Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)(9)

“Is that why you are sorry?” I asked, my voice so soft and meek I wasn’t even sure it was mine.

I waited for him to answer, knowing I needed to give him time. I was sure I was ready to hear what was coming, part of me anxiously hoping it would help me solve the swirling identity puzzle I was trapped in. It was like an intro to a Yes song.

“No. I’m sorry for leaving you behind.”

I froze, every muscle tightening in tense ropes that froze me in place. My eyes widened as I stared at him, my heart a thundering pulse at the apology he had shared with me. It was an admission that I had been waiting my entire life to hear.

He had left me behind.

However, he had also held me as we cried, as we mourned the murder of a child we had both adored. That loss—that moment when we had watched her soul slip from her body and into the knife Edmund would later use against me—had destroyed us more than I think either of us had realized.

He had withdrawn into himself, mourned and cried in inconsolable sobs that scared me, something only Sain understood. I, instead, had chosen to lock the emotion away, killing hundreds of Draks and thousands of mortals.

It had been the only outlet I could find.

I had needed him, but he couldn’t be there for me. He couldn’t, because he was as broken as I was, and inside that shattered soul, his only recourse was to flee, leaving me behind.

Another pain had been added to the mound already there. I felt all the pain now as he reached for my hand, as his hot fingers wrapped around my cold ones, and his eyes searched mine, waiting for a response, for an acknowledgement, for the forgiveness I wasn’t sure I could give him.

Not now.

Not when the emotions, the sadness, the memories of abandonment were so fresh.

With only a few words, he had brought all of them back. The gauntlet swelled inside of me so fast I could barely breathe. I could feel it building in a wave of magic and anger that I felt sure was going to explode out of me.

I wanted it to explode out of me.

I wanted Thom to hear, to feel the depth of what he had done to me.

I wanted to make him hurt as I had so many others.

Yet, that part of me wasn’t the only part of me anymore. It wasn’t the only emotion I had, the only memory I clung to. Yes, it was me, but there was more—more understanding, more compassion, more forgiveness that Thom had never been able to instill inside me.

I was more.

I was more because of what had happened, because Thom had left. I was more because of Talon. And, although it hurt, I don’t think either of us could have come to terms with our monsters if we had stayed by each other’s side, if we had let the demons that plagued us grow together into a roaring beast.

Now, as we sat across from each other, his hand wrapped around mine, the soft bed I had shared with Talon sagging under the weight of us both, I thought I understood.

Not in its entirety, and I don’t think I ever would. There was too much in this world to understand, too much to make sense of, too many lives to meld together. However, as I squeezed his hand and let myself fall into the emotion in his eyes, I at least grasped the first step of the thousand step journey I was about to take.

I had said it before in the belly of Imdalind with my legs shackled to a wall.

I am Wyn.

Sometimes, you didn’t need to overthink things.

Be Happy.

“But you came back,” I whispered, my voice cracking as tears silently fell down my cheeks. “And that’s all that matters.”

Thom smiled at me as his hand tightened around mine, and he opened his mouth to speak. They were words I never heard, trapped in a rumble that shifted the bed we sat on so abruptly I was sure I had lost it.

Thunder roared as the abbey groaned, but I knew at once it was more than the fit the earth was throwing. It was something magical, something that had erupted from inside the walls.

“Are we under—”

The abbey shook again before I got my question out, the hallways echoing with the sound of an explosion. Dust shook from the rafters to fall over us in some type of ridicule.

“I don’t know. Can you find them?” The bed groaned loudly as Thom moved to stand over me, his body disappearing from sight for a minute as he looked out the window. He searched the fields and forests that surrounded us for signs of movement, war, and who knew what else.

Even through the weakness that Joclyn’s healing ability had left me in, I knew I could, or at the very least, I had to try to find the enemy. Battling was probably out of the question, unfortunately.

I only nodded once in acknowledgment before I rolled myself over on the bed, my body screaming in protest as I dropped my hand down to the old hewn wood that had been worn smooth over the last thousand years, and let my magic flood it. I let it move through it as I searched for the pinpoints, searched for the little pressure of power that I could always feel.

I hadn’t even reached the exterior walls of the abbey before the panicked screams echoed through the hallways, before my search became un-needed.

“I don’t need you!” The words came loud and clear as my exhausted magic snapped back into place. The anger and frustration behind the shout was terrifying, but there was something else that was even more frightening.

The magic that followed on its heels, the voice that was unmistakably Joclyn’s, followed by a man’s, and while the words were undistinguishable, I recognized the panicked tone at once.