Page 25 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Fourteen

Kat

Mortals swore their souls to the creatures beneath under a King’s command.

Desperate to be imbued with the power of the Old Gods they gave worship to.

Only the moment their hearts stopped , darkness poured forth into their veins – becoming as the Old Gods always intended.

Nothing but a plaything to devour this world.

Relics of Elysior – fey Compendium Records

Despite the quiet of the study, the distant ringing of the warning bells wouldn’t leave my ears. My hair hung free around my shoulders, ends knotted. The ache of my magic unbearable where it bit into my bones, making my limbs tremble.

A horrid taste lined my mouth. Reminding me cruelly that I’d been sick. Blood still sticky as it dried between my trembling fingers.

The barest crackle of the fire seemed too loud. My heart pounding too painfully against my ribs.

She was alive when you burnt her, little troll. I winced at the memory of those words, how tightly they seemed to constrict my throat.

‘Kat,’ Emrys’s cool hands cupped my face, making me look at him.

At the darkness in his eyes. Endless. How it curved along his jaw, the sensation of his magic hesitantly brushing my forearms, trying to seek the source of the pain.

But it was burrowed too deeply inside of me.

Ash still clung to his dark hair. Smeared on his cheek and neck along with dark demonic blood.

The blood of what those lords had become.

Monsters hiding in mortal flesh.

‘Well. Council meetings appear to have become more eventful.’ Thean’s voice was sharp with accusation as the voyav lounged in the study doorway, hands pushed deep into their pockets. ‘You can hear the Council warning bells all the way to the west hills. What on earth is going on?’

‘They’re dead.’ Gideon tore off his ruined jacket, tossing it carelessly against the sideboard. ‘Montagor made his move.’

‘What?’ Thean’s relaxed demeanour quickly forgotten as they moved further into the room. ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

‘So you can decide to be useful, parasite ?’ Gideon bit out, such malice in his voice I flinched.

‘The Council members became what they sold their souls to. Montagor also summoned Scavengers .’ There was a harsh reluctance to Emrys’s words, a tension rippling around him. As if something else could claw its way out from beneath his skin, causing the fire to flicker wildly.

‘The Council chambers are miles from the nearest seal or even breach—’ Thean’s words were calm and assertive with fact but Emrys was already shaking his head.

‘Montagor has a relic , and now no laws of summoning can stop him,’ he interrupted, a dark warning in his words that let a chill slip over my skin.

A relic.

The dark held weapons of their own. Weapons even the old Kysillian’s flame was no match for.

The warning sang though my mind, unable to remember who had spoken it to me.

Montagor had used something demonic to tear that chamber apart.

Something so ancient the tales had forgotten it existed. To form a perfect deadly trap.

A sinking feeling consumed the centre of my chest, as if a soft bank of earth was slipping away from a cliffside within me. All these things and none of them made sense.

This darkness wasn’t just back, it had never left.

‘What’s hap—’ a familiar voice began before it stopped.

Alma.

I hadn’t realised until that moment that my heart hadn’t finished breaking. Until I saw her in the doorway, the concern in her deep green eyes and the worry at her brow.

‘Kat.’ She crossed the room to me in an instant. ‘I bloody told you—.’

The barest brush of her fingers against my torn dress sleeve, but I recoiled like a wild thing. Unable to bare it.

I stumbled back against the shelves. The books rattled but the house settled them quickly, creaking with worry. Either for the state of me, or the sudden panic that seemed to be encasing my heart.

‘I’m fine.’ I tried to push my arms behind my back, only for the pain to stop me. For it to shorten my breath.

‘Kat.’ Emrys came closer at the same moment Alma did.

‘You’re bleeding,’ she replied, a sternness coming into her words as she tried to reach for me again. To manage me as she had before. Only I wasn’t the Kat of before and I was fearful I never would be again.

She was alive when you burnt her, little troll. That creature’s words seared through my mind, the flash of Master Hale’s face covered in blood.

Murderer.

‘I’m fine!’ I sneered, baring my teeth as I gripped one of my injured wrists. Feeling the wetness of my blood against my palm as it seeped through Gideon’s makeshift bandage. Feeling the stinging rush of magic burning in my veins.

The fire roared in the hearth, almost singeing the books that rested on the mantel.

That vicious pain in my neck came back, making me grip it, bowing me forward.

‘I see things aren’t going to plan, dear Emrys,’ Thean drawled with almost boredom.

‘You knew he was close to finding a relic.’ Emrys’s voice was steel, eyes darker than the night. ‘And your master knew it too.’

Thean’s master – the Countess.

Of course, because if the Council fell to ruin, Elysior would be vulnerable once more.

‘Are you angry at me for not telling you, or that you couldn’t sense it yourself, my lord ?’ Thean inclined their head, but I could see the concern buried in those amber eyes, dulling them. ‘That you’ve allowed yourself to become second to a monster?’

Second. Serus was the first son of the Old Gods. Varin … Montagor was the second.

The other few names that had survived record: Acarus, Duar, Than and Orus. Then Serus’ shadow – his sister in the tales. Acara . Queen of the Damned, seer of the night.

My knees almost buckled, the pain at my ribs tightening my chest. The house groaned, movement on the bookshelves behind me as if the books themselves wished to flee the room as the bitter cold bite of Emrys’s power rose. Dark shadows moving between his fingers like blades.

‘As much as I commend it, Emrys … killing the voyav doesn’t help us.’ Gideon moved between them. Hands resting on his hips, the golden fingers of his right catching the firelight, speckled with the red of my blood. ‘We should ward the house and—’

‘Someone tell me what on earth is happening?’ Alma snapped, hands clawed as if anticipating a threat. The hurt in her expression and the depth of her confusion were plain as her eyes found my own once more.

I’d never felt further from her, too far from what I was supposed to be.

‘Montagor attacked the Council,’ Gideon answered.

‘Bloody saints!’ William clutched his horns, mouth agape since he had entered the room, apron still on and speckled with flour.

‘I assume they’re dead then,’ Thean offered with the barest interest. ‘Or claimed.’

Claimed . Turned into the demonic creatures they’d worshipped when they followed the King.

Emrys gave the barest of nods as a shocked curse slipped from William’s lips but it was all background noise as my eyes met Alma’s and I saw the panic and the weight of her heartbreak. Saw it in the shadow of scales at her jaw.

‘Master Hale?’ she asked so softly and all I could feel was the blood between my fingers.

Kayin. My father’s name on Hale’s lips. The truth of it. All this time he’d known.

I didn’t mean to tell them. He knew. He told them. He made my father leave. Let me carry this guilt in my heart. Let it burrow into my very bones. He knew all my secrets and how ruthlessly he wielded them against me.

Told me to forget Daunton. Told me its victims were best left to rest in the past. As if this pain in me would only make them suffer more.

Liar. He was a liar – and how easily I’d devoured those lies. I turned away from it, the horrid hissing inside my skull as I pressed my fingers to my temples, desperate for it to stop.

Tauria. You did not listen. The voice clawed at my mind. I shook my head, tears running down my cheeks. It was like something inside me was ripped in half. Shattered so easily.

Only for Alma’s hands to take hold of my face, stilling me. The familiar rough scrape of the scales forming at her palms.

‘He lied.’ The sob clawed its way up my throat. ‘He knew. All this time he knew and he lied.’

All I could see was the red smoke in the orb before him. Of the things I’d done, how little it was all worth, when fey had died anyway. Died for nothing.

‘I don’t—’ Alma shook her head, looking to Emrys for any help before those eyes came back to me.

‘I trusted him with you,’ I wept. It was a raw animalistic sound from my lips. I trusted him with Alma. With the only fragments of myself I had left. ‘He knew.’

Daunton. What he did. What he would do. Those girls’ faces flashed into my vision like pages flipping in a book. Small and bony. Desperate and weak. I could hear them, screaming endlessly. The taste of smoke filled my mouth, coating my tongue.

Then all I could smell was the bitterness of saint smoke. The blood and bruises on Alma’s flesh. Could feel nothing but the damp coldness of the night mist, of the bodies beneath wet soil.

‘He knew.’ My magic rose, sensing my panic as a threat, biting painfully at my bones. I saw Alma’s eyes widen as she felt it, as she snatched her hands back from my face as if I’d seared her skin.

A scream was burning in my throat. The house gave a wary groan and Emrys called my name.

The stone around my neck fluttered like a panicked heartbeat. A horrid pained sound escaping my lips. Unable to bear it, I pulled at my hair, dust and grit beneath my fingertips. I heard the hearth roar in answer and I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t survive the fury of my magic.

‘She shouldn’t summon!’ Gideon warned too late.

‘Outside!’ Alma ordered. On command the house raised the floorboards beneath my feet.

Sending me sideways only instead of falling against the bookcases, I stumbled into the space that opened up like a doorway between them, out into the bitter cold day.

The low winter sun stung my eyes, as grass tangled around my boots.

The vicious wind stirring my ruined skirts where the house had sent me into the wilderness.

Just as I’d wandered through those nightmares. The cold wind whipping around me as the first drops of rain brushed my cheeks; nothing compared to the endless flow of my tears.

I’d killed them. Killed those girls in Daunton and fooled myself into believing they mattered. All that time, I’d suffered it so they would matter. But they didn’t. They never would.

There was nothing but the darkness of the wood in the distance. No memories. No voices calling me back. How far I’d wandered and yet how this pain remained.

A scream clawed its way out of my throat the same moment my fire burst from my palms. Rain sizzling away as I was engulfed in the inferno of it.

It swirled and danced around me. Vicious and ruthless as it roared.

My dress became ash, floating away on the wind of my own making.

Leaving me in my slip, unable to be consumed by flames because Alma always enchanted them.

Always took care of me. Always. Even when I failed her.

The agony of my grief kept clawing its way out of my throat. As I screamed my fury towards the bruised sky, at the ancestors for not showing me a better way. For leaving us. For allowing them to suffer it. For never saving them.

Forgive me . The memory of my father’s voice whispered so gently as if in comfort … but I feared there was no forgiveness left in me.

Then, as quickly as the fury came, it was gone, simpering and weak within my bones. Leaving me with nothing but ragged useless breaths. Exhausted with its rage until all that was left was the consuming nature of its grief. The earth was scorched beneath me, left to nothing but ash.

I fell to my knees, rain pounding against my skin until arms came around me. A soothing bitter chill of magic that the ruthlessness of my own submitted to. The sheer size of him curling over me, blocking me from the storm.

Emrys.

He said something against the curve of my throat but it was lost within the taunt of those voices in my mind.

Tauria.

My sacred Kysillian name that the dark shouldn’t know. The thing I should never have let out.

Then the darkness took me back.