Page 29 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

‘Alma, it’s dangerous .’ I interjected before she lacerated the voyav.

It sounded like a plea, soft and desperate as I moved closer to her.

Blocking out everyone else until it was just us.

So those very human green eyes could meet my own.

Clear and filled with her iron resolve. She’d made up her mind and there was no unmaking it.

‘This is my curse, Kat. I will be its master.’ The unwavering weight of those words struck me like a blow. The painful truth pressed between them. Shame coursed through me at my attempt to stop her. She was right. How much agency she’d been denied that I had no right to take more from her.

No matter how scared it made me. She’d been caged long enough and I knew the madness of it. Her eyes didn’t even flicker in Emrys’s direction, nor Gideon’s. She needed no permission. She never had.

‘William.’ She held out her hand patiently, the boy going pale, eyes moving to Emrys, who gave the barest of nods. He wouldn’t forbid her. Not as those words hung true between us.

William reached into his apron and pulled out his sharp small shears and a knife.

Alma ignored the knife, taking the shears as she gave him a small reassuring smile. Moving to where the fiend still twitched.

There was a horrid crunch as she cut off the thing’s clawed finger, straightening before making her way to the study and giving us no choice but to follow.

Moving straight to my desk, turning over her sleeve, revealing the webbing of scars that bit into her flesh.

Paler than the rest of her skin. Rolling the fabric higher to where the small white marks lay from other extractions. All the things she never spoke about.

‘Miss Darcy, if you—’ Gideon began but Alma ignored him, already making the cut with the small healer’s blade I’d left on my desk.

The barest slice just at the base of her thumb, enough to bead against her skin. Then she smeared that dark foul blood from the beast’s finger across the wound. Let the talon drop from her hand to thud against the desk; a small puddle forming of dark liquid and smoke.

Her back straightened as her eyes fluttered closed. Nothing but the weary groan of the house and our own breath.

She was so silent, so still for the longest moment. I’d seen her change before, but never like this. Never with such focus.

‘Is she all right?’ William whispered out of the corner of his mouth, before huffing when Gideon elbowed him in answer.

Alma didn’t even flinch, not a twitch. Slowing until her chest stopped moving, her stillness becoming deadly.

Too long.

Unease rolled through me as I moved the barest step forward. Missing the curl of Emrys’s fingers in the back of the coat I wore as if to wrench me back.

‘Alma?’ I asked cautiously, reaching out for her arm. The house groaned. Desk draws rattling as if something was trying to escape. Then the fire went dead in the hearth.

Wrong. A voice mocked in the back of my mind. Alma’s eyes opened. No green to be seen. Only black. Endless as the night. A flash of darkness moving beneath her tanned skin.

One minute she was mortal, beautiful and familiar.

The next she was nothing but talons and smoke.

Lurching right for me with a feral scream of sharp yellow fangs in a demonic jaw.

Forcing me back as we tumbled over the desk in a tangle of limbs and black vapour.

Papers and books raining down as I hit the floor hard.

Not having a moment before those fangs went for my face.

‘Alma!’ I screamed, hands on her monstrous jaws as putrid breath and saliva dripped onto my throat. The weight of her claws against my ribs squeezed the air from my lungs. Only they didn’t pierce Emrys’s coat. Or whatever charm he’d worked into the fabric.

Thankfully Emrys’s powerful forearm came beneath the creature’s chin, stopping its attack as it screeched into my face. Strange leathery skin too hard to hold.

‘Gideon!’ Emrys roared. Blue summoning light in the corner of my eye, only we didn’t get a chance because then the creature that was Alma formed wings.

The strength of them manifesting threw Emrys and Gideon backwards, crashing into one of the bookcases as paper ruptured skywards.

‘Fucking saints!’ William shrieked from somewhere in the commotion.

‘Alma!’ I snapped, trying to push her back. Only for her horrid sharp teeth to catch my hand between my finger and thumb, making blood flow. ‘Stop!’

I forced my knee up and used the momentum to throw her demonic form off me and into the sideboard. Breaking its legs and making it collapse, artifacts littering the floor with heavy tomes.

Only as I rolled and got my knees back beneath me, turning in defence, did I notice she was gone. Nothing but smoke curling where she should have landed.

‘Bloody fucker,’ Gideon cursed, blue aether crackling in his metal fist as he and Emrys regained their feet. Emrys’s eyes were pitch-black, veins of dark magic crawling up the side of his tense jaw. As if he was resisting summoning.

‘Don’t kill her!’ William cried, his hands buried in his unruly hair to grip his horns from where he crouched low as if anticipating attack.

‘Nobody is killing anyone!’ I snapped, trying to drag air into my lungs as I turned, watching the eaves, waiting to see from what direction she’d attack next. To sense her. My hand stinging from where she’d bitten me.

‘It’s still too early in the evening to make promises, darling,’ Thean pointed out, completely unconcerned, lounging against the shelves with folded arms. Of course – because the fiend form of Alma didn’t appear to be coming for the voyav.

My gaze shot to William, who was also unharmed. Despite the fact he’d been in the hallway with one of the things. It hadn’t bitten him. No. The creature had been desperate to make its way down the hallway … towards—

I looked down at my hand, blood dripping between my fingers.

Blood.

My heart stopped, sinking into my gut.

Salvek hunted blood on command. And Alma was hunting mine – just as the creature she took that claw from had been.

Maybe it was Thean’s smug smile that made the idea materialise as the house began to groan and creak. A warning that she was coming.

I lunged forwards, right for the voyav, dragging my bloody hand across their face.

Smearing it red as a curse slipped from their lips.

Before they could push me off, I was already diving for the floor.

Just as Alma swooped in from the shadows above for another attack. Taking Thean down instead of me.

The voyav swore, becoming nothing but a jumble of limbs as the creature roared and tucked its wings tight.

I lunged, locking my arms around Alma, holding onto my wrists. Her folded wings trapped between us, talons at the top digging into my chin but my Kysillian strength held her. My call for it the strongest it had ever been.

‘Kat!’ Gideon barked, lurching forward to help as Emrys grabbed the voyav under the arms and dragged him from beneath Alma’s claws. The front of that ridiculous frilly white shirt torn.

‘Alma! ’ I cried desperately. Her strength in this form almost too much for me to hold.

Then Emrys’s dark summoning wrapped around us, holding her in place. The cold ferocity of it biting into my flesh.

‘ Le Mev ,’ Emrys commanded, his voice darker than I’d heard it, but that word made my magic flare in challenge.

Yield. A command in the old tongue. Something about the darkness of his magic against the smoke and strange pallid marked flesh that formed Alma. Making her shudder. Curving into herself with submission, a strange keening sound slipping from that demonic sharp mouth.

Sensing her withdrawal, Emrys’s magic slowly released her, but I felt it curling between my fingers as if trying to get to my palm. To see where I was hurt.

I felt Alma’s smooth cold demonic flesh start to warm, felt her returning as her body began to shudder in my arms. I let her go, watching as she supported herself on her forearms, her demonic whine morphing into deep uneven breaths as bones began to crack, the smoke slipping from her flesh.

‘Here!’ William called, tossing one of the blankets over her, draping it across her as those limbs cracked and twisted back into human form.

‘Will she be all right?’ he asked quietly, crouched next to me as I tried to gather myself. Too out of breath. Unable to answer when I didn’t feel like anything would ever be all right again.

Alma let out a pained moan, a tremor moving for her as her skin returned to its familiar warm hue, those dark curls in disarray as her mortal body trembled from the exertion.

‘Alma.’ I reached for her but she flinched away, her lips moving, gaze distant.

Then she clutched the blanket around herself and was on her feet.

Stumbling to the table by the bookshelves where the maps always lay scattered.

Emrys and Gideon averted their eyes, William went scarlet but Thean didn’t break his glaring stare at me.

Shirt torn and my blood still smeared across the voyav’s perfect face like warpaint.

‘Damp stone ruins. Runes on the walls. Carved too deep. They went too deep. There was an altar, crovern weed grows there. Evergreen in the darkness.’ The words were too quick from Alma’s lips, a tremble to her limbs as she fought to stay upright, gaze crazed like a madwoman.

‘Alma.’ I took hold of her shoulders dragging the blanket up to cover her better. Yet she didn’t stop talking, didn’t stop trembling as her eyes raked over those maps, as her clawed fingers rifled through them desperately.

‘Crovern weed only grows in the south,’ William half stammered.

‘It’s following.’ She twitched, those horrid oily scales running down her arms. A crack and twist of bone before she shook it away, a hiss slipping through her lips with the pain. ‘I need her.’

She shook her head, dark hair falling around her as another tremble coursed through her and she grabbed her head as if pained.

‘Alma.’ I held her tighter. Then her head shot up, eyes wide as she met my own.

‘ Kyvor Mor ,’ she said. Repeating the word uncertainly.

Kyvor Mor , that voice mocked in the back of my mind. The fear driving deeper with every flinch and twitch of Alma. She broke my hold, lurching towards Emrys’s desk.

Then she flipped through those books and maps, eyes wild. Until one single long, horrid claw had buried itself into a map at the centre of his desk.

‘ Near. ’ The word was a demonic hiss from her lips. As if her tongue was still too long for her mouth.

I felt a presence at my back, expecting Emrys but it was Thean, watching like they’d never seen her before. The woman unashamed by the brutality of her magic as she stood in nothing but a thin blanket, meeting their stare.

A wild, uncaged thing.

I looked down at my palm, blood weeping from her demonic bite. The house could move anywhere but Montagor could find me within it. Yet they’d struggle to find where I’d bled before. Where old blood lingered.

‘We need to move the house,’ I said, trying my best to keep my voice steady. ‘Dark beasts don’t hunt the same ground twice.’

I needed to be somewhere Montagor believed I’d never go.

I moved between the shelves, heading for the Portium door. Everything that had led me away and yet I still found myself back where I never wished to be.

Someone called my name but I didn’t stop. Not until I moved that crystal and gave the door my command. Until it hummed and began to work with a spark of my magic. The wheel stopped its clattering, and the house – seeming to confuse my unsteadiness for excitement – opened the door.

The blast of cold winter air was a sharp slap across my face. Sharp enough to distract me from the fear that turned my insides out. The sharp stone ruins of Daunton protruded like charred bones from the decimated earth.

Daunton Wood.