Page 55 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Alma

No matter what they take, or how many feathers they pluck. You’ll always have your wings, little one.

You can always fly.

I hated the memory of that voice, because it always made me feel nothing but empty. Nothing ever followed it. No name or face. Just a voice. How awful that I wondered if it was simply the echo of my own. So desperate for any comfort, I lied to myself. Even now.

I shook my beastly head, letting the scales ripple and shift down my side to protect me better from the wind.

There was freedom in the air. Despite the cold chill of the night as it rushed against my wings.

As I stretched them wider and felt the luxurious calm in the tendons.

Trying to take my mind off leaving that horrid house. About leaving Kat there.

She was with Emrys and Gideon. I had to be reassured by that, yet my scales still rippled with annoyance.

I banked, scenting my way back. A strange primal urge that turned and twisted me through the air without thought.

But before I could relish the feeling of being on the right track, a flash came from the dark forest beneath.

An orange glow like fire, yet there was nothing below.

No small villages this far into the wilderness.

Foolishly, I hesitated, scented the air too long. A sharp pain rushed across my back leg. Molten agony like a claw burying itself into my flesh.

I tried to pull back, sharp teeth bared, but the change was slipping away from me.

As rapidly as the air through my wings. A weakness in my jaw making the sack slip free, tumbling though the air below me.

I tried to shift to dart and chase it. Become smaller and more agile.

Only for my clumsy limbs to struggle. Sending me into a nosedive for the earth.

The dark marshy lands beneath looming closer.

Panicked, I twisted into a large bird form, only able to throw my wings wide one more time before they vanished completely, and I tumbled into a short freefall.

I hit the ground, swampy earth breaking my fall but sharp unrelenting stones still dug into my skin. One striking my cheekbone, making light flash across my vision as I tumbled to a halt, skin raw and bones aching.

Pain radiated down my back from where my wings had been, as if they’d been clipped off. I reached behind me, desperate, looking for the wound. There was nothing but the sharp points of my spine as it settled back into mortal form.

My fucking chest was too tight, breaths too short. I tried to summon my beasts but there was nothing. Just silence as I shivered in the mud.

No.

I reached for my leg, feeling cold metal protruding from the flesh that made me wince. A dart, small and gleaming in the moonlight.

With trembling fingers I pulled it free, the metal reeking of a sour, copper smell.

A smell I knew. One that had tormented my nightmares.

A sob clawed up my throat as I threw the dart away from me. Recoiling as I gripped my thigh. Blood seeping between my fingers, but the sickly metallic scent remained.

I rubbed at it hopelessly, no matter how it stung or how much filthy mud brushed the wound.

A magic suppressant. Nulling poison the menagerie used – but that wasn’t possible.

They’d been banned. Eradicated. Master Hale had promised that.

A hollowness took root inside of me, like icy claws burying themselves into my flesh. My vision unfocused. Unable to smell anything but wet earth, my heart pounding too wildly.

How quickly my beasts left me. How easily my body betrayed me. Weak and useless against the wet earth. Tremors running through my limbs helplessly.

So distracted by my own pain I didn’t hear them approach with my mortal ears. Not the snapping of leaves or the crunch of boots. Not until hands grabbed me, pulling a surprised scream from between my lips.

‘What we got here!’ The hissed words met my ear, fingers pulling at my hair. I fought. Repulsed by the cool leather of their fingers against my flesh. The bitter scent of saint smoke.

I could barely see the dark uniform of the Council hunter.

The gaps in his yellow teeth and the shaggy mess of his hair.

The reek of his ale-soaked breath weaker than it should have been in the absence of my senses.

I bit and clawed but it was nothing compared to his strength.

He struck me across the face, enough to get his meaty arms around me.

‘Feral bitch!’ he spat as one of my blows landed. Pain exploded in my temple, dark spots in my vision as he tossed me to the ground once more.

My limbs were too sluggish. Thoughts too slow. Then there was the weight of him on top of me, the sour smell of his skin.

‘Got something, lads!’ he crowed, cruel hands trying to pin me down. In a moment it wasn’t him and me against the damp soil.

No. A nightmare filled my reality. Me on a rug in a room reeking of tobacco smoke. Surrounded by cruel laughter, the rattle of a chain and the cry of creatures from rooms beyond.

The menagerie.

A feral scream tore from my lips, jolting me back into now.

Through my agony I found something inside me.

Some wild strength as my nails painfully lengthened.

The barest of claws but it was enough. Tearing through the flesh of his throat like paper, as that warm blood sprayed into my mouth.

He screamed, rearing back but I surged forward.

Fingers digging into meaty wet flesh as he gargled his own blood.

I screamed and screamed. Uncaring who was coming or the flashes of torches in the distance.

Who was listening. I kept tearing at him until there was nothing but mulch between my fingers.

Until my limbs weakened. As sound from the woods pierced thought my madness.

Forcing me to scramble back. Knowing I needed to run. They were coming. They’d catch me.

I turned. Only to bolt into something hard and alive. I screamed again, trying to buck free but those arms don’t let me go. The soft fabric of their clothes, then the familiar rich sent of them penetrating my panic.

‘Alma.’ So soft. So authoritative. Settling that terror inside of me. Until I could drag in greedy gulps of air. Taunted by that fucking scent. A flash of amber in the darkness.

Thean. The comfort of their presence and the sharp scratch of their fangs against my jaw with how close they held me.

I turned further into that commanding hold, needing to see. Uncaring that I was naked as I knelt in that mud, illuminated by nothing but moonlight. My fingers curling into the fine fabric of their coat. Ruining it with my bloody claws.

Those amber eyes burnt with fury as they dragged over my face. My cheekbone throbbed from either the fall or the hunter, I didn’t know. They missed none of it. Dark rage seeping across their expression. Not appearing like any form of Thean I’d seen before.

‘I can’t change.’ The words came panted through my lips.

Then those amber eyes dropped to my thigh where I’d pulled the dart free. Their nose wrinkled as if they could smell it too.

I thought they’d say something. Mock me.

Yet this creature before me was too quiet as they pulled their coat from their tall masculine frame and draped it around my shoulders, holding it closed as I slipped my trembling numb arms into the sleeves.

Or tried to. My poor attempt at claws snagging on the fabric.

Movement came from the trees. Noises that Thean didn’t seem to hear. The close voices of those hunters making me flinch. I’d killed one. I turned to see him slumped in the mud, only for Thean to catch my chin, pulling my focus back to them.

My lip trembled and I hated it. Hated how their eyes caught it. How obvious my fear was. How easily I let myself slip back into the past.

Then there was nothing but the absence of them as they got to their feet, shadow blades appearing in their hands before they vanished. Vanished as if they’d never been there at all.

No. The warmth and scent of their coat told me they were. They’d simply become the creature I should have never forgotten they were.

One of the Countess’s assassins. A death their mark would never see coming.

Then there was nothing but screaming. Ruthless screaming.

I scrunched my eyes closed but forced myself to listen.

They deserved it. All of them. For how they’d turned me into nothing but a shivering lump on the cold earth.

I clawed at Thean’s coat, trying to drag their scent in.

To find any comfort, but that scent was too weak in this mortal form.

The smell of wet earth too strong. Like those graves in Daunton Wood.

Then I felt that I was drowning merely trying to draw in breath.

A touch brushed my shoulder. I recoiled, kicking and hissing, only to find Thean peering down at me moments later. Shirt streaked with blood, that blade sheathed once again at their thigh. As they reached out to help me, like I was some lame foal.

Then I remembered who I was. My bitterness rising above my fears.

‘I don’t need your pity,’ I snapped.

‘I don’t have any pity in me, darling,’ they sighed and then they pulled me up into their arms so effortlessly. Leaving me no choice but to cling to them for fear of being dropped. For fear of falling once again.

‘I was carrying a sack. We need to find—’ I barely got the words out before the thing dropped against my middle, forcing me to clutch it despite how thickly it was coated in mud.

Kat had trusted me with it.

‘Cursed objects have a tendency to harbour bad luck, sweetheart,’ Thean warned, but their voice wasn’t as playful as I remembered. Their form too tense as if lost in thought.