Page 23 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Thirteen

Kat

There was a ringing in my ears, a dryness on my tongue that threatened to choke me. My name came muffled through a horrid rumbling sound. Too close. Too loud in the darkness. A flickering of bright white light before me, stinging my eyes as I tried to open them.

Slowly, the wishing stone came into focus, blinking wildly like the irritated flutter of a dust sprite’s wing.

Danger .

I reached for it with aching fingers, palm meeting nothing but shards of stone, blood coating my fingers as I pushed myself to my elbows, sharp rubble digging ruthlessly into my forearms. I coughed again, blinking the burning smoke from my eyes.

There was a horrid, muffled wailing, turning me towards another wall of acrid smoke only to realise it was the warning bells echoing through the gloom.

The world was upside down, the room too hot and the air too thick.

Dark smoke curled before me, flashes of bright orange and red concealed within it.

The stench of burning flesh cloying.

Murderer. No. My magic was silent. I looked at my hands, no illumination from a summoning in my veins. No bite of my flame. This wasn’t me. Couldn’t be me.

It was something else.

Then I remembered Montagor’s smile. His taunt. The agony of the warning from the wishing stone. He’d done this.

Something crashed inside the smoke, the ground shaking with the force of it. The sharp bitter smell of a magically ignited flame burning my nose.

‘Emrys!’ I choked out, desperate as I spat grit from my mouth.

All that answered were the distant moans of injured, the rumble of destruction. A familiar shape lay in the dust and debris just before me. Master Hale’s cane.

‘Master Hale ?!’ I stumbled to my feet, skidding as rubble caught under my boot, forcing me sideways into a fallen column. I tripped over my ruined skirts, trying to clear my vision as the room seemed to sway beneath my feet.

Through blurred vision I saw a sprawled form in the rubble through the smoke, a half-destroyed desk trapping his legs. Master Hale.

‘Master Hale.’ I pushed the desk aside, listening to his grunt of pain as I took hold of his shoulder. A horrid paleness to his blood-smeared face. He groaned, blinking up at me with distant confusion.

‘Stay still,’ I commanded, tearing at my skirts for anything to stop the blood, pressing it against his temple but his clammy hands grabbed for me. His hold too tight, eyes too blood-shot and pupils too large.

Another boom cut through the chamber. A scream followed as I curled into myself and heat flushed my skin, unable to make sense of anything with that acrid smell burning my nose.

‘Kat!’ the echo of Emrys’s voice came to me, making me turn, but there was nothing but a wall of smoke.

‘Emrys! We’re over—’ I tried to call, but Master Hale tugged me closer, almost brutally, forcing me to look at him. To see as he frantically shook his head, clawing at the sleeve of my dress, trying to drag me even closer.

‘Master Hale, you need—’

‘Kayin,’ he begged, wheezing and coughing, only it was too wet. Blood slipping through his teeth and onto his lips.

Kayin . One word that froze me in place.

A name I’d never spoken.

One he couldn’t know.

A horrid sound slipped from my lips as a sharp talon of fear pierced my heart. Kayin. My father’s name. After the ancient Kysillian king. The endless sun of the north.

Magic flickered in my veins, not powerful enough to fight the terror chilling my blood. The wishing stone fluttered against my breastbone.

Master Hale shouldn’t know that name.

Couldn’t.

His grip tightened. Nails digging into my flesh. Shaking his head as if willing himself silent.

An animalistic sound slipped through his cracked lips as he hunched over. A wheezing rattle as his back heaved. ‘Couldn’t. Couldn’t find him.’

The room groaned in warning, the sharp snap of flames, the distant crash of something else collapsing. Another scream, but none of it mattered.

Things I shouldn’t have forgotten filled every space in my mind. Hale’s reluctance to talk about the past. The impossibility of him finding a creature like me.

His unwavering kindness. His need to see things right.

Lies . That voice hissed once more and I knew it to be true.

‘Stop.’ I tried to pull myself back from the nightmare, but his nails dug in like claws refusing to let me go.

‘Kat!’ Emrys called out to me through the smoke.

I needed to move but I couldn’t stop staring at those horrid blood-coated lips.

‘I didn’t mean to tell them where he was!’ he begged, shaking me wildly as a wailing moan escaped him.

All warmth was sucked from my flesh.

‘Katherine, please .’ His grip was too tight, fingers too cold. ‘Forgive me.’

Forgive me. My father’s voice whispered against my cheek. In that moment all I could see was my father’s face, the sadness heavy in his eyes and the tightness of how he held me. Knowing he wouldn’t come back. Knowing he couldn’t.

Knowing they’d kill him.

Quiet. Demure and still.

I looked down at the creature before me, in the ruined Council hall, blood coating his teeth and revulsion rolled through me, the burning sting of rage in my veins.

Looking into the dark eyes of Master Hale, understanding what I had been all this time to him.

A pet to soothe his guilt.

Useful. All I’d ever been to him.

The stench of burning flesh filled my nose, coated my tongue. Hale had made me beg and grovel for his affection. Made me ashamed of who I was. Made me a spectacle.

It was all a lie.

With a sharp tug he dragged me closer, until his breath brushed my ear. Until I could smell the coppery tang of blood that coated it. A choked wretched sound coming out of his lips. It was then I realised he was laughing. Demonic, dark laughter.

Then he wasn’t Master Hale at all.

‘She was alive when you burnt her, little troll ,’ he spat, bloody spittle hitting my cheek as his nails became dark claws. Sinking into my flesh and taking gouges out of my wrist. ‘You killed her!’

I screamed, wrenching myself back as his teeth snapped like a feral beast. Elongating.

Too big for his mouth that cracked and split.

Blood spraying my throat as he bit through his own tongue.

Eyes full black, that darkness spreading outwards as his bones began to twist and crack.

Becoming something else. Teeth chattering as the darkest laugh crawled out of his throat.

I twisted and thrashed. Screaming with rage or fear, I didn’t know. They’d woven themselves too tightly together. My wrist bloody enough to slip from his clawed grasp. As I fell back against the sharp rubble.

‘You killed her!’ The creature gnashed its teeth, bones popping as it tried to escape his mortal flesh.

‘Stop!’ A feral scream tore from my lips.

Fire tore itself from my bones, lethal and wild as it slipped through my veins.

My magic tearing itself from its slumber at the bottom of my soul.

Just like the dragon should have in that tale.

Vicious and starved as it tried to force itself out of my hands.

The stone around my neck flickered and pulsed wildly.

The creature that was Hale lunged but before those claws could reach me, bright white light shot from the wishing stone.

Straight through the thing’s throat. Just as it had in that pit.

Black blood pouring as its eyes rolled back in its head, slumping onto the ruined marble floor.

Its body cracking and twisting, a gurgling hiss from its lips as it began to reform.

Move, I commanded myself. Unable to let the words out of my trembling lips.

A crash sounded through the smoke. Screaming. A hissing skittering followed by a roar. Dark things claiming the dead’s souls. Debts come to be collected. And I was in the centre of it.

Then there were hands on my forearms. I screamed, kicking out, but those hands didn’t let me go.

They turned me abruptly so I was looking up at Gideon.

His blonde hair falling in disarray across his brow, covered in dust. Jacket sleeve torn to reveal the golden metal of his right arm.

Dark blood smeared across his cheek, pale blue eyes almost glowing with rage.

‘Up!’ he commanded ruthlessly, hoisting me to my numb feet with hands under my armpits like I was a child.

He half dragged, half carried me over the debris.

Moving faster and faster, the roaring collapse behind us, the licking flames, blinding smoke and screeching of dark things being awoken in mortal flesh.

Another rumble threatened to take my legs from beneath me as Gideon curled his body over my own, stone bouncing and skidding across the ruined marble.

Thick dark smoke curled around us, streaked through with bright white light, abating the flames and making us a path through the chaos to the main doors. The familiar cold bite of that magic.

Emrys.

We stumbled into the hallway, fragments of rubble meeting my boots as the wardens lay bloodied and dust-covered in the foyer. Smoke curling around the high arched ceilings, the door nothing but shattered wood.

Students screamed and ran past covered in blood and dust. Clutching at patches of seared and burnt flesh. Gideon pushed through them effortlessly as the warning bells continued to screech.

He forced me back into an alcove out of the commotion. I panted, each breath tasting of blood. That wishing stone glowing between us, satisfied by what it had done.

Master Hale.

My stomach knotted and I had barely a moment before I vomited in the small space between us, splattering Gideon’s boots.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he hissed, pressing one hand against my shoulder to keep me upright against the wall. Then his brow furrowed, looking down at his metal hand covered in bright red blood where he’d touched me.

He went rigid, eyes dropping to my arms.