Page 52 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Gideon moved down the hall, his aether cutting down the cobwebs from his path as Alma followed.

Emrys waited for me, seeming to count my unsteady breath before I allowed myself to enter the house.

The wooden beams above sagging with age.

Groaning not in welcome but as if another great burst of wind could drag the walls down.

The once-painted ceilings were peeling, large chips of the art cracking under our boots.

The irritated rustling from something nesting above as small streams of dust rained down.

The main staircase had sunken in on itself.

Forcing us down the narrow dark corridor with nothing but Gideon’s witch light.

‘How fucking depressing. I thought the Greymarks were merchants?’ Gideon huffed out a frustrated breath, raising his aether to fully consider the damage.

‘They squandered their wealth a long time ago. This was supposed to be a summer residence,’ Emrys added, his cautious gaze moving back to me.

The remains of the banister had caught my eye.

The side of the wood where someone had carved a flower, so small and unsteady as if done by a child’s hand.

I let my fingers trace the shape of it. Wondering if it had been left by her.

‘They left my mother here when she was barely days old.’ The words slipped free so easily as I stood somewhere I knew she never wanted me to be. ‘Lord Grey had no use for a daughter. So, he abandoned her here with a fey nursemaid to raise her.’

How old and cold this house seemed and how small she must have felt inside of it. Knowing this decay had taken decades, which meant my mother had lived in it in disrepair. How nothing but sadness remained as I moved further down the hallway, how endless and dark it was.

Alma watched me with concern but I reassured her with a small smile as she moved further into the house. Not needing to hear my secrets. She’d heard them all before.

She ducked into a side room, making Gideon swear as he went after her. The remains of furniture lingering inside still covered with sheets. Stained grey and green with mould. The damp leaves that had blown in through the gaps in the boarded-up windows.

The wood-panelled walls were vandalised. White paint flaked where it had been smeared. Marks of impurity from saint worshippers.

‘Kat?’ Emrys asked, at my side as the sight of it stalled me.

I turned to see him. How carefully he watched me as if trying to understand.

‘My mother didn’t even know she was a lord’s child until he came back when she was eighteen.

Surprised to find his unwanted runt a beauty.

Out of money and favour in the King’s court – he tried to whore her to a wealthy man. ’

Such quiet consumed the room for that small moment. How the walls seemed to creak and groan, wary with the tale. One I knew he’d find familiar. How many of the King’s followers had done the same. The horrid things they did for power. Even against their own.

‘She refused. So, they used a contortion charm on her.’ Shattered the bones in her right arm, so awfully she’d never regained full use of it. How deeply those pale scars had marked her. ‘Then they hanged her nursemaid in the town square as punishment. Her name was Katherine.’

Why I held that name. That simple mortal name. Why my mother had given it to me. So Katherine would know, wherever she was, that my mother loved her. Would always love her, the woman she thought of as her mother – no matter how brutally this world had torn them apart.

‘What happened to Lord Grey?’ Gideon demanded from the shadowed corner of the room.

‘My father killed him,’ I answered. Unafraid of that truth. How glad I was for it, how my magic flared in my blood. Pleased with its vengeance.

‘Good,’ Gideon answered, his blue eyes gleaming like his witch aether with his anger. Then came a wooden creak, drawing me to a lopsided sideboard in the corner. My hand moved for my father’s blade. Only for my magic to settle inside of me, as if taking a relieved breath. Familiar with this place.

The sideboard creaked again, hinge squeaking as the small cupboard opened slightly, small and weak once again.

Too soon to be an accident. I crossed the room and pressed my fingers against the wood, feeling it.

The slight irritation of magic, one that lingered deep in the grain of the wood.

Weaker than Blackthorn house, but there all the same.

‘It’s enchanted,’ I whispered, wondering how the magic could have survived such destruction. Feeling the sadness pressed into the very dampness of the wood. ‘Is that possible?’

Emrys pressed his fingers next to my own, expression pensive. ‘It was an old tradition. Most witches were indentured to the house and had no choice.’

It creaked again, persistent and slow like the greeting from an old dog’s wary tail.

The Grey family wouldn’t have cared for it.

Not as Emrys or the Blackthorns had cared for theirs.

Not as my mother would have. Making me wonder if that was why all her tales included an enchanted house. Yet she’d never spoken of this one.

There was no love left in this house. In this forgotten place that had been a haven for my mother once. Because it would miss her, and I wondered how she had survived the pain of that loss. Of knowing it would be left to ruin without her.

My magic flared. Dragging my focus to the wall next to me, where ivy clung to the remains of the plaster.

Here, a small voice called. My fingers curled into the dry leaves instinctively, and they crumbled beneath my touch. My magic burst from my fingers as the leaves fell charred to the ground. Embers illuminating what was hidden beneath. Where the wood was burnt and bubbled, rough and deep.

I fit my fingers into the gaps and it was like laying my palm into his handprint.

We protect what we love, Tauria. The ghost of my father seemed to linger at my side. The closest I’d been to him in thirteen years. My magic curled like a wounded beast inside of me. He was here. He’d protected her here and so had my magic, because he’d given it to me.

‘Kat,’ Alma called, breaking the spell of my grief. I followed her voice, finding her in what appeared to be the remains of a library, the shelves scorched as if someone had attempted to set it alight. I avoided the holes in the floor, the boards far too unsteady beneath my boots.

‘What is it?’ I whispered, feeling an odd sensation move through me. Almost compelling me closer to a set of cupboards on the far wall.

Then her confused green eyes met my own. ‘It smells … familiar .’

Damp remains of burnt books rattled on the shelf making us both jump, leaves tumbling from where they’d rested on top.

The cabinet clattered, doors knocking as if something small and feral was trapped inside.

I went to grab Alma’s arm but she had already slipped easily into another form.

Ripping through her leathers easily as a small wrywing appeared.

Her spiked tail thumping against the wooden floor, a hiss leaving her maw as she bared deadly, sharp teeth.

The rattling stopped as if cautious of her threat, silence claiming the space before the door burst open.

Dust plumed into the room but something else skidded across the ground, to land at the toe of my boot.

A small cloth sack tied with fraying string.

Alma hissed, circling it warily but I pushed her snout away.

‘It’s fine, Alma,’ I whispered, trying to nudge her meaty form out of the way.

Disgruntled, she leapt up, changing mid-air into a smaller wrywing, no bigger than a bird as she perched on my shoulder. Digging her talons a little deeper than necessary. Warning me against my own foolishness.

I knelt, unknotting the string quickly before reaching inside.

Fingers closed around smooth leather and out came an old book.

The dark navy of the cover burnt at the corners.

The silver decorative border peeled and scratched away with time.

The tome bound with worn string despite the rusted blood lock on the side.

A piece of paper pressed carefully into the string. Aged and creased. My magic stirred inside of me, but not in warning. A soft warmth, like a caress from within.

‘Kat?’ Emrys called, I could feel the brush of his magic up the side of my throat like a comforting caress. Alma growled but I didn’t stop. My fingers trembled as I unfolded the paper, the cracking of it too loud in the silence as the book almost slipped from my grasp.

It was in Kysillian.

The curve of her handwriting, the same she’d used to write all my stories. Every tale from my childhood. The uneven spacing of the letters as if she was only just learning. As if this tragic tale was only just beginning, but she knew we’d end at the same place.

Right here.

I had a dream.

I hope you see it.

I hope it’s real .

Such raw pain consumed me, my eyes stinging with tears at the sight of the gift she couldn’t have known I’d need. The only thing of her now that remained apart from me. Just these words on stained parchment.

Alma whined on my shoulder. Reminding me why we were here. I blew the dust from the cover, showing the carved letters on the front.

Only then did I understand why the house had offered it up so easily. It thought I was her, come back to collect what I left behind.

‘Is that—’ Gideon choked on the rest of the words.

‘The Compendium of Souls.’ I stood on unsteady legs, the silver lettering barely glinting as the filagree twisted to depict skulls trapped between thorny brambles.

Gideon stepped forward, eyes moving to Emrys. ‘We need to get that book back and—

A horrid pounding echoed into the room. Three strikes. So loud I jumped, stumbling into Emrys, whose arm came around my waist only to move me behind him. The lethal dark of his blade extending in his hand.

‘What the fuck is that?’ Gideon demanded, aether moving between his fingers, the shadow blade firmly in his grip. Alma leapt from my shoulder, twisting into a larger, more imposing wrywing – sharp claws gouging marks in the damp wooden floor.

The wooden boards beneath my boots began to tremble, thin streams of dust raining down as the abandoned clutter rolled to the shadowed corners of the room as if willing to hide.

‘Nothing from this realm,’ Emrys replied, eyes full black as the summoning of his magic decorated his skin like dark veins.

Another crash as something slammed the doors down the hall. From the whining of the wood around us, it wasn’t the house.

‘Did Greymark make a bargain with the darkness?’ Gideon snapped out of the side of his mouth, his metal fingers clicking together in irritation, gaze locked on the doorway.

‘If he did, I’m certain the demon that came for his soul wasn’t happy to find him hanged in a tree.’ Emrys slid another blade from the sheath at his thigh.

‘He wasn’t in the tree,’ I reminded them, clutching that book to my front like a shield.

Both brothers turned to me.

The remaining curtain scraps tore free from the windows as if they’d been tugged. Bright moonlight spilling through the spaces between the boards that covered them. Illuminating the room and the rotting wooden floor beneath our feet.

Dark runes burnt into the floor.

I stumbled away from it as Alma recoiled with a chatter of sharp teeth. Coiling for attack as her sharp scales rippled down her spine.

‘That’s the mark of cruvor,’ Gideon said, something distant and cold in his voice.

Cruvor. The dark’s manifestation of malice.

Emrys began to scan the corners of the room. As if we were being watched.

‘Kat. How did your father kill him?’ Gideon moved closer. There was a calmness to his voice but it didn’t reach the wild panic in his eyes.

My heart was pounding too strongly in my chest. My magic searing my veins in a strange vicious victory. As if taunting whatever rested here.

Grief and rage could fuel the dark. Could feed things that should never have been made.

I’d brought that magic back here.

‘ Saever ,’ I whispered, watching Gideon’s eyes widen with the ruthlessness of it.

A barbaric sacred punishment in Kysillian law for those deemed worthy of it. Hanging, drawing and quartering with the flame. Relentless in the fact that sometimes they were partially put back together. Forced to take a healing tonic before it began again.

I’d never known if the story was true. Only now I did, as a horrid roar came from the darkness of the hallway.