Scorched Treachery (Imdalind, #3)(63)

Thom continued to look at me expectantly. I could feel his eyes burning into me. I stayed still, my vision forward, my breathing even. As much as I trusted Thom, as much as I loved my brother, I didn’t want to let him inside my head.

“You’ll find a way to get her out.” I couldn’t help but smile at Thom’s words, at his easy confidence. After all, he had been so set on simply destroying her not long before.

“You believe that, do you?” I could almost feel him twitch beside me at my words. I had overheard him talking to Dramin last night, his fears about the inaccuracy of sight spoken aloud. It may have been wrong to eavesdrop, it may have been wrong to bring up what I had heard, but my regal blood demanded one thing, while my logic another. The distinction was never clear to me anymore.

“You know I only fear our father,” he said, the wavering in his voice surprising.

“Vím, ?e.” I suddenly felt bad for bringing it up. “I do too, which is why I am still alive and why I can’t bring myself to look past the terror that Joclyn is trapped in.”

My muscles tensed in anxiety the second I finished talking. I had spoken too plainly, opened myself up too much to him. The words had come unbidden from my mouth, and now I was to face the consequences.

“Do you remember Rosy?”

Thom’s quiet voice caught me off guard, the subject matter startling. Rosy was never spoken about, least of all by Thom. I had never met her, but I heard the story, saw the terrors from Thom’s memories. Unsurprisingly, Thom was now looking intently at the crude carving in the stone before us.

“Ano,” I said.

“When she was three, Wynifred and I used to take her to visit the serfs in the country side.” Thom’s voice was distant, his mind lost in his memories. I could feel my heart tense at what was coming. I may not know the whole story, but I did know the outcome.

“It probably wasn’t the best day trip for a child,” he laughed, “but she enjoyed playing with the other small children. I could watch that smile on her face for days. She looked so much like Wynifred. Those crazy dark eyes – they would shine more than you would ever think possible.”

I cringed, but stayed silent. Edmund had not allowed Thom to bond himself to Wynifred, and they were left separated for much of the time. She had been the most powerful of the Trpaslíks, chosen specifically for Edmund’s first experiment.

“I loved to watch her dance. She was so graceful – we all thought so, even Edmund. His first grandchild, he was so proud. Except...”

Thom’s words faded as the memory grew darker. I could see everything in my head, everything Thom had told me when he arrived under my protection. Rosy was the way he had to explain his allegiance for me; the pain over the torture and murder of his small daughter the reason for his defection. But, in coming to me for help, he had also given me something more, a link to Rosy’s mother. I knew she would stop at nothing to get her revenge. I still remembered my anxiety at meeting face to face with Wynifred. I sighed heavily, the reason for Rosy’s death almost too simple to even comprehend.

“She didn’t have his blue eyes,” I finished for him. The blue eyes. The sign of royalty. The sign of Edmund’s lineage. So many of my siblings had never had a chance to live simply because they were born without his eyes. His obsession was over something that meant nothing, leaving a trail of blood behind it.

“I was so lost in what our father was doing to her, to my child that I couldn’t see beyond it. I couldn’t focus. It became just another way for him to control me, but I didn’t see it before it was too late. Suddenly she was gone, my willpower tied to her life. When she was gone, all I had left was my anger, and it covered me. If it weren’t for Sain, I would have been killed too. The way...”

I knew he was about to mention Wynifred, how he had left her behind. She couldn’t leave Rosy’s memory behind. Her soul had been tied to what Edmund had done. I reached up and clapped him hard on the back, needing to comfort him as a brother, not as a leader.

“He’s doing the same to you, Ilyan,” Thom said, looking straight at me.

“I know bratr.” I couldn’t say much more than that, the tight restriction in my chest wouldn’t let me.

“Don’t let him.”

“You are a wise man, Thom,” I said, feeling humbled by the strangely perfect lesson I had just been taught by my younger brother.

“I’ve had a lot of years to perfect it.”

I could only nod. After all my years on this earth, after all my lessons, studying, and worshiping, my younger brother had become wiser than me. He saw the world in the way I always wanted to.

“Well, you’ve done well.”

“Not really,” he said, surprising me with a rare laugh. “Sometimes the things you need to hear have to come from others. You can’t give yourself good advice, after all.”

I turned to him, stunned. He looked at me for only a moment before looking away, obviously embarrassed.

“You’ve done it again, Thom.”

“Whatever,” he said grumpily, the modern word sounding odd in Czech.

He stood quickly, his stalky frame unraveling awkwardly. I looked back toward the crudely carved heart as Thom’s ebbing magic signaled his departure, his direction making it clear he would sit with Joclyn until my return.