“Siln?.” His voice broke and cracked as his weak body tried to push himself to sitting.
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face, my joy at seeing him awake temporarily trumping the guilt I felt at putting him there. I entered the room at a dead run, my arms wrapping around Dramin as I tackled him, pushing him right back down onto the bed.
He grunted at the impact, his arms stiff before they came to wrap around me, his touch calm and hesitant. I felt the soft touch on my back, and I snapped, my guilt and sadness tumbling together until they ran down my cheeks in warm streams.
“I am so sorry,” I sobbed into him, my voice breaking as my chest heaved, everything in me tightening in despair. “I d-didn’t mean to. I am s...sorry.”
I pushed the words out the best I could, hating when the stutter came back yet pushing past it. I needed to tell him. I needed him to know that it had been an accident. I needed him to understand.
“Siln?,” Dramin said in my ear, his voice so soft I could barely hear him. “Dear child, you did nothing other than what the sight had shown, nothing other than what was in your heart, and I do not fault you for that. I never could.”
His arms wrapped tighter around me, his words digging into my soul as the tears came faster. The weight that had hidden itself in the deep pit of my heart vanished, taking a tiny bit of the stress I had harbored with it. I gasped for breath as my body relaxed, the now joyful tears that slid down my face increasing as I felt the others enter the room.
“Dramin,” Ilyan gasped from the door, his voice a wave of awe that washed over us. His quick gait pounded through the surprised silence, his hand landing lightly on my hip as he came up beside us.
“You are well, my friend,” Ilyan whispered, the emotion choking his voice away.
Dramin looked toward him and chuckled, the sound that I had grown so used to—the sound I had missed so much—warming me. I had almost expected never to hear it again. Hearing it lifted the fear that had lived in my heart and warmed the chill that had dwelled in this room. It was its own form of magic.
“You’re alive.”
The irritation that was so normal in Thom’s voice was choked by his joy, his face pale from where he stood in the doorway. I moved to the side as Thom rushed to his friend, embracing him as a brother. The two men clung to one another as Wyn and Sain helped Ryland into the room, his agitation obviously growing alongside the heightened emotions that surrounded him.
They moved in slowly until Sain caught sight of the scene in front of him. He froze in place, the deep emotion that I had wanted so desperately to see over the past few days glistening down his cheeks.
“M?j syn,” he whispered, and although I didn’t understand the words, I caught the meaning, the joy at seeing his son alive.
Sain rushed forward before the echo of his voice had fully faded, his feet stumbling over themselves in his desperate need to reach his son.
“Tatí,” Dramin whispered, the break in his voice making it clear that he, too, was weeping, but I didn’t see that.
All I saw were his hands wrapped around my father’s. His father’s.
All I saw was the greeting that I had so desperately wanted, the love behind it one that I wasn’t so sure I hadn’t pushed away.
Jealousy rocked through me, green and bitter in my veins. I stumbled away from Ilyan’s side, fighting the need to run away and destroy something, to scream, to mourn what I had lost when Cail had murdered my mother.
A family.
The realization rocked through me, my heart clenching as it felt what I had been trying so hard to ignore. I think a large part of me had healed Dramin because it was the right thing to do. However, another, much smaller part had broken my father’s rule in desperation to gain back the closest thing that had felt like family.
To prove that I didn’t need him.
“My boy, my boy,” Sain said as tears streaked down his cheeks, his words adding yet another stabbing pain to my heart. “You’re alive. After so long…” Sain’s voice trailed off into Czech as he clung to Dramin’s hand.
My heart seized with want as I watched them, pain moving through me as it tried to drum up the anger that I was working so hard to hide. I couldn’t stay here. I let the shaking sadness out and moved toward the door, staying in the shadow and as close to the shelved wall as I could in an attempt to go unnoticed.
“I don’t understand,” Sain said, “Joclyn saw your death. How is this possible?”
I froze in place at the sound of my name, my eyes shifting toward them as I pressed my back into the high shelving. For the first time since Sain had come to him, Dramin looked up to me, his eyes widening at where I stood, waiting for the reprimand to come. I looked into my brother, but instead of frustration, I saw the pride that he had looked at my father with a few minutes before. My chest loosened with that look, my heartbeat steadying with the hope of being welcomed.