Page 24 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

‘Fuck,’ he tugged the cravat from his neck, the stitches popping, but he gave little care as he tore my sleeve to see the wound. Pain I’d forgotten about in the aftermath of everything else.

Deep gouges wept blood over my forearms. Too much blood. Gideon’s fingers slipped against my skin as he worked quickly. Tearing the fabric into long strips as he bound my forearms with it, the white cloth turning red too quickly.

‘He – Hale changed,’ were the only words I could get out as another set of demonic screeches came from the room beyond, making me flinch. The smoke-filled hallway suddenly ominously empty.

‘They sold their souls,’ was Gideon’s terse answer. Of course. I’d forgotten that. Sworn themselves to the mad king. Sworn their soul too. Emrys had told me that.

Emrys. I needed to say his name. Needed to call him back.

My lips parted only for a roaring rumble to come from the crumbling Council room, as unnatural screams filled the air. I pressed back against the wall, the wishing stone fluttering wildly.

‘What is that?’ I demanded.

‘Emrys,’ Gideon answered with short annoyance.

Then I felt it. The brush of Emrys’s magic but different. Sharper, almost wild in its movements across my skin. Colder than before. Consuming.

As it had been in that pit, rising within Emrys. Shadows leaked into the hall, only these were not made of fire smoke, they were like tendrils of ink spreading across a page. The same ones that had guided us through the fire.

Darkness bled from the chamber doorway, or what remained of it. As if one of the ancient Old Gods had been awoken, dragging his dark cloak across the sky to summon the night. Only the creature at its centre wasn’t a fable, a story or an old malicious god.

No – it was Emrys, bathed in that strange white ethereal light to match the glow of the wishing stone around my neck. The darkness curling around his limbs as if it was an extension of himself.

His shirt was torn, face splattered with blood, but his eyes were pitch-black, darkness spreading beneath his skin like vines.

He strode towards us, that strange shadow slipping from him like a cloak as it faded from his pale skin once more.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t, as an awful trembling consumed my body.

‘If you’re quite finished making a spectacle !’ Gideon barked with all the authority of a perturbed housekeeper. ‘She’s hurt.’

Emrys didn’t falter in his path to me. A barely contained wildness to his movements. The demanding, probing touch of his magic made the pain recede enough to breathe.

His cool palm cupped my throat, fingers stained black with the evidence of his summoning.

He was here. The relief made me droop. A sob escaped my lips.

Fingers curling into the ruined remains of his shirt.

Every breath I gulped down lined with the sharp scent of beasam bark, every one taking that ache away from my lungs.

‘Kat.’ His hands captured my face, forcing my hair back to see me, but I could only shake my head.

‘He lied,’ I gasped, chest too tight, tasting nothing but my own tears. ‘He lied.’

‘Hale changed,’ Gideon offered quietly, wiping his bloody hands on his trousers. ‘We need to come up with a fucking plan to get out of here.’

He lied . A voice in my head mocked. Like a shard digging into my chest. Nothing could stop it burrowing deeper.

Not even the strength of Emrys’s hold as he held me to his chest, as my blood soaked into his shirt.

His lips pressed against my temple, my panicked breaths brushing his throat still marked with that darkness that lingered within him.

‘They’re here!’ a voice cried through the thick smoke. The dishevelled dusty form of Finneaus shouting down the hallway as he appeared mere feet before us.

Footsteps rumbled in the distance. What remained of the Council hunters looking for us, but I cared for none of it. Didn’t hear the curse slipping from Gideon’s lips or the lethal cold of Emrys’s magic as I pushed from his arms with ruthless strength.

Feral wild fury tore through me as I barrelled straight for Finneaus. He didn’t have a moment to react as I slammed the full force of my body into his. Knocking him to the ground.

‘Lying, vicious bastard!’ I screamed, pinning him beneath me, a horrid crack as my fist smashed into his face with all my strength. Two sharp blows. Something white and bloody skidding across the dusty marble with the force.

His teeth.

He screamed and twisted like a trapped fish beneath me as my nails tore through the skin of his cheeks like paper. I roared into his face. Going for his eyes.

‘Kat!’ Emrys’s arms circled my middle, lifting me easily. My hands curled into fists, Finnaeus’ blood sticky between my fingers. He scrambled backwards, palms slipping in his own blood as it dribbled from his shocked, parted lips.

‘Norac! ’ The feral scream clawed its way up my throat.

Coward . The Kysillian word was nothing but an animalistic roar of fury from between my lips. The fire from the walls surged for him at my will, molten jaws wanting to devour at my command as he screamed. The stench of singed hair and burning flesh permeating the air.

My breath was heavy through my clenched teeth. Only no screams could compete with the roaring chaos inside my head.

Emrys went rigid at my back as something changed in the chaos. Something new. I felt it shift in the magic that curled around me. Harsh and vicious like a snarling beast towards a threat. That skittering from my nightmares, the sharp drag of claws against stone at the end of the hall.

Dark and bony as it moved through the smoke, all sharp angles.

Then I saw them. Dark towering creatures.

Leathery grey flesh sagging from their bones.

Arms too long and thin, dragging against the floor.

Maws open to show sharp, narrow fish-like teeth.

As the flames continued to crawl up the tapestries around them, devouring the paintings and the books in their cabinets.

Manifestations. Demons summoned from the death in the room beyond.

Emrys moved me behind him, my trembling bloody fingers curling into the back of his shirt. Knees threatening to buckle as my magic churned within me, unsatisfied. Seeking more vengeance. Burning for it.

‘Dear Emrys,’ Montagor smiled as he appeared between the creatures.

Tendrils of darkness curling around his form as he fixed the cuffs of his coat.

Unbothered by the destruction. Or Finneaus’s blood beneath his boot or how the boy kept scrambling backwards pathetically.

‘It appears you’ve run out of bargains.’

‘This madness won’t end well for you, Varin,’ Emrys warned. ‘Your sire should have taught you that.’

Varin. That name. One of the princes from beneath. Where Serus brought honour, Varin brought wrath and ruin.

‘ Our sire,’ Montagor replied without even a blink of hesitation, as I saw the darkness curling across his skin, pressing against it like insects scuttling beneath.

Another one of the King’s summonings. Montagor was made like that too.

The fire pulsed and twisted from the walls. My magic feral in its need to consume. To finish off Finneaus and the rest of them.

‘You killed them,’ I panted, fingers curling more tightly into Emrys’s shirt.

‘Did I?’ Montagor’s smile was predatory, his eyes filled with dark mirth as they met my own. The creatures behind him screeched and gnashed their teeth. Held back only by the slight twitch of Montagor’s dark-stained fingers. So similar to Emrys’s.

No. They weren’t similar at all.

‘They want your little pet, Serus,’ he warned, coming a step closer, smearing Finneaus’s blood across the ruined marble. ‘And they aren’t pleased you denied them their feast.’

Feast. That was all that pit had been.

I was torn from the horrific thought as more screeching came from the opposite end of the hall. The Council chamber. Wild and demonic.

He hadn’t killed those lords in the chamber with the explosion. The dark had just come to claim them.

‘You think you can outrun your fate?’ Montagor mocked, a darkness rippling between his fingers, and I hated how familiar it seemed. ‘How strange it always guides you back to me, brother.’

‘He isn’t your fucking brother,’ Gideon sneered, a lethal nature coming over his features, a charge of magic simmering around him. Witch casting. There was only a moment before chaos reigned again and then I learnt why they called a witch’s aether havoc .

Gideon’s fists glowed pale blue with aether, crackling in the air with the sharp static of it. It had no rhythm, wild and sharp as it twisted up his forearms. As his eyes burnt with it.

‘Move!’ Montagor commanded but it wasn’t quick enough as those demons screeched, saliva dripping from their fangs as they surged to charge.

Gideon thrust his aether forwards, it slammed into the supporting columns of the arched hallway.

A horrid crash, the ground shook. I was pressed down with the weight of Emrys wrapping around me.

Stone clattering against marble but between my fingers pressed over my face and through the white cloud of ash and dust, I saw the hallway collapse.

Over the chaos came the skittering of demonic claws. The howl of something hunting. I twisted in Emrys’s arms, seeing the other end of the hallway, dark shapes stumbling through the smoke like reanimated corpses. More souls the darkness had stolen.

More creatures Montagor had summoned.

This was a trap. It had always been a trap.

One of Montagor’s making.

My fingers dug into Emrys’s forearms; by the bite of his magic around my skin, he felt it too. Saw the new threat.

‘Fuckers,’ Gideon coughed, the blue glow of his aether weaker than before.

Focus. I wasn’t trapped. I wasn’t a pet to be contained. I turned, scanning the remains of the hallway as Emrys untangled himself from me, rising to assist whatever destructive plan Gideon was concocting.

Then, through the smoke, I saw the shape of the narrow stone stairwell. Once hidden behind the tapestry now aflame on the stone floor.

The annex stairwell. One that lead to the fey quarters. I lunged towards it, fingers digging into Emrys sleeve as I dragged him with me through the narrow stone arch.

‘Gideon!’ he barked. Then the three of us were pressed tight in the narrow stone passage.

‘Tell me again about my dramatics, brother,’ Emrys snapped at Gideon, who pushed his filthy blonde hair back from his brow. Both casually ignoring the roaring darkness just beyond us.

‘It got rid of the bastards, didn’t it?’ Gideon fired back, those eyes burning bright with witch light.

‘Up,’ I panted, listening to the hollow roar from the hallway. ‘We need … up.’

The grit of stone and dust caught on my tongue. That ringing in my head as the shaking stopped, only for the distant rumbling of dark things.

‘Up!’ I commanded again. Pushing at Emrys’s broad chest with my trembling hands. He didn’t seem pleased but took my hand, sticky with blood, and moved up the stairs.

The ground shook beneath my feet, threatening to send us both tumbling. A horrid screeching howl from behind, sharp claws on stone.

Emrys pushed me in front of him, a steady hand at my back forcing me up the twisting stairs as I slammed my toes into the steps.

Blue flashes of Gideon’s aether caught my eye but I kept moving despite the spots dancing in my vision, despite how my hands slipped on the stone in my own blood, until the doorway appeared into the fey quarters.

I staggered into the passage, not stopping before I barrelled straight into my old door, the sheer weight of my body breaking the flimsy lock. I staggered across the stone floor, managing to catch myself on the stone chimney breast.

‘Kat.’ Emrys’s hands were at my waist, turning me towards him as I fought to catch my breath. Still trying to cough that horrid acrid smoke from my lips.

‘Yes, let’s hide in a cupboard,’ Gideon hissed scathingly, rubbing his head from where he’d caught it on the low beams.

‘This was my room,’ I panted, pressing my hand against my ribs to stop the terrible ache in my side.

Gideon’s angry expression became appalled for the barest moment before he hid anything else behind another curse.

I didn’t dare look at Emrys. Not with the cool simmering power still radiating off him.

There wasn’t time. I moved out of his hold and towards the bed.

Sad and narrow, where I’d huddled with Alma for any warmth.

I pushed it to the side as I dropped to my knees.

Fingers running over the worn wooden floor, finding the loose floorboard.

Pulling the plank away and letting it clatter to the side.

I rifled through the pathetic collection of contraband. Alma’s rust-speckled sweet tins, storybooks and teacups – Alma was like a magpie, collecting treasures. Her favourite blue cup sat abandoned in the dust.

‘Here.’ I pulled the string of the waxed bag from the hole.

Tipping it so the items inside tumbled free.

Salvaged from the ruins beneath and collected over the years.

Amongst it all a vial of black travelling salt.

My palms braced on the rough wooden floorboards as dark spots danced across my vision.

Emrys’s hands came about my waist to help me to my feet, not letting me go.

Gideon looked to the small empty hearth.

‘Let’s hope William’s left the receiving grate open,’ he huffed, just as another boom echoed down the corridor.

Demons on the hunt.

Alma was going to kill me.