Kiss of Fire (Imdalind, #1)(89)

“Why... why... would he...” I couldn’t finish. I wanted to run away; I didn’t really want to hear the answer.

“I let out some of the Vil?s when I was seven, so he locked her up. He doesn’t want anyone else to be like us.” He dried his tears and went back to playing with his car, his humming loud and broken as he cried.

“You’re not going to leave me, are you?” He didn’t look up, but I could hear the longing in his voice.

“No.” I reached forward and ran my finger through his curls, the soft hair moving through my fingers. “I’ll never leave you.”

“What if I asked you to?” My hand froze. His voice had deepened into that of an adult, his head still hanging down.

“Ryland?”

“What if I asked you to leave, Joclyn?” He looked up at me, his thirteen-year-old face looking strikingly like my Ryland, the Ryland of today.

“I can’t leave, Ry.”

“I’m sorry, Joclyn. But it’s too dangerous now.” His hands reached up and grasped my shoulders tightly, his small fingers digging into my skin through the sweater. With one mighty jolt, he pushed me backwards. The white room disappeared as it faded into trees and sky. Ryland’s face continued to look down at me as I fell, fell away from him, fell out of the tree.

Wind I didn’t control came out of nowhere and caught me, just as my hand hit the ground in a precursor to the impact. The wind ceased as I dropped the last foot, landing hard on my back.

I grunted as I sat up, rubbing the now sore spots that had been so recently broken. “Ow.”

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Ilyan spoke from behind me. “You’re just lucky I was looking for you or that would have been much worse.” He was smiling broadly, but his smile faded away as he looked at me. It was like he could see right into me and knew what I had just seen.





TwentyNine


“What did you do, Joclyn?” Ilyan asked, his voice sounded like my mother’s.

I flinched. “Oh, you know; the usual. Got mad at your sister, threw her into a wall, and flew away.”

“You’re not the first to do that,” he smiled, “but that’s not what I am talking about.”

“What are you talking about?” The cornered teenager reflex was coming on strong.

“What did you do, Joclyn?”

I backed away from him as he continually stepped closer to me.

“Pushed my magic into the necklace, even though you told me not to; shared a T?uha with Ryland, who was younger, by the way, and told me all about how Edmund made him kill his mother.”

Ilyan’s face went from angry, to concerned, to furious as I spoke.

“Is it true?” I asked softly, hoping to deflect his anger away from me.

“Is what true?” he snapped.

“That Edmund made him kill his mother.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Ilyan pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, his eyes screwed up tightly. “Edmund tortures his children, Joclyn.” He dropped his hand to look at me. “He uses them to increase his power, to bend their will so that they only answer to him. He trains them to be destructive weapons and pawns in his little game. He holds no love for Ryland; he probably made him torture his mother as a way to break him, to teach him a lesson.”

“Them?”

“Yes, Joclyn. Them. All ten of them.”

I stared at him, my hands opening in a question.

“What do you want me to tell you? It’s nothing good.”

I could tell how uncomfortable the subject was making him; he was very edgy.

“I think I have handled quite enough to prove I can handle a bit of bad news.” My voice was firm.

He sighed exasperatingly at me before turning away, his hand running through his long blonde hair.

“Ilyan.” I wasn’t sure if I was angry or worried. The way Ilyan was reacting, it was so unlike him. I could almost feel the waves of negative energy flowing off him. He spun around to face me, his eyes damp.

“He tortures them, Joclyn. He tortures them until he breaks them and then he uses them or he kills them. It’s not a monarchy he is running here. There is no next-in-command. It is only Edmund and the children he gobbles up and spits out. He did it to Zetta; he did it to Markus, Drayven, Ovailia, Sylas…”

“Wait,” I interrupted him, my heart clenching in my chest, “Ovailia?’

Ilyan breathed out deeply, his face looking like a cornered dog. He looked away from me, his hand dragging through his blonde locks again.

“Ilyan?”

“Yes. Ovailia. He tortured my sister by making her watch as he killed her mate. He forced her to track down and kill her friends. She bears a scar from her neck to her tailbone where he cut away, bit by bit, until she agreed to do it.” His voice was so bitter, so pained.

I reached out to him, desperate to comfort him, to make it go away. Then, my hand dropped; the awful truth of what he was saying hitting me hard.

“Your sister.” My voice was a whisper.

“Yes.”

“No!” I took a step back in horror.

Ilyan looked into me, that unyielding defiance I was used to, coming on strong. His eyes, so familiar, so much like Ryland’s. I had been too focused on Ryland to put the obvious puzzle pieces together. I felt ridiculously stupid.