Burnt Devotion (Imdalind, #5)

I spouted what came to mind, not worrying if I hurt him, my sour voice striking through each of them as my magic flared angrily. I knew I should control that part of me better. I just didn’t care.

Negativity was leaching off me like a virus. I didn’t think I had ever felt so outnumbered before. Even when I had destroyed that nest of Drak…

I pushed the thought away, willing some Styx song to come into my head and take it away. It was the best palate cleanser if ever there was one. Well, at least my choice to live was good for a little bit.

“Calm down, Wynifred,” Ilyan growled, his voice rumbling while Joclyn walked over to me, her arm weaving around my shoulder.

“There’s more,” she whispered, her voice low as Ilyan went into the room she had come from.

Sain was looking at me with that same panicked fear before he followed his king. I looked after him, trying to understand what was going on, before Jos pulled my attention again.

“We found some refugees…”

“Refugees?”

“Some people got out of Imdalind. It’s not just us anymore…”

“How many?” I interrupted, knowing I should be more focused on the fact that people had made it out of the blood bath Edmund had unleashed on Imdalind. At any other time, it would have been my focus, but not now.

A distant scream filtered through the frantic scratching of the Vil?s as if on cue. My head turned to it, almost expecting the victim to be standing behind us with dozens of Vil?s ripping at their flesh. There was nothing other than darkness, though. Nothing except the old, dust-covered table that had been pushed up against the window probably before Joclyn had even been born.

“Numbers don’t matter. There will be enough.” Her voice had deepened the way Sain’s always did when he was seeing something. My body tensed at the realization, the similarities bristling through me.

“And I am guessing you aren’t going to tell me how you know that…” I rolled my eyes at her, something she only laughed at me about and pulled me closer to her.

My irritation begged me to move away from her, but I stayed staring at the men that lay before us. I hadn’t expected the whole ambiguous ‘I don’t need to tell you about my sight’ thing to come from Jos. Sain and Dramin, yes. I mean, Sain had already done it enough for me to plaster a house with my irritation. But Jos, now that was a line I had never thought we would hit. Especially after the whole head-butt fight I had witnessed between her and her father.

“Well, I would,” she sighed, her own irritation blazing through, “if I knew one hundred percent. But I don’t. I just have a dumb sight with things that may or may not happen…”

That sounded like the Jos I knew.

I laughed as she huffed in irritation, the diplomatic attempt she had made all but gone now.

“I guess I’ll have to take it,” I said as my laugh faded away. “As long as you saw it, I suppose, then I know it will happen. My best friend’s sights are the very best sights…” I spoke as nonchalantly as I always had with her, the laughter rolling off my voice. Her reaction wasn’t humorous. It was almost frightening.

She flinched beside me, her shoulders pinching together in a tight, little spasm that reminded me so much of the broken girl I had seen only days before, the broken soul Ryland still fought.

My stomach dropped in fear as I turned to her, expecting the roving eyes and the manic movements to return. She only stood there, her eyes wide with the same fear she’d had when she had first walked in.

“Jos?” I asked tentatively almost expecting her to recoil under the word, but she only stood before me, her wide eyes staring far away from me, through me. “Are you…? Are you seeing now?” I could barely get the words out, the awkwardness of what she could do still not completely normal for me. It still kind of felt like finding out a cat you had raised really had two heads, and it had been hiding one all along.

“No.” Her voice was dead, and I almost didn’t believe her, until her focus resettled on me, the same fear cutting through me. My back tensed on its own, my magic fighting against the restraint I had it under. “Just worried about getting all of these unconscious and injured males out of here and to the next safe house.” Her smile slowly grew with each word, the fear leaving her eyes, even if it was a little bit.

“Why is it always us girls who have to clean up after their messes?” Jos put her hands on her hips with a smile, looking so much like a house mom complaining about messy toys that I couldn’t help but laugh.

Sadly, it was true. All the boys—save Ilyan—were useless.

“Watch yourself, Jos,” I cautioned, unable to stop the smile from spreading over my face. “Ilyan will hear you, and then he probably will make us do it all on our own.”

I said it in jest, but I already knew how true it was. I had been on the receiving end of Ilyan’s “I’ll show you who’s boss” temper tantrums too many times. I wasn’t really interested in a repeat, especially when thousands of ravenous rat birds were involved.

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