Page 26 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Fifteen

Kat

To burn is the cost of our fury, Avaya . Our fury can end this world, that power must be feared. The kings burnt to save us, but perhaps … they burnt to save us from themselves, as much as that darkness beneath.

Greed and power are never far apart – no matter what the stories say. For even those heroes never wished to fall, Tauria.

The roaring crackle of fire filled my ears now, lurching me into waking as the reek of smoke filled my nose.

Avaya. That name followed me into waking. A word of fire and smoke. What my father had called me to show his love. It meant starlight in Kysillian. Because he called my mother Aya , which meant little flame. How easily I’d forgotten that.

The smell of books, old magic and the lingering scent of beasam bark chased that memory away. I was in the Blackthorn study. It was drenched in orange light as the sun sank across the wood beyond the window.

Home. I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes, realising the smell of smoke was coming from me. I was still in my slip – the only thing that had survived that fury within me.

I looked at the bandages across my wrists. Gideon’s cravat had burnt away with the ruthlessness of my summoning. But someone had washed and dressed my forearms in clean bandages. A glass sat waiting on a small table next to me, a healing tonic too.

My trembling fingers rubbed the fabric at my wrists.

How brutally my fury had hollowed me out.

Most of it a blur. Just the memory of Alma’s quiet broken reassurance left.

The strength in Emrys’s hold as I’d been moved to the chaise as if he remembered that I hadn’t wanted to go to bed.

Didn’t wish to be left alone in the dark.

A horrid taste lined my mouth and I reached for the healing tonic. Sick of my weakness before I picked up the glass, drinking deeply before I pressed the cool glass to my forehead, trying to steady myself and find some sanity.

‘Please,’ I whispered to nobody. The small table next to me rocked slightly, nudging against my knee, offering some small comfort.

A murmur of voices reached my ear, coming from beyond the room, from somewhere down the hall. Probably everyone trying to work out what to do next, while I’d fallen apart so easily.

‘Pull yourself together,’ I sighed as I untangled myself from the blanket, seeing my enchanted bag abandoned on my desk. I rooted through it for my training attire, only for pages of my notes to come out. All my scribbled workings on incantations and research into wild herbs.

Notes on the saltorvarious pox. The thing that had brought me here in the first place. How easily I’d forgotten that desperation to fix something. To see the world right.

How easily I’d believed I could. Write a paper good enough to graduate. Find Alma a home. Find some useful position and live the life I’d dreamt of: helping fey.

Only it was a lie. They’d been dying all this time.

Everything that had happened … I believed it had to be for a purpose. To graduate. To be the first. To prove them all wrong.

Only the bitter reality was impossible to deny. It was all for nothing.

My gaze blurred with tears of frustration as I pushed the papers away and tugged out my training clothes, only for the clatter of something hitting the floor to stop me.

The hilt of my father’s blade, glinting in the dusk light.

A flare of memory made the training clothes slip from my fingers. Remembering how the sword had clattered against that seal. How Emrys had touched it, brought it to me.

How it had come to me, despite all my mistakes in leading us to that horrid place.

With trembling fingers, I picked it up. Letting my thumb run over the scratched and tarnished metal.

‘I shouldn’t have let you rest so long.’ Guilt raked at my bones. How long I’d left the thing in disuse, how long my muscled ached for the strength they once had.

Too long pretending to be something I wasn’t. Mortal. A simple girl with no ambition or choice.

Again, Tauria . My father’s soft command brushed my ear, making my breath catch as the hilt almost slipped from my numb fingers.

Tauria . The name the darkness knew. Knew I was here. Knew the power in my blood to awaken it or seal it. A realisation that only deepened my panic, my throat too tight as I sank to my knees.

‘Please.’ The word was too small from my lips as I looked down at the hilt curled in my fist. The smooth warmth of the blade so real.

A Kysillian is never beaten. Never marked by the viciousness of this world because the kings in our blood bow to no other.

Words from the ancient texts I’d found in the abandoned Fifth Library. Those scars on my back burning like a brand. I’d been beaten. Marked. I’d let them scar my very soul. I’d lost, over and over again.

Imperfections that I knew meant I was unworthy of the Kysillian name my father had given me. Unworthy of the fire in my blood. How the ancestors would see me as a disgrace. A weakness.

‘Forgive me,’ I whispered. Too small and pathetic for a creature that held the right to wield an ancient blade. I pressed the hilt against my brow, bowing forward as the emotion cracked me open.

Knowing only one truth: I’d always be my father’s daughter. That he’d love me … no matter what I’d done, or how foolish I’d become.

Always . A word whispered in my mind, a word from my mother’s lips with the ghost of a kiss against my cheek. The barest hint of memory as I took myself back. Back to that beach. To the day I’d said goodbye. To all the things I’d allowed myself to forget.

The crashing of the waves, high and rough as they always were on the north sea. The briny taste on my lips. The bitter cold bite in the air. How I’d tumbled down on that wet sand, only for my mother to kneel in it with me.

‘Tauria.’ Her hands took hold of my shoulders as the storm raged around us, plastering her dark hair to her cheeks. How perfectly beautiful she was, even in her grief.

‘He has to come back!’ I cried, breaths uneven with my sobbing. Using my small fists to rub my eyes, stinging from my tears.

‘He will, my love.’ She brought my sandy fingers to her lips, her smile weighted with sorrow before she presented the hilt of my father’s sword to me, letting it rest across her palm as the rain puddled around it. ‘Do you think he’d leave this behind forever?’

A small offering. A hope between us. A promise and a lie.

‘No.’ I shook my head as she wrapped my hand around the hilt so we both held it. Still warm from his touch. From the chaos in his blood.

‘It’s your job to keep it safe. Just as he taught you.’ One arm came around me to bring me closer, to wrap her cloak around my shoulders, the other hand falling to her very pregnant stomach between us.

‘He loves us very much,’ she averred, her brown eyes filled with such endless love and hope. Even then. ‘Never doubt that, Tauria.’

I curled myself into her arms as she kissed my tear-stained cheeks as my hair tangled with hers in the harsh wind.

‘No matter how far this world takes him from us, he loves us beyond anything else.’ Her voice broke with the pain of her grief but I felt her smile against my skin. ‘That truth remains . Aest’rea . Always.’

Always.

Aest’rea. A promise in Kysillian that mortal words had no equivalent. A love eternal. In every life.

I watched my tears splatter onto the blade now. Saw the murky reflection of myself in the golden metal. I knew the depth of their love because I felt it in the weight of my grief. How it had changed me forever. A small darkness in my heart that would never leave. One no joy could erase.

My first blessing was to be their daughter. To be loved.

Always .

‘Isn’t this a depressing sight,’ came the silky, irritating voice of Thean Page.

My head shot up, turning to see the voyav still in male form in the study doorway.

White shirt rolled to the elbows and creased as if they’d been hard at work.

Their strange auburn hair left long and tied back at the nape of their neck.

That dark make-up lining those sharp amber eyes.

A furrow at their brow with either disgust or confusion but I didn’t care.

I wiped the tears irritably from my cheeks and got to my feet. Clearly the voyav had somehow survived Emrys’s temper.

‘If you want to end up back in your deathbed, you’re going about it the right way, darling,’ they sighed, as if my mere presence was exhausting.

‘Unless you missed it … it appears I’m rather difficult to kill.’ I flipped the blade, letting it shift to become a throwing knife, glinting in the firelight. Ignoring how my hand trembled with the barest motion. ‘I’m fine.’

Thean inclined their head. ‘Is weeping on the floor a recent hobby you’ve decided to indulge in? If so, you should know it’s quite … pathetic.’

‘What do you want?’ I demanded, reaching down to snatch up my training attire.

‘I was looking for your handsome dark lord.’ They shrugged, moving closer, keeping to the shadows cast by the shelves as if the weak sunlight could render them to dust.

‘Not here,’ I answered.

‘Maybe roll around naked in the rain again. That seemed to summon him quickly enough,’ they offered dryly. ‘Besides, you should be counting your blessings.’

‘What blessings?’ I snapped, annoyed I was being goaded so easily.

‘That he’s not here, otherwise you’d have to lie and we know just how much you hate that.’

‘Lie about what?’ I demanded petulantly, despite the sinking feeling in the centre of my chest.

Their fanged smile was so cruel. ‘The things the dark told you.’

Serus, that mocking voice called. That darkness was calling his name. Reverent in its hunger.

What the dark wants, it never let’s go. Emrys had spoken those words and now the memory of them struck like a fist to my chest.

The thought of it made the wound at my neck sting. I flinched but refused to touch it. Not needing any further warnings against my own foolishness.