Page 22 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

I’d allowed them to humiliate me in this very room, the sharpness of their words stinging more venomously than any lash.

Only fear can bind your hands . Finally, I understood the weight of those words as they became true. Guiding me. How the time had come to speak it. To speak of all the things still tethered to my chest. To let them go.

I wouldn’t allow them to tell me who I was. Not anymore. I could feel Emrys’s eyes on me, urging me to look at him as if he could sense it within me. The mercilessness of my rage.

‘Make it quick, Woodrow,’ Ainsworth sneered.

‘Did you know?’ I asked. Quiet and demure. Exactly how Master Hale commanded me to be. Saw the paleness in his face as he realised before the rest of them. The trap the Council had wandered right into. One made of their own web.

They wished to trial me under the laws of their treaty. Yet what if they broke it long before I ever could?

Ainsworth frowned as his bench sat a little taller and cleared his throat. Unsure if I was asking a question or making a statement. ‘You have to be clearer in your—’

‘Master Daunton was accused of the mutilation of four fey girls in the village of Telvor,’ I continued, listening as sudden silence consumed the room. ‘He ran the Council’s peace efforts from that outpost, did he not?’

Madame Bernard’s choked stutters were barely audible. ‘Vicious rumours of—’

Master Grima cleared his throat. ‘There was … an accusation .’

‘Before he was moved to Daunton?’ My voice faltered, not with fear but with rage as I swallowed down the taste of smoke. ‘To further his calling to your saint ?’

I focused on the vibrations of the magic within the orb beneath my palm. Alive and seeking lies. Lies it wouldn’t get from me.

‘Miss Woodrow, I fail to see why this is—’

‘A fey girl named Lara Delvern escaped Daunton’s confines – she reached the village of Farrow.

Her arm was shattered, her nose broken, and her flesh covered in spell burns.

’ I kept my gaze focused, but I saw Gideon’s flinch out of the corner of my eye.

Of course. As a healer he’d understand that pain.

The torment of it. The inability for spell burns to heal.

How deep and foully the magic would seep into the victim’s blood.

The madness that could follow.

I didn’t need to look at Emrys. I could feel his energy. The ravenous fury of it, just as it had been the night he’d felt that pain on my skin.

A cavernous silence followed my words.

‘She was also covered in lash marks. They’d begun to fester and she’d been assaulted.

’ My finger dragged across the orb, watching the white smoke dance so peaceful, so disturbingly serene compared to the horror of the truth that seeped from between my lips like poison finally freed from a wound.

‘This Council reviewed her claims and returned her to Daunton – declaring her insane.’

‘I don’t see how—’

‘He broke all of her fingers with a contortion charm.’ My words pierced through the silence and any lies they could muster. ‘Made her say a devotion prayer for each one. For the ten promises you hold to your saint.’

To be good. To be pure. To be quiet. To be true.

‘He beat her to death with forsaken iron.’ I could hear her even now.

The distant desperateness of her screams. How they caught in her throat with her tears.

How fear had locked every one of my limbs in place as I trembled in Alma’s arms. How her taloned fingers had dug through the thin fabric of my nightdress.

Hidden by nothing but shadow in the freezing dorm.

I let my fingers slip from the cold surface of the orb, reminding me too vividly of how cold Lara’s flesh had been in death. How cold all of them had been.

‘She’s buried between the gnarled roots of a yew tree. One-hundred and eighty-four steps from the back gate.’ I remembered because I had buried her. ‘Her body was covered in spell burns. She was broken by Master Daunton and I know because I saw him do it.’

I watched the white smoke swirl inside the orb like a flurry of snow. Bright and undeniable. ‘I didn’t see the others, but I saw her.’

It didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen the others.

That I’d only heard it. They mattered. She mattered.

Lara Delvern mattered. With her wheat blonde hair, small white curved horns, brown eyes and kind hands.

She mattered and I’d done nothing but hide in those cold dorms. Nothing but hide in this very Institute.

I let the record of her sit in those bookcases collecting dust, let her linger there like a ghost.

‘Her last word was please. ’ I’d remember that until I died. ‘He enjoyed it most when you said please.’

To prove he’d broken you beyond repair. Knowing it didn’t work. That in the end not even begging could stop a monster. The power it gave him. How desperately Daunton wanted it to be mine too. Tried to pry it from my small, bloody lips.

The room was so quiet, the air thick with an oppressive tension as if thunder was about to crack.

‘So, my question is … did you know you sent a monster into the east woods to take his pleasure?’ I demanded, voice firm with my defiance. Staring down these monsters in mortal form. Filled with hate and the greed for power, just like all those that came before.

‘No. We—’ Ainsworth’s words were halted as that orb started to glow red.

Liar .

‘There were complaints—’ That smoke continued to churn, dark as blood, and something inside me settled. A sharp pain that had been a discomfort for too long. Knowing how evil they were but refusing to let myself accept it. Refusing to see everything because surviving was more important.

‘You have nothing to ask me.’ I pushed away from them, grateful my strength didn’t falter. ‘No rights under that treaty. Not when you broke it yourself over twelve years ago.’

‘This hearing is not—’

‘Protection for the beings of the land. Both own blood and magical. United in desire for peace. Your oath .’ My words seared through the silence, through the oppressive chill of Emrys’s magic.

They’d killed us for nothing all this time.

I let them see the vengeance burning in my eyes, feel the heat of my magic roiling with sadness and fury. Watching Montagor give the barest flinch as if he remembered the potency of my flame upon his skin.

‘There is no treaty to keep. There never was. So how can any fey breach it?’ I’d signed a lie. Been bound by a falsehood – and perhaps that was the most painful part of all of this. How easily I’d devoured those lies, hungry for anything to ease the agony of my own grief.

My gaze moved to Master Hale, saw the paleness to his features. The depth of hurt in his eyes and that was when the agony began. As I looked at the orb before him, stained with that bloody darkness like all the others.

He’d known too.

He’d known and done nothing. Nobody had come. They’d left us there and I wouldn’t torment myself with it any longer.

Murderer. Yes, I was. And I’d do it again.

‘How easily you’ve spoiled their fun, Woodrow,’ came the bored voice of Montagor, only … he was still smiling.

It was then the pain came, straight in the centre of my chest. Searing hot, stealing my breath.

I reached into the collar of my dress, tugging the chain of my wishing stone so it came tumbling out.

Blinding light emitting from it, stinging my eyes.

My chest unbearably tight, as if my heart was trying to crawl up my throat.

Run . That mocking voice came again. A warning that came too late as that odd sensation consumed me again. Too cold, too sudden. All the air being pulled from the room in a moment.

Intense agony bit into my neck, a helpless cry left my lips as I gripped my throat, as my knees made brutal impact with the chamber floor.

‘Kat!’ Sharp with warning, raw as if it hurt to even speak my name.

I turned my head, Emrys already moving towards me, the darkness spreading across his skin.

But I didn’t get a chance to see his eyes before the room exploded in fire.