Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(8)

My heart had forgotten how to beat. The heavy, lead cage clamped so tightly around it I was sure it would fall right to my toes, a solid mass of bleeding, useless flesh.

That was it.

That was what it was about.

More than who I was and what I had become, it was knowing the most treasured parts of my life were real—Thom holding me at night and reciting poems in French. Talon bringing me flowers and dancing with me in the lamp light. Rosy cuddling into my collarbone, her breath hot on my skin as we tried to sleep.

Those were who I was, and they were the memories I treasured more than any other. Still, they all intersected in a jumbled mess. They all felt like a dream and not like a life I had really lived.

I had to find the reality.

“It was,” Thom said, his hand pressing through the blankets against my knee, the warmth of him seeping through the heavy layers of cotton. “You know it was. Just because there is change, it does not deter from the promises and the realities you know. It’s all true. Just because some of the facts were hidden from you for a time, it doesn’t deter what you know.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to let his words seep into me and become real and easy to accept. They only floated somewhere in the air between us, however, a part of me not quite ready to accept them yet.

Thom seemed to see that. He sighed heavily as he moved closer to me, his hand moving up my leg to rest on my waist, the pressure soft and careful as he leaned closer. The bright blue of his eyes deepened as they soaked in what little light we were surrounded by.

“Thom?” I asked, the word choking on its way out.

He only shook his head, his eyes shining as he wrapped his hand around mine. Then he pressed his forehead against mine, leaning into me the way we had done so many times before.

“The love,” he whispered, his voice soft in my ear. “The life you had, the life you built; the memories you hold, the memories you will make; and every whispered word, every shared laugh, they were all true, Wynifred. I still find you very easy to love.”

My heart restarted as the words seeped into me, as the pain in my chest eased enough that I could feel my heart beat.

I sucked in breath then pulled away from him as he did me, his hand pulling away so softly I almost missed the movement.

“You always were wise beyond your years, Thom.”

“Everyone keeps saying that lately. I’m about to go back to not talking. As irritating as pretending to be mute is, at least I wouldn’t have to put up with being known as the Dali Llama.”

“To you perhaps.” I sighed, my muscles already tightening at the admission I was about to make. “I missed talking to you. I would miss it still.”

“Do you remember, Analine?” Thom asked, the sheer abruptness of his question catching me off guard. Not because it had come out of nowhere—something that was pretty standard practice for him—but because of what he was asking about.

“Your mother?” I almost couldn’t get the words out. They felt foreign.

“Yes.”

“Of course.” I don’t think I could ever forget the woman who, at the time, was regarded as one of the most beautiful in Europe, a French princess Edmund had quite literally stolen off the throne. There were still portraits of her hanging throughout the world, except no one knew who she was anymore, just a nameless beauty whose memory Edmund had squashed into oblivion.

I had known her quite well before Edmund had ordered me to remove her heart. The memory of her tear-stained face came to me without prompting. She hadn’t even fought me. She had only rambled in French about her son, the very man who sat before me.

“Before she was taken away, she told me something about my father that I didn’t believe until after I had left. Something about how he loved me, but he didn’t know how to show it, because he had never felt love before.”

“I find that hard to believe.” I couldn’t keep the scoff out of my voice, not like I really tried. The idea of Edmund loving was painfully laughable.

“So did I. Because I had never felt love before, either. I had never known love strong enough that losing it destroyed me. Losing Rosaline destroyed me. Losing you…” He paused, his voice catching in his throat as he turned away from me for the first time since I had woken up.

I stared at him, trying to push the same emotions I was sure were plaguing him away, stop them from rising up in me. My bones bowed at the attempt, my spine curving in as Thom’s arms wrapped around himself, his back shuddering as he drew in breath.

I reached forward without thinking, my hand pressing against his back in a desperate show of support, a plea to remind him I was there. Despite not wanting to, I was feeling the same things he was.

Even after three hundred years, her death still hurt. It always would.

“You can’t show love unless you know what it is to feel it. You can’t recognize it until you’ve lost it.” He spoke away from me as the room illuminated with a forked streak right outside the window as his body continued to shudder under my touch.

“I’ve changed, Thom.” My hand dropped from his back as I spoke.

He turned to me as the room roared with noise. “I know, but not as much as I was expecting. There is softness in your eyes that wasn’t there before. Even after Rosy was … born,” he ended lamely, his eyes leaving their intense focus to look at his large calloused hands as they writhed over each other.