouse him, and then maybe we could get out of here as Sain had suggested.

“I had a sight while we walked through the city, and it told me of the dangers of this place. Of where we were heading…” I tensed as he paused, the incessant claws of the Vil?s sounding louder for some reason, while a distant scream sat heavy on my chest. The danger Sain spoke of seemed far too close. “I tried to tell him to stop, to convince him to find Ilyan, but he refused. He began to yell, and the shield dropped only moments before the Vil?s tore the sky apart.”

I could only nod. I had seen this. I had seen Thom yell, which was so out of character for him that even the memory made me uncomfortable.