I hadn’t let him explain; he had tried, but I hadn’t let him get the words out, and even if I had, I knew that I wouldn’t have listened. My stubborn anger was already begging me not to listen to Wyn.
I sighed and looked away from her, knowing that would be all the answer she needed.
“M?j majetek se proto roz?í?ila tento den dní, moje srdce roste v zemi a zp?sobu. Pozemky jsem chodil, se nav?dy, vázané na m?j kamarád p?ede mnou.” Her voice was a whisper of magic that prickled over my spine and I turned back toward her in a rush, my magic desperate to hear as much as I could.
She sat still, her face soft, her eyes closed as the words that were familiar and precious to her flowed off her tongue like a song. Her magic swelled as she spoke, the warmth of Talon’s magic surging through her briefly before it settled back down.
“What does that mean?” I whispered, my magic still pulsing as the sky rumbled, disrupting the calm in the air that Wyn’s words had brought.
“It’s a line from the bonding ceremony, the part of the Z?lství that Ryland conveniently skipped over, you know, after he forgot to ask you if you wanted to be bonded,” Wyn said with an exaggerated eye roll. “Mates are supposed to braid each other’s hair and bind their hands in oils. The Drak’s share Black Water for whatever reason, and then those words are spoken. The first lines happen to be, ‘My property has expanded this day of days.’”
Wyn sighed as she came to lieback down beside me, the uncomfortable twisting of my stomach increasing. “He doesn’t view you as property. It’s just the line—tradition. It means something else to us than it does to you. It’s something that Ilyan, as King, has held dear for centuries.”
“I’m a terrible person,” I groaned as I rolled into Wyn, burying my face into her shoulder. The full weight of what I had done hit me, coming down on my chest like an anvil. I gasped for breath, the heaviness of my regret suddenly making it impossible to breathe.
“No, you’re not,” Wyn began, the lighthearted tone in her voice making it clear she didn’t understand. “You are just overwhelmed, stuck in a new world with a dad who gets confused about his role in your life, a best friend who has a whole other life that she—…”
“No, I mean I am a terrible, bottom-of-the-rung, absolutely horrible human being,” I interrupted.
Before I knew it, the hateful tears were falling down my face again. “I told him I didn’t care who he was; he wasn’t King anymore because everyone was dead…”
“No wonder he had a fit,” Wyn whispered after my words faded away, her dark tones making it clear how much of a mistake I had made.
I sat up, curling my legs into my chest as I hid my face in my knees. Piles of feathers billowed up into the air at my movement, a cloud of white surrounding me as I let the feathers fall on top of me. I had never wanted to disappear as much as I wanted to right then.
“Listen,” Wyn whispered as she sat up next to me, her hand moving to rub over my back. “Ilyan may not take the formalities seriously all the time, but he can’t help who he was raised to be. You undermined that. It didn’t help that he lost his best friend, either. Talon was more than just his friend; he helped to keep Ilyan’s temper in check.”
Wyn’s words trailed down my spine in a wicked prick of pain. I knew that what I had said was wrong, but hearing exactly why was a very broad slap to the face. I wished I knew where Ilyan was. I yearned to hug him and apologize. Even if I could, I wasn’t sure of what the outcome would be anymore. I wasn’t sure I deserved to be forgiven. The things I had said… The way I had behaved… It was inexcusable.
“What are you going to do?” she asked softly, her hand coming to a stop against the middle of my back.
“I don’t know.” I pushed the long strands of black hair out of my eyes as I turned to look at her. “Grovel at his feet and beg forgiveness.” I tried to laugh as I spoke, but it didn’t quite work, and so I pressed my forehead back into the hard joints of my knees.
“I’m sorry, Ilyan,” I groaned, knowing he couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t even feel his presence near me enough that I could push the words into his mind. I was trapped in my room, with words that meant so much to me that I could hardly breathe, without a way to get the message to him.
“I’m sorry, too, Joclyn,” his voice was a soothing balm right to my soul. It cut through me and I jerked up, my breathing picking up to see him standing in the doorway.
His hair was longer than I had ever seen it, stretching to about halfway down his back and over his torn and filthy clothes. His blood-shot eyes were soft as they searched into me, pulling out the love and happiness that I had thought I had lost and bringing them right to the surface.