Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(76)

As tears trailed down my face, and my magic caught fire to the floor, long flames licking over the surface in twisting snakes as if there was a trail of gasoline there, I tried to keep the sobs trapped inside of me. They came, anyway, loud and angry as I tried to escape the vice of Ryland’s hand, tried to escape the voice that came again and again.

“Mommy.”

My focus snapped to Ryland, ready to yell at him to release me, to let me run as far away from here as possible. However, the look in his eyes stopped me. The calm that I didn’t think I had ever seen from him, the plea for help, for understanding, clear without him so much as saying anything.

It froze me.

“Take it out,” he moaned, his voice a hollow echo in my ears as Rosaline’s laugh filled my head. The words only confused me more until he tightened his hand around mine, his face trailing with fresh tears. “Take it out.”

With those three words, it all made sense. Those three words froze me.

The blade.

The blade that had been made from Rosaline’s soul… It couldn’t be.

I begged for it not to be, but after one look in his eyes, I knew. A piece was inside of him.

“Mommy?”

I cringed against the voice, the way it echoed in my head and pulled at my heart.

“Can you hear her, too?” I asked the question on instinct, but I knew at once he could not.

He only stared at me, the pain in his eyes for another reason.

I closed my eyes, embracing the blackness behind my lids as a high-pitched scream echoed from outside, the sound followed almost instantly by the laugh of the child I still mourned.

From the moment Edmund had destroyed her life, I had vowed to ruin the monstrous man. I had vowed to release Rosy from the prison she had been entombed within. Inches away from me was the first piece to that debilitating task that I had embarked on.

There wasn’t any question about what I was supposed to do. There never had been.

From the moment her laugh had filled my head, I would have moved mountains to help her, despite the pain.

It just so happened that this mountain involved cutting open an innocent boy’s heart and miraculously putting it back together again before his magic died, taking him with it.

I had removed hearts for centuries, keeping them beating for Edmund’s use, keeping the magic alive so he could devour it. Given that, this should be a simple task, like breaking into a Pink Floyd concert.

Yeah, I got this.

I didn’t even look at him as I put him to sleep. I heard his head hit the floor with a painfully loud beat as a held breath seeped from his now relaxed lips, and then I went to work.

His chest was riddled with the same scars I had seen in the dungeon, the same scar that moved through my hand. Line after line, one over the other as the blade had been plunged into him again and again.

Scars that would never fully heal, that would only serve as a reminder of what he had been forced to do. Scars inside and out. The thought disgusted me. Even with my inner knowledge of how Edmund worked and how he used his children, this was crossing a line. Ryland’s life had been stolen before it had even had a chance to begin.

I wanted to find a way to give that back to him.

I would start with this.

“Mommy?”

My magic swelled with her voice, moving into his heart, into the beating organ that held the core of his magic, his life. My magic tensed at the concentrated power of it and the ripple of energy that tried to push me out.

You weren’t supposed to let your magic enter another person’s heart, strictly speaking. I knew Ilyan did it all the time, but he was insanely strong. He could control his magic so perfectly that there wasn’t any risk. He could defend himself against the soul’s automatic defense system—that little response that tried to destroy anything that entered the heart of another. It was something I could feel trying to destroy me.

Painful pricks of energy pressed their way into my magic, into me, surging through me in a warning that I already knew I couldn’t heed. I only needed to find the blade, whatever piece had been left behind.

My chest tightened as I searched, my breaths coming in massive heaves as I tried to fight against Ryland’s defenses. The magical assault punches were coming fast now, and I knew I didn’t have much time.

“Mommy!” Her voice was a yell of excitement and joy. It rang through me as though she was standing right next to me, her arms opened wide, ready to jump on me.

And then I realized why.

I hadn’t felt her magic in centuries, but there it was, embedded in a shard of blood mixed with souls and magic so small I wasn’t even sure Ilyan could have found them. I had only found it because of Rosaline.

She had showed me the way.

Her magic was as beautiful as it had always been, incredibly strong, incredibly joyous. It was like coming home again to feel it so close, yet it was tainted by the other souls that had willingly been given to make the blade, the hatred and malice that ran off them so strong it was like bile against my tongue.

I gasped as though the flavor was really there, my chest constricting painfully as I forgot to breathe, my focus so intent on the task at hand that something so simple had been cast aside.

I inhaled with a gasp as I pushed my magic farther, wrapping it around the tiny shard as though it was precious and cradling the malice alongside the beauty.

With one strong heave, I pulled it free from the softly beating tissue that it had been lodged in.