Page 2 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Two

Alma

I’ll keep you safe. Always.

I’d told many lies, but that one haunted me most of all, the guilt gnawing ruthlessly at my bones, right down to the marrow.

I’d told her she could do anything.

I’d lied.

Lying, sinful bitch.

How viciously those words hissed through my mind now, making me flinch as my aching fingers dug into my temples, clawed nails biting into my flesh.

Yet the pain was no match for the agony tearing at my chest. Terror like iron bars closing around me as I watched the late afternoon sun slip across Kat’s prone form, deathly still amongst the dark covers of Blackthorn’s bed.

The blue tinge to her chapped lips, parted so the barest rattle of breath could escape. Too weak. Too slow.

He’s here . She’d screamed those words, nails digging deep into my forearms until I smelt blood. Her skin burning, the ruthlessness of her flame scorching my wrists with its wildness. She’d screamed my name. Then Emrys’s in desperation, as she thrashed and sobbed helplessly.

Magic had a price, I knew that, but I’d never been prepared to witness her pay it. Not like this. Reliving every horror alone, as she begged for her death. As galmoth venom ran through her blood. Torturing her into madness.

Please. That word had crawled up her throat the most. The one I hated more than any other.

Maybe this was my final punishment, for all I’d done. For all the secrets and lies. To lose her.

My only friend. The only love I’d known.

Another tremor moved through my fingers. The sharp sting of scales forming as I balled my hands into fists, rubbing raw knuckles against the coarse fabric of my skirts.

She hadn’t moved in days. Not even when useless healing incantations were cast or as I ran damp cotton across her dry lips.

I’ll keep you safe. The lie bowed me forward over my knees, a muffled sob threatening to leave my lips, but I swallowed it down, refusing to break. To accept the closeness of her death.

‘Alma?’ The soft voice lurched me around to see William standing at the foot of the bed. The fire behind him had been freshly stoked, drenching his worried face in warm light, making his obsidian horns appear tipped with gold.

‘William. I didn’t hear you come in.’ I wiped at my cheeks, ignoring the rough texture at my jaw.

‘It’s all right.’ He smiled, a smudge of dirt on his cheek. The potent smell of soil, mint tea and fresh bread greeted my oversensitive nose at his presence. ‘You should get something to eat and some fresh air.’

‘I—’ I shook my head, the mere motion making my neck hurt. ‘I had something earlier.’

My tired eyes fell back to Kat, hoping she’d react to our voices, but there was nothing.

‘Alma,’ William coaxed gently, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder. I tried not to flinch at the contact. An old habit as my eyes lifted to meet his. ‘That was yesterday.’

A horrid sinking dread made bile burn the back of my throat. Eyes darting to the window, to another darkening grey sky, bruised with an oncoming storm.

I hadn’t noticed.

I’d lost another day and I hadn’t noticed.

‘I’ll stay with her,’ William offered quickly, sensing my distress as he held up the book from beneath his arm like a small trophy. Golden script I couldn’t understand glinted in the firelight. ‘I thought she’d like the history of Greyland herbs.’

His warm grin didn’t touch the sadness haunting his eyes. He’d been reading to her. Ancient plants and herbs. Healing tonics and root remedies. I didn’t understand at first, but then I watched the relief it gave him. Hope I couldn’t find for myself.

That she was still here. That she was listening.

I nodded reluctantly, ignoring the fear that clung to the paleness of his skin as he bit his lip and avoided my gaze. It was an unease I’d seen before, one that chased away my grief and replaced it with sharp annoyance.

‘They’re fighting again, aren’t they?’ I demanded, gaining my answer from the boy’s small flinch.

Bastards.

‘Alma—’ He tried to call after me but I was already moving.

Crossing the room and pulling at the cuffs of my dress in irritation.

Ignoring the dark spots that danced in my vision, how my exhausted limbs protested with sharp shooting aches, like bony fingers prodding my muscles.

Allowing anger to chase all other emotions away. As I’d always done.

The claws at my fingertips burnt as they lengthened, and I stepped into the darkness of the hallway, moving for the stairs. My steps only faltered as I caught sight of myself in a speckled mirror, almost hidden behind bunches of dried herbs.

A simple, tired girl with strange eyes looked back. Dull, dark curls sitting limply against wan cheeks, sharp green eyes filled with sorrow and deep bruise-like shadows beneath.

‘You always were self-destructive, Emrys, but this is taking it to another level!’

The voice echoed off the tiled floor in the hallway below, making my hand tighten on the banister before I moved down the stairs, ignoring the mocking glint in Lady Blackthorn’s eyes as I passed her portrait.

‘Of all the creatures you had to be entangled with – a Kysillian ? I don’t think there is a being on this earth the darkness wants to kill more viciously!’

‘That’s enough, Gideon,’ came the terse tones of Blackthorn. The depths of the anger pressed into those words made a coldness streak down my spine. The lamps in the hall dimmed as if afraid of being noticed.

Then came the sharp, unamused and clearly deranged laugh from Gideon Swift, the rumoured Blackthorn bastard. The greatest healer of our time, and a dead man, if the Council records were correct.

What surprised me most about Gideon Swift wasn’t that he was alive.

It also wasn’t that he was drunk or reeking of poppy smoke when Emrys dragged him rain-soaked through the portal days ago, forcing a cleansing tonic down his throat until he choked and vomited all over the entryway, much to poor William’s horror.

No, it was just how he looked absolutely nothing like Blackthorn – golden unkempt hair that fell onto his brow. A handsome, serious face. An intimidating nature to his height but not holding any of Blackthorn’s brawn.

The opposite side of a mysterious coin to the dark imposing form of Emrys.

No, Gideon Swift was the exact image of the portrait over the stairs behind me. The look of a witch.

Be wary of the witch . The children’s rhyme came to mock me as I moved to the study doorway, curling my fingers around the weathered wood frame. The study had stayed in place right by the stairs since Emrys had brought Kat back.

It was a nightmare I couldn’t unsee. The smoky copper scent of Kat’s blood – the drip as it hit the carpet. The wrongness of Blackthorn’s own scent. Different from before.

Then I’d seen that darkness curl beneath his skin. The pitch-black of his eyes that set off every instinct in me.

Verr .

My claws throbbed sharply with the memory. How easily they’d buried into his flesh. How my fangs had pierced my tongue with my scream. The taste of my own forsaken blood filling my mouth as I’d lunged for Emrys’ throat. For what he’d done to her.

Alma, stop!

The high-pitched scream of William. The stickiness of Blackthorn’s blood between my fingers as I went for my kill. Ruthlessly.

The bastard hadn’t even tried to stop me. As if he saw it a fitting punishment.

Alma!

William’s cries haunted me most of all. The desperation as he’d pressed himself into the space between us.

Emrys had reached for him to pull him away, but William had spread his arms wide. The boy’s pale cheeks chapped with his tears, wide eyes begging.

Then in a blink I wasn’t looking at William. I was looking at the small form of Kat. How she’d stood over me once. In nothing but her thin nightgown. How she’d taken the most brutal blows for it.

I’ll keep you safe.

I shuddered at the memory. Forcing myself back to the present. To the feel of the smooth wood of the study doorway beneath my palm.

The room beyond was the same disaster it had always been. Too many books and papers. No sense of any order. The only thing that had changed were the occupants.

Thean Page sat in the shadowed corner close to Kat’s desk, the voyav’s usual cruel, mocking smile absent as they nursed a glass of wine with little interest. Despite being in female form, they wore ill-fitting men’s clothes, as if they hadn’t noticed they’d shifted.

The richness of the dark wine staining their full bottom lip.

A thick air of apprehension lingered around the voyav like pipe smoke.

Another game they were playing and one I wouldn’t be fooled by.

Nor the fact that they seemed to have become some kind of personal footman to Blackthorn, hunting down herbs, tonics and black-market remedies at his command. Night and day.

As if they cared. Cared about the madness that had consumed this house with grief.

The dark circles beneath their strange amber eyes were the only evidence of the burden of their tasks and the barely healed scabs over their knuckles from whatever resistance they’d endured.

‘The venom has entered her blood, Emrys.’ Gideon Swift slammed his palm down onto the desk, tension stiffening his back, as he ignored the items that toppled to the carpet. ‘She’s beyond my skill!’

‘Everything is these days.’ There was a harshness to Emrys’s words that matched his curled fists. His features were sharper in the dim fire’s light, his clothes crumpled, sleeves ink-stained and torn at the cuffs.

Unease crawled down my spine, making me glance at the voyav. Seeing how they watched the lord warily. Preparing for a building storm that would give no warning when it broke. Vicious and uncontrollable.

Then I noted the shadows creeping beneath Blackthorn’s skin at the base of his collar. How the same darkness danced between his fingers, the fire lying flat in the hearth like a scared beast in his presence.

Exactly how he’d been when he’d brought Kat back. A madness in his eyes, pitch-black with something else.

Verr.