Scorched Treachery (Imdalind, #3)(62)

The thought came to me before I could stop it, the desire to hold Joclyn as we looked out at this beautiful view, as we felt the magic of the earth together, because I knew she could. So many of our kind never could, but she would. I wanted to see her face when she did.

I wanted to show her the beauty in the world, not just the sadness. I wanted to give her my heart openly, and I wanted her to take it.





Chapter Nineteen





For hundreds of years, this Abbey had housed the brethren that came to worship their own silent god. They farmed, they prayed, and they worshiped until the year the troops drove them away, leaving my beautiful home abandoned. It had been ransacked, the stained glass windows were destroyed, the gorgeous pews burned, and the stone walls carved with crude declarations of love. What had been my home, my personal place of sanctuary, was now only a discarded, forgotten place.

I could see one of the carvings now, a roughly drawn heart and an unintelligible figure carved amongst it. It was bright against the stone in the evening light, the last of the day’s sun bouncing off the angles of the ruins like glittering jewels. I stared at it as I sat on the rubble strewn floor, my legs crossed in front of me in a style more common amongst the Chinese worshipers.

I had intended to restore this portion of the building, giving life to the ancient arches and restoring the glass back to what it had once been. Now, it seemed to be too late. What could be rebuilt would only be ruined and destroyed within a matter of days.

I breathed in the smell of earth that lingered heavily in the air, the density of it filling my lungs before dispersing throughout my body, the heavy earth magic lingering with my own.

My feet had brought me here after the nerve endings in the base of Joclyn’s neck had been severed from her spine. I had felt them snap, one by one, my magic working tirelessly to repair them as her heart began to go into cardiac arrest. If I hadn’t been singing to her at the time, I would have missed it. She would have died in my arms as I slept.

My heart longed to stay next to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t look into her face and not blame myself for being unable to release her from her prison.

Ten days.

She had been trapped in her prison for ten days. We had escaped the cave in Italy only for her to remain trapped in her solitary prison. For her, it had been more than a month, more than a month of what I could only assume would be consistent torture.

My hands lay on my knees in meditation. My thoughts were on the desires of my heart, while my power focused on the natural magic that surrounded me. It was the only religion I knew, the only deity I had found in this world – the magic in the earth.

I had to hope it was enough. I breathed it into me, pulling the heavy ancient power through me only to transfer it to Joclyn, to move it through the ?tít and into her.

When I first came to this place, almost a thousand years ago, my heart was heavy, broken, and guilty. I had taken a life, and part of me felt power in that. A wicked ribbon of black that I could feel attempting to infect my soul. If my father had gotten his way, it would have. But I had seen that maniacal light in his eyes then, the joy at what I was able to accomplish, and the look scared me. If I had any wisdom at the time, I would have seen what he was capable of then, and I would have stopped him, but I was only a child.

A child who ran away from home, ran from what I was supposed to become, to build a monastery and find inner peace. Sadly, I was still not sure I had ever found it.

“Ilyan?” I kept my eyes closed at Thom’s voice, his magic adding its own ebb and flow to the air around me. I breathed it in, adding it to my own.

The crunching of Thom’s feet against the destroyed bits of the chapel came closer, his magic heavy with insecurity and yet steady, always steady. He sat down next to me, and while I still did not move, I opened my eyes, hoping the small gesture could be taken in greeting.

“Dramin told me what happened.” I could only nod, not sure I wanted to talk about it, not sure what to say. “He’s on guard now, but...I wanted to see if you needed anything první.”

I kept my vision forward, although my magic flared to Joclyn, covering her through the ?tít as I reconfirmed her safety. She still slept, her body continuing to heal as she lay.

I couldn’t be mad at Dramin for leaving her, although part of me wanted to be. If we didn’t keep someone on guard at all times, we would soon be overrun. Trpaslík camps had been popping up every night, each one bringing our enemy closer to us, each one giving us less time before they would attack.

“Ilyan? M?j pane?”

I sighed and looked at him out of the corner of my eye, one quick glance before returning to stare at the graffiti on the wall. He obviously wasn’t going to leave me alone. He was worried, but I couldn’t help but feel his worry was misplaced. I could handle my own issues.

“I’m fine, Thom. Jen jsem...” I stopped. I never opened myself up to anyone. It exposed too many weaknesses, too many weapons that could be used against me. I had heard the mortals use the phrase ‘skeletons in the closet’ for hundreds of years, and that is sometimes how I felt – as if I had skeletons in my closet. Except it wasn’t one or two hung up on a coat rack, it was an armada. If I could ever control them, I could take over the whole world.

I had surprised myself when I began to open up to Joclyn, when I began to tell her of my past. The only people who knew such things about me were those who had been present my whole life: Dramin, Ovailia, Sain, and Talon. Even they did not know the whole picture, but Joclyn, I wanted Joclyn to know everything. I wanted Joclyn to understand me, to trust me, so that when the time came for her to rely on me and trust in my judgment, she would do so without question. I didn’t want to have to command her magically as I sometimes did all the others. I had done so once, after she had first lost Ryland, and I still regretted it.