Page 57 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

‘I need a bath.’ I stood, our hands slipping apart as I used the back of the chaise to support my unsteady legs. Not missing how the voyav’s hands flexed as if resisting the urge to help.

‘I wouldn’t soak your wounds until the balm has been given enough time to work.’

‘I don’t want him on me.’ The words were too sharp with my panic. Childish, as I curled my shoulders inwards. Bile rising in my throat at the stickiness between my fingers. The phantom feel of his hands across my flesh.

Thean strode past me, to the door that led to another room.

Only to realise it led to my room. Or what had been Kat’s room before the house had moved her to Emrys’s.

They needed no instruction, as if they’d been here before and that thought made me flush.

They opened the bathroom door and turned the taps of the bath, bending in to fit the plug.

Pulling back to fold their arms and glare down at the water as if watching it would make the tub fill quicker.

‘What are you doing?’ I frowned, shocked by such mortal movements coming from them.

‘You don’t want them on you,’ Thean replied effortlessly, no annoyance or hesitation in the words.

‘The balm—’

‘I’ll do it again,’ they offered softly. But there was an anger in the tension of their jaw. One I thought was aimed at me, but their gaze was looking at my calves. Where they’d cut deeper than everywhere else. Across the curve of my foot, right to my toes.

Nobody who’d seen them before had seemed to care. Not the men my Keeper brought with their wandering hands. Or even Daunton in the end.

I was nothing but something to be used. Used so much I ceased to exist. Every flinch or tear became invisible. For I had been nothing but a thing, and only what they could take had value.

Then I understood Thean’s fury – why it was so familiar to me. It was the same feral sharpness I’d seen in Kat’s eyes when she looked upon those marks – when she’d seen them the first time in Daunton. Still weeping and scabbed.

Only, if Thean had changed me after I’d become the ravhorn, they would have already seen them. Unless …

‘You really didn’t look,’ I whispered, unsure why that truth settled so warmly inside of me. Why it made my eyes sting with tears.

‘You didn’t give me permission to,’ Thean answered.

The simplicity of those words stunned me, shamed me too.

What I’d become, to forget my voice and my choices mattered.

The space between us seemed too cavernous, filled with this strange game.

With secrets and unspoken things – yet, there was something I wanted to say.

Wanted to free from the confines of my chest, wanted someone to hear, even if they forgot it eventually.

Even if they forgot me.

‘Sometimes they cut away so much I wondered if there would be anything left.’ I’d worried how much they could take, worried when they’d find nothing of value left. Wondering what they’d do with me then.

The cruellest part was that even here, safe and warm, it made it worse. What if I’d made it up? What if I was the only one who remembered? What if none of it happened at all and I was simply mad?

‘Now it just feels like a dream. Like it never happened at all.’ I dug my fingers into their coat around me, painfully. Wishing they were sharper claws so they could bury themselves deeper. To drag the sorrow from my skin. Hating the sting of emotion in my throat.

‘It did.’ Thean’s voice cut through the darkness of those thoughts, like a small lantern swinging in the night wind, guiding me back to sanity.

They came closer, cautiously. Crossing that distance between us, as they slipped into a more feminine form, so effortlessly I didn’t think they’d even noticed.

‘What’s your favourite form?’ I asked to distract them – to distract myself, perhaps.

They looked down at their own hand. ‘I’ve never been able to decide.’

‘I used to like being a spear finch.’ Too small and delicate so my Keeper would be too afraid to handle me. No matter how he spat and cursed to have me back. He wouldn’t touch me.

I remembered the small victory of it. How I’d spent hours cleaning those pretty teal feathers. Trying not to think of what would happen when I faltered, and my mortal form came back.

‘They’re pretty, too.’ I shrugged, trying to push away the darkness of the memory. The pain of it.

‘Not as pretty as you, little nightmare,’ the voyav offered so softly, almost as if the words had slipped free of their lips against their will.

My sharp edges should have cut them for trying to play a game. For the cruelty of pretending those words were true. Only the longer I looked at them, the harder it was to be angry. To find a lie in their soft unguarded expression.

‘People pay a fortune for a spear finch,’ I reasoned. A price nobody would pay for a nameless girl like me. A monster in human flesh.

‘You’re not a bird now,’ they observed, coming closer still – until there was nothing but the sinful scent of them filling my lungs.

‘No.’ I’d learnt that the hard way. ‘I needed claws more than wings. It took me a shamefully long time to realise that. Too long perhaps.’

Someone stronger might have broken away sooner. Someone cleverer might have found a different way. Then my eyes moved to that blood mark upon Thean’s throat. Knowing there were more, there had to be. The more powerful the being, the more blood marks it took to contain them.

Perhaps that was why the Countess liked the strongest creatures – to demonstrate her power. To break even the most monstrous of us.

‘You made your vow,’ I swallowed. Blood sworn. In service until death. A cruel fate, and even crueller to those who convinced themselves it was better than anything else. That service was better than the danger of freedom.

A dry humourless laugh left their lips. ‘I don’t remember that either. Just someone asking a question and being too scared to say no.’

I could never imagine them small or weak. Yet as that wicked amber gaze found my own once more, there were no lies in it. No, just open and lost. Such regret pressed there, making me wonder, if given the choice again, what they’d do.

Say yes, little rat , that voice commanded in my mind. How brutal and cold. Mocking.

Then those eyes went hard, with displeasure as if sensing the rise in emotions within me.

‘Pity?’ they mocked sharply, flashing fangs, but I could see the sorrow hiding in the dark corners of their amber eyes.

That pain moved me closer, letting me pull in another breath of their cologne. How comforting it was despite how it tightened that strange knot of unease inside of me. Ignoring my beastly urges to want that scent all over my skin. To be claimed by it.

Strangely missing it despite the voyav being right before me.

‘Maybe I see imprints of my story within the pages of yours, Thean,’ I whispered. Knowing that pain, the sharp and destructive nature of it because of how similar it was to my own. ‘And I’m glad you’re here, promises or not.’

For a moment their face was so soft and content I could have been fooled into thinking they were mortal.

‘That might be the most dangerous thing you’ve ever said, little love.’ There was a soft mirth there but a pain too. Making me want to give them privacy as I moved to the bath, letting my hands sink into the water. Watching it cloud instantly from the dirt caked on my fingers.

‘Do you think—’ I began, turning, but Thean was gone. The taps groaned as if the house foolishly wished they’d stayed too.