Page 3 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

I hadn’t believed it. Couldn’t. Despite the restlessness of the wild magic in my bones.

Not until Kat’s wounds were healed and the venom swiftly took its course through her.

When his mere touch had caused her to scream out in agony.

Her magic sensing the ancient threat in him in those first hours as she’d viciously clawed at her own skin.

It had broken something in me to hold her down, to hopelessly try to comfort her. But it had broken something in Emrys too. I couldn’t ignore that.

He’d recoiled from her side. Hadn’t been near her since. Becoming nothing but some strange wounded shadow chasing the madness of theories, trying to find any hope.

I’d learnt long ago that hope was for fools. For little girls who devoured stories and were allowed to dream. Not for creatures like me.

‘Blood loss, galmoth venom, iron burns and magic sickness,’ Gideon continued, his words breathless with disbelief as his gloved hand raked through his dishevelled golden hair. ‘The cures for that venom are dead. Just as the creature that caused it should be!’

Each word of that truth struck like a blow. Each moment of the agonising last few days flashing through my mind. Only my own grief couldn’t compete with the sudden coldness in the room, how Thean lurched urgently to their feet, wine forgotten.

Shadows crept from every corner, long and lethal across the study’s floor like claws. Blackthorn’s anger made the room creak with unease, books on the table slamming shut of their own accord. Those warning bells from the back shelves of the library began to ring as if they trembled too.

‘Stop it!’ I snapped, feeling the sharpness of fangs against my lip and the tightness of claws at my nailbeds as I charged into the room. ‘This bickering isn’t helping her!’

Days. They’d been fighting for days .

The darkness eased, the fire returning to the barest glow as Emrys pushed away from the cluttered desk he’d loomed over, unable to look at me as he turned to the fireplace. I understood why.

I was another reminder of that night. Another reminder of her .

Gideon straightened, cool eyes assessing as embarrassment flushed his high cheekbones and his lips pressed into a thin annoyed line at my interruption. He assessed me with haunted, pale blue eyes. Eyes that appeared to have seen this world before and knew all the answers.

‘You’re wasting time.’ I moved closer to the desk, to where their failed remedies lay scattered with little care. Empty vials and bright powders stained the healing pages. ‘You said we were trying the clawfox venom next.’

‘There are no clawfox samples left. Not even the remaining black markets are peddling them.’ Gideon’s words were clipped with caution. His cold gaze pinned on his brother as if anticipating an attack.

‘Then we try the basilisk herb William harvested.’ I threw out my hand in frustration in the direction of the door.

‘She’s not strong enough to survive another fever.’ The healer’s voice was terse with impatience.

I shook my head. ‘There has to be—’

‘ Miss Darcy .’ His tone was stern with authority, making my back rigid. Reminding me too vividly of all the masters that had come before. ‘The best we can do is keep her comfortable and—’

‘ Comfortable ?’ Emrys turned from the fire, the word sharper than a blade as it cut through the air.

That one word crushed the air from my chest more brutally than any man’s fist ever had, than any keeper or master I’d encountered, making it impossible to suck any more into my lungs with the tightness of my throat.

There was no comfort for her. Not when her screams still echoed in my ears.

Fear clawed at my ribs, deep painful lacerations that fuelled the vicious anger inside me.

No .

‘She’d find a way.’ I pressed the words through my lips. Feeling the sharpness of scales slip across my cheek before they slid away again, buried back within my blood. The beast inside coiling to strike, to find a way out of my meagre, mortal flesh.

‘There isn’t a way.’ Gideon’s voice softened, regret lightening his features as his eyes drifted to Emrys’s rigid form.

‘There wasn’t one out of Daunton either.’ The words escaped before I could think. My secrets protruding too easily from the shallow grave I’d buried them in. My voice didn’t sound like my own. Too cold and distant.

It was the first time I’d said that word, almost making my lips tremble, but I tipped my chin, letting the feral rage in my chest consume everything else. All my sadness. All my fear feeding the monster that lurked beneath.

‘No way out of the beatings, the bitterness of the cold or the unmarked graves they’d make us dig deep in those woods.’

I refused to waver, leering forward until one talon was pointed at the healer’s throat.

‘Kat found one.’

A muscle moved in Gideon’s jaw but his stern expression remained.

‘She found it for me ,’ I spat, my clawed finger resting the barest inch from his pulse point. ‘So if you think I’m letting you stop, you’re very much mistaken.’

All the things she’d done for me. How she’d saved me over and over and I had nothing to give. No brilliance. No intelligence. Nothing.

‘You’re not finished.’ Fury made my spine sharpen and I heard the popping of stitches in my dress with the threat of a change, anger boiling in my blood. I didn’t know all the stories. Knew nothing. Everything to save her was impossible and I wasn’t smart enough to understand any of it.

I wasn’t a mage. I had no hope of ever being one. All I had were beasts beneath my skin.

‘We’ve been through every record. The samples we need haven’t existed for a decade, long before the uprising.’ Gideon’s voice was tight but those regretful, blue eyes pooled with sorrow. ‘That’s the problem with basing magic upon monstrous things.’

‘There could be more samples in the—’ Thean began but their voice faded from my ears.

A smell turned my focus to the desk beyond the healer.

Bitter, earthy but distant. Almost faded.

Familiar enough to pick at a memory in the back of my mind like a loose thread as I stared at the books and papers scattered on the desk.

I focused on the desk – the vials of scales, feather clippings and the beasts that each page depicted, following the scent, moving closer until I could touch them. Smears of dark paint for shadow creatures, thick scales and golden stripes for eternal beasts.

They were hunted and they were killed for what they were worth.

Kat had told me that. Why most creatures were nothing but stories. How mortals longed for the magic in their blood, in their scales and fur. Buried in their very bone marrow.

The rattle of a chain, a feverish burn to my scaled skin and the sour smell of rotting straw. The darkness and the reek of damp. Memories I begged myself in the dark of night never to see again, only now I let them have me. Let their foulness tear at my heart.

What profit you’ll bring. The clammy touch of stubby fingers against my cheek. The inspecting glances. A vile caress and a spat curse.

I didn’t listen to the nightmare of those voices. No, I listened to my magic as it rippled over my skin with unease, lingering in the tips of my fingers and brushing my palm. Like a hand trying to guide me the rest of the way.

I moved closer to the source of that scent, the bickering voices of Thean and Gideon nothing but a distant mumble as I looked at the grey dirt in the vial on the table, barely glinting with the texture of the scale that remained.

I turned it over to see the dark specks that endured, how they crumbled with the barest of motions.

Dead things are worth the most. Why is that, little rat? The Keeper had asked in the silky sweet voice he always used before the beatings. Before the performance.

‘They’re beyond value,’ I whispered to myself now, as my fingers curled around the vial. As I felt the curse buried in my blood sense it, hungry to change.

Only the dust in the jar wasn’t enough. It had regressed too far but that distant smell made a memory pierce through the pain of all the others.

Small fingers dragging over vials. The dusty rot of it clinging to the back of my throat, the sharpness of tobacco smoke in the shadows of forgotten places.

The promise of magic concealed within the vials. My skin almost burning with the urge to be cut, for blood to come free and release another monster from within.

‘What is this?’ I demanded, holding the glass vial out, silencing the room.

Gideon’s mouth was open from whatever insult he was about to throw back at Thean. He swallowed it, sharp eyes confused as they met my own.

‘The useless remains of what’s supposed to be a scale from the shadow drake. The closest thing we could find to the ravhorn.’ His answer was hesitant. ‘One of the suggested cures for shadow sickness.’

Ravhorn. I’d heard of that. Heard of it in one of Kat’s boring fucking lessons when I had better things to do. A dark remedy. Poison from the shadows of the world.

Liar. That voice hissed in my memory. No, I’d heard of that dark beast long before Kat had fed me the story.

I rolled my wrist, feeling the tightness of the scarring there, the shift from scales to fur.

If you know it you can become it. How the Keeper had repeated that most of all. Beat it into my very bones. Whispered like a gentle caress, pressed the words against my tear-stained cheek with his dry, tobacco-stained lips as fragments of creatures were forced against my bloody palm.

I was consumed by the memories I begged to forget.

The scratch of the scales. The patches of fur still attached to bloody skin, the bitterness of the venom, the endless dusty pages that made my nose burn.

The drag of my finger over the dry paper, feeling the creases and the skin it had been made from.

What crumbs of those creatures could remain? What little was left for my magic to feast on? The dry dusty stench of his collection.

Pathetic, useless beast .

No. I’d allowed myself to be useless. Hidden so carefully, like a rat in its nest.

‘That could bring her back?’ I demanded, taking another step towards Gideon, feeling the cold bite of Blackthorn’s magic, the deadly focus of it suddenly solely on me from where he remained in the shadows.

‘If the writings are accurate,’ Gideon offered, sending a cautious glance in his brother’s direction.

A chill shot down my spine in warning. The beastly instincts in me too close to the surface. Like my ear twitching with the barest whisper of a new sound. I turned towards the study doorway just as William appeared. Deathly pale with that book clutched to his chest like a shield.

‘Gideon.’ He swallowed, eyes shimmering with tears. ‘H-her tremors have started again.’

‘Fuck,’ Gideon cursed, turning to his desk and rooting through his things. That cold demeanour slipping away as the sharp determination of a healer took over. ‘We’re almost out of Longwood herb.’ He ran a hand through his golden hair before he remembered William.

He reached for the boy and spoke softly to him in comfort as William blinked tears from his eyes, fingers trembling where they held the book.

I should have gone to him, should have gone back to her, but something rooted me in place. The sharp bite of my magic against my palm where I held that vial. Telling me what I already knew. There were no answers in that bedroom. They lay here. Right before me.

‘I can look in the east fields,’ Thean offered without hesitation, all the voyav’s cruelness slipping away, their expression open and cautious as they looked at William, pale and lost.

‘No,’ I commanded, turning to Emrys, that poison still curled in my fist. I crossed the room to stand before him. Refusing to focus on the red marks my claws had made on his already scarred face and throat. The blooming bruises there, and how he hadn’t properly healed them.

Almost as if he hadn’t felt it. Or simply because he wished for the punishment of that pain. A horrid broken coldness lingering in the darkness of his eyes.

I swallowed down my shame. ‘Kat made that doorway take her to those woods. To Paxton fields. Can it go anywhere?’

Pain cut into the sternness of his face.

‘Within reason,’ he answered carefully, his focus moving to William. Then to the hallway behind him as if he could move for it at any moment. To her. How the shadow of that darkness still rippled beneath his skin.

‘I know where there could be samples.’ I held the vial under his chin, something about my desperation making him look back to me. ‘Like this.’

‘The underground traders don’t have—’ he began but I was already shaking my head, dark curls falling around my face.

‘Not the traders.’ I grimaced, an agitation taking hold of my body with the urge to move. To hunt. ‘The docklands of the west. The bone markets.’

Something in the room shifted at my words, the strange warm presence of Thean Page at my back, but I wouldn’t look at them. Couldn’t . Not to see the suspicion in their eyes. A rebel would know that place, but not the secrets I’d buried there. Beneath the ash and bone fragments.

Gideon frowned. ‘How would you know the bone markets? They—’.

‘A merchant worked out of the water cellars there. He dealt in dead matter. In things others couldn’t find. My—’ I wouldn’t say keeper. Wouldn’t give him the power of being remembered.

‘The town was levelled.’ Emrys’s words were guarded, but not with the tone of a challenge – with a sense of protection against a hope I was offering. One even I was too afraid to cling to. ‘They say a dark storm took it. A Verr summoning at the end of the war.’

‘They’re there. I saw them. Protected deep beneath the earth. They have to be there.’

It was a long shot but it was all I had. A memory of that horrid place. I saw Gideon’s eyes move to his brother, doubt creasing his brow. I couldn’t blame him. It sounded impossible even to my own ears.

‘I need to try,’ I pleaded. Hating the weakness of it. A madness, perhaps, but it was all I had. This one memory. This one chance.

Gideon’s lips parted as if to argue but Emrys spoke.

‘Then we’ll try.’ Firm, unwavering, as a light softened the darkness of his eyes. An olive branch between us. Between the secrets and lies.

Then he was moving across the room so he could lay a comforting hand on William’s shoulder.

‘Watch over her for me.’ Emrys’s command was gentle, but hoarse with pain. William blinked away his tears as a new resolve came over him with that order, his shoulders straighter, a soldier given new purpose.

‘Thean,’ Emrys instructed, sharp and lethal as he came back past me, striding deeper into the study, through those shelves the house moved without command.