Page 64 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Kat

The hunters tore through the west and east. Nothing but cruel men given permission to do cruel things.

Their loyalty driven by hatred. Driven by the poisonous greed that this land was theirs, that it hadn’t existed before their saint had deemed it so.

That their king’s dogma was true, and they were destined for a greatness that would never come.

Reaver records of the east – papers of the second purge

Weak men hunt the innocent. For cruelty and hatred are the only pleasures they’ll ever know. My father had taught me that. Words never truer as I watched the hunters move through the cobbled streets and the quiet distress of fey echoed back through the narrow village.

Images of the purges, the cruelty of the kings before, flickered through my mind like pages turning in a book. The hot fury of my magic bit into my bones, making my veins glow with a lavender hue. My father’s blade in my hand and vengeance singing in my blood.

Fuelled by the cold bite of Emrys where he crouched at my side, so still and watching in the shadows, those dark veins across his jaw, down his throat and twisting between his gloved fingers. Nothing but focus in his pitch-black eyes. A predator on the hunt.

Of course, he’d woken the morning knowing this threat was coming. Those instincts in him correct. Varin was moving, only I didn’t think he was here now.

We’d barely had time to prepare. I’d managed to find some new boots as William put on his own leathers. Demanding to come despite Gideon’s grumbled reluctance. But up against hunters who hungered for something – and with verium in their arsenal – we needed all the help we could get.

‘Thean, you should be hiding,’ William whispered sharply behind me.

‘I’d rather die than scuttle about in the mud, darling,’ was the voyav’s dry reply from where they leant against an old woodshed, partially concealed in a strip of shadow.

Gideon sent the voyav an irritated glance from where the rest of us were all crouched in the mud.

All except the voyav, who appeared completely bored by the danger just around a few corners.

Of course, I imagined Thean’s usual order of business was to kill first and wonder later. Or perhaps never wonder at all.

‘Here she comes,’ William hissed, thankfully saving us all from another spat between Gideon and Thean.

I don’t know when William practised the art of holding a cloak out like a magician to catch Alma’s bird form and knowing when to drop the bundle as she shifted.

So it fell to the ground to cover a crouched Alma, as her head poked out.

Her eyes gleaming with anger and the impression of feathers still against her flushed cheeks.

Her flight and landing weren’t as smooth as I’d seen, her recovery still ongoing, but she’d refused to be told what to do and I wasn’t going to make decisions for her.

‘They’re digging,’ she panted, sweat from the flurry of her flight making her dark curls stick to her brow.

‘Digging?’ William repeated, voice far too high in pitch to be calm.

‘In the ruins in the woods. Twelve hunters. Four dogs.’ She nodded. ‘They have fey locked in the main hall and some in caged wagons.’

‘They’ve found something,’ Gideon cursed. ‘The lords of old buried their treasures.’

‘Why?’ William’s fingers were buried in the soil between his knees as if seeking some comfort from the earth.

‘In case a Kysillian came by with a firestorm.’ Gideon’s eyes met my own. ‘We all know how well those flames suppress Verr summonings.’

Of course. It was why the King wanted Kysillians gone before all others. Kysillian flame was the only thing that could compete with such destructive dark summoning. Why the Countess held those blades like a trophy. Protection from the dark magic she played with.

‘We need to summon Priscilla,’ Gideon added irritably, tugging at his hair in frustration as he peered around the cottage again.

‘Her Reavers won’t enter territory so close to the lines held by the rebels,’ Emrys warned, his eyes not leaving the hunters that moved distantly down the narrow streets, tone flat with rage.

We were on our own.

‘We need a distraction,’ I offered. Distraction to get those fey to safety, somehow. To pull the hunters’ focus away. Knowing we were running out of time. There weren’t enough hunters here and if Montagor was interested in what could rest here, he wouldn’t be far behind. He never was.

‘Can we just have a moment to—’ Gideon didn’t have a chance to finish before Alma shifted again. The cloak dropping to the cobbles before her crow form took off into the skies, before she shifted into her wrywing form with a loud roar. Silver scales gleaming in the low winter sun.

‘Bollocks,’ Gideon snapped, pulling his blade from his belt and glaring at Emrys. ‘This is like the fucking east hills all over again.’

‘How would you know, you were busy crossing swords with two guards in the armoury,’ Thean snorted, picking at their nails with their dagger. Only their eyes tracked the form of Alma as she swooped behind a tree line.

‘I was getting information ,’ Gideon bristled, ignoring the panicked shout of hunters.

‘ Vigorously from what I heard, little witch,’ Thean added unhelpfully with a sly smirk.

Emrys – thankfully – ignored their bickering as he dug a hand into his jacket pocket. ‘William. Get the fey out and open the wagons.’

He pulled out a portal stone and a rune marker, handing them to William. Everything the boy would need to make a usable portal for a short period of time.

‘Where are they going?’ William nodded, face serious and determined.

‘The eastern fields,’ Emrys replied. ‘Stay out of trouble.’

‘I’m sure Priscilla will fucking love you dropping them on her doorstep,’ Gideon griped as William darted around the side of the cottage and into one of the other alleyways. Emrys’s jaw was tight with worry, those dark eyes watching him go.

‘I’ll help William with the portal stone,’ I offered. Worried about leaving him on his own, and knowing Emrys’s focus needed to be on the hunters and what they were doing. Not on the boy he cared for like his own son.

Without another word I followed William down the other side of the alley. Silently jumping over scattered market baskets where someone had dropped their wares. The hunters arriving too swiftly. Then I turned another corner and saw William’s fiery head crouched in the bushes.

‘William,’ I whispered, still managing to startle him as I stopped to join him in his hiding place. Considering the town square ahead of us. Quaint, surrounded by small cottages with smoking chimneys and narrow cobbled streets. The kind of village my mother would illustrate in her stories for me.

Two guards stood watch of a caged wagon, fey men inside. Beyond them, the main hall doors rattled slightly. Voices crying and shouting to be let out, before one of the guards kicked the doors to silence them.

A few kelsh fey men knelt at the side of the wagon.

They had patches of a scaled texture on their arms and face.

Earth summoners, mostly land workers now.

Small black horns protruded from their brows.

From the bulk of them, it was apparent why they all had bleeding wounds.

They’d been hit with verium. Their hands behind their heads, faces bloody as if they’d put up resistance.

One I was certain they’d pay for the moment the hunters got what they wanted.

They wouldn’t leave witnesses. Not to this.

A boom shook the earth and made me grip William’s shoulder as smoke rose over the small cottages from the direction we’d come. At the same time a large flock of birds rose from the surrounding wood. Followed by the roar of Alma’s wrywing form in the distance.

I suppose that was the sign we were waiting for. The guards watching the wagons turned, distracted.

‘I’ll knock them out.’ William buried his hands in the dirt beneath the bushes. His fingers giving off a faint green glow, eyes shut tight with concentration.

Then the ground quaked for a different reason.

William sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, his shoulders bunched with the might of his summoning.

His roots exploded from the earth across the yard.

Screams filled the air from startled fey.

The hunters flew into the air, only to land with a sickening crunch against the cobbled road, necks no longer at the right angle.

William looked stricken before he shook his head, steely determination filling his flushed face. ‘Serves the bastards right.’

‘Ready?’ I asked as Alma roared overhead again and I heard a boom. Either from Gideon or Emrys’s summoning. The cries of hunters in the distance grew louder.

William nodded, sweat beading his brow as we lurched forwards at the same moment, crossing the space.

‘Oi!’ a hunter cried, coming from around the wagon.

Hand on his sword. I let my father’s blade twist in my palm, small and swift.

I threw it. It sailed through the air with a streak of fire.

Burying itself home in the bastard’s chest. He fell backwards with the force just as Alma roared overhead.

Dropping two screaming hunters she’d picked up from somewhere – who weren’t screaming any more as they hit the cobbles with a horrid wet crunch.

‘Use the storehouse doorway.’ I grabbed William’s shoulder where he’d paused with worry. Turning him towards the large carriage house doors hanging open from the raid. ‘I’ll open the wagons and the hall.’

William’s boots skidded as he turned direction, jumping over the hunters’ bodies and sprinting to the carriage house. Pulling the rune marker and portal stone from his pocket.

I pulled my blade from the hunter’s chest, his wide red-rimmed eyes filled with nothing but death before I moved to the wagon.

I let my blade lengthen again, slashing through the chain threaded through the kelsh men’s bindings. They recoiled in an instant, stumbling to their feet. Pulling those short, strange darts from their flesh. Their vibrant green eyes sizing me up for a threat.

‘ Get them out ,’ I commanded in Mican, not wasting a moment as I climbed the wagon step to find the lock.

‘Rebels,’ one of the women hissed inside as she clutched a crying swaddled child to her chest. A duok with pale markings up the side of her face – an earth healer.

‘ No. We’re here to help,’ I answered in Mican, startling her before I grabbed the lock, heating it until it warped easily against my palm. I leapt back, the door swinging free.

‘ Get to the portal ,’ I commanded, pointing them in William’s direction, where he waved frantically, the Portium light glowing behind him.

Then I moved to the next lock, getting that one open too as one of the villagers took an axe to the lock on the main hall doors and fey came rushing out.

The crowd pushed and moved towards William.

Children crying as the elderly hobbled with the help of the young.

Some hesitated at the dark shadow of Alma roaring from above.

‘ Move !’ I barked.

A scream came from behind me, turning me to find a girl clutching a straw doll as her mother pulled her away.

There was a horrid crack of bone as the corpses Alma had dropped started to undulate in their own puddles of blood on the road.

‘Bollocks,’ I hissed. The hunters had sworn themselves. They were becoming fiends.

‘Fuck,’ William exclaimed, eyes wide with panic through the crowd as he realised at the same time.

‘Keep going, William!’ I ordered, stepping into the street. I let my flame sing in my veins, let it race across the cobbles and form a barrier. Keeping the fey and William on the other side, as the dead rose before me, if pulled on strings by a master.

The corpses undulated. Eyes full black. Teeth snapping. It should have reminded me of the thing Master Hale had become. Should have consumed me with that childish fear.

Murderer. A dark voice hissed in my ear. Only it didn’t strike as it once had before.

No. Because I was a murderer and I’d do it again. The fiends screeched and charged. I’d fought a fiend before. Two couldn’t be much harder. I just hoped no more turned up.

A roar pealed from my lips as I let flame race from my palm. Forced it forwards, engulfing them in its deadly jaws, becoming nothing but ash.

I should have remembered how many Alma had dropped.

A force hit my side. Sending me slamming into a wooden hut.

Hay and dust exploded around me, filling my mouth with grime as I tumbled across the wreckage, my blade sliding from my grip.

I kicked debris off myself, seeing the shadowed shape of the fiends moving through the dusty air.

‘Bastard,’ I hissed, surging to my feet and rolling flame between my palms before thrusting it towards the creatures. They screamed and thrashed as my summoning devoured them.

I lunged for my sword that had fallen next to me beneath the debris, getting my hand around the hilt before a clawed hand seized my jacket, wrenching me backwards.

I threw my elbow back, catching the creature’s jaw enough to get free. Turning and letting my flame consume its skull. It screeched, clawing at its own eyes. Scrambling backwards. Only for something else to catch my jacket, throwing me into the brick chimney.

I bared my teeth, about to turn on the fiend, only to feel the sting of a blade at my throat.

‘What do we have here?’ a strange voice asked. The cool metal at my throat biting deep. Stealing my breath, my heart hammering into my ribs. The wishing stone flickering wildly just as my magic flared in my veins.

Then the stone guttered out. Darkness filled my vision. A chaotic, vicious air, a pained cry and then a sickening crash of bone against stone. The blade against my flesh.

It only took a blink for the darkness to abate, for Emrys’s strong hands to suddenly be there.

Hauling me behind him. Those dark-tipped fingers curling into my jacket, as if to comfort himself I was all there.

His deadly gaze fixed on my throat, making my trembling fingers move to it, but there was no blood. No cut.

‘A Blackthorn making a mess. I can’t say I’m surprised,’ came a smug voice. I was unable to see anything but Emrys’s broad chest, blocking my view of the speaker.

I pushed up on my toes, glancing over his shoulder to find ourselves surrounded.

More guards and, standing in front of them, was a water nymph. An imposing, striking creature. All sharp angles and deadly handsomeness. That impossible inky blue hair, dark eyes and iridescent skin designed to drag foolish maidens to the depths.

Then I saw the emblem pin at the lapel of his own tight-fitting black fighting leathers. The fist and dagger.

The rebellion.