Page 67 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Where I expected feral brutal loyalty at such an insult, Callen and Aster remained quiet, almost solemn in the face of such a truth.

‘Be careful, Blackthorn, you have no idea the lengths she will go to win this. The bargains she’ll make with monsters themselves.

’ Callen’s eyes gleamed with warning, but there was no anger.

Not even a threat in the flare of his magic.

Nothing but a strange desperation, as if conveying a message with no words at all.

‘Montagor is ravaging these lands because he wishes to control dark artifacts. The more he acquires the further his reach will grow. It’s only a matter of time until it leads him to a seal,’ Gideon answered, uncaring for the threat.

‘How can you be certain of that?’ Callen frowned, only those eyes sharpened with concern at the darkness laced within the words. The threat of what Montagor could be up to.

‘A children’s tale,’ Aster scoffed, yet Callen’s lavender gaze grew hard with worry.

‘Is that why your Countess hunted it too for a time?’ Gideon countered. A smooth rhythm between them that told me they’d all met before.

My hackles rose at Gideon’s slight. What use would the Countess have for artifacts? Especially of the Old Gods?

I felt Emrys’s power bite but I kept my gaze on Callen. On the blood we shared, on the barest hint that he was not where the ancestors willed him to be. Just as Thean wasn’t.

‘ This won’t be a war if Montagor possesses anymore relics ,’ I spoke in Kysillian again. Wondering if they too found it strange to see another of us in the wilderness of the world. ‘ He’s going for the seals. He’ll need Kysillian blood to finish this. ’

Callen stayed silent, but there was no hard edge to his gaze or those words.

A heart seal was bigger than all the others if the tales were to be believed. It had taken seven kings to seal it, therefore it only stood to reason that it would take seven Kysillian lives to open it. Powerful bloodlines.

Fear bit deep into my bones, the scar at my neck almost burning in warning at that truth. How fey had already been taken so senselessly beneath Fairfax . All that pain and blood … for nothing. It was a drop in the ocean of what was to come.

‘ They tried to take mine ,’ I offered, pulling the collar of my leathers aside to show the marked skin at my neck. The paleness of a scar only a demon could leave.

Callen had gone very still. Either sensing the ferocity of it and the truth in my words or repulsed by the weakness in me to allow my Kysillian flesh to be marked in such a way. So visibly.

I’d been bested. Time and time again. Yet I stood here still and I refused to be ashamed. Because as I looked at that blood mark on Callen, he’d been bested too – and there was no shame in it. Not here with me. Not if it had let them survive.

‘Fairfax was using ancient blood. An experiment Montagor seemed interested in,’ I continued in mortal tongue, unafraid of what that revealed. ‘Surely you’ve heard that tale .’

The rebellion would have known. They knew everything. The cruelty they allowed because beaten fey were a weapon they could wield to their advantage. Desperate fey would pay any price for protection, a price their Countess liked to reap.

Callen gave no answer. Couldn’t because I’d seen that ring on her finger. The artifact she used to hone her power. How ruthlessly she kept these beings like pets. Wore our sacred blades as jewellery. I knew that pain and I knew the shame of it.

‘Callen,’ the Nymph reprimanded, as if knowing every thought in the Kysillian’s head. A worry formed at Aster’s brow, one that spoke of something deeper than simple camaraderie between the two.

‘You shouldn’t have wandered across my path, Blackthorn,’ the Kysillian warned, a slight panic filling those lavender eyes. ‘She wants your attention too much.’

Fear coiled tightly in my chest at that warning. The Countess wanted Emrys. Of course she did with her interest in the seals and Verr relics.

Yet Callen turned back to me. ‘ A free Kysillian is a gift these days. It seems the ancestors watch over you. So, who am I to make you stray from your path, Nuva ?’

Nuva . Sister. A form of respect I’d never heard before. One between warriors.

To keep this secret and lie to his master? I didn’t need to wonder why. I knew.

The scared Kysillian blades in the Countess’s grasp chafed against the loyalty in his blood as much as it chafed against mine.

‘ You’ll let us go ?’ I demanded, still not trusting him. Not believing that something as simple as my blood could sway him.

‘ With a warning. ’ His lavender eyes gleamed with it. ‘ Pray those monsters in the north stay away. Or they’ll kill you slowly as penance for what he is. ’

He nodded his head in Emrys’s direction, yet the caution in his stare pinned me in place. No disgust or disdain. Almost pity.

What the elders would have done to my mother to punish my father for his disloyalty to his blood. For wasting sacred magic on half-breeds.

Then I watched Aster shift uncomfortably and avert their gaze. Saw why perhaps Callen would feel the need to warn me – when he himself was in the same danger.

‘ I’m not theirs ,’ I challenged.

‘ We all are. Even if they don’t want us. ’ Callen’s smile was small with sadness. ‘ They care for honour too much. ’

They cared about their honour so much they’d rather destroy this world and the truth to keep their power.

Even Kysillia’s stories can be twisted for them to gain power from your ignorance. A truth my father had given me long ago. How corrupt our own elders had become for nothing but pride.

‘We cannot stay much longer.’ Aster warned softly, noticing the rebels struggling to keep the captured hunters under control.

Callen ran a hand down his tired face, nodding before looking at me one last time.

‘ Take heed. A milvok lies on the path ahead ,’ he offered. An old strange tale. A milvok was an invisible creature, a trickster with a poisonous bite.

Some say it never existed at all. That it was a warning for something else, almost in code. Yet as he gave it I saw the discomfort on his features, as if the words felt like glass tearing from his throat.

Of course. He was sworn to the Countess, and when she demanded secrecy he had no choice but to give it. Not about the plans she had or who they involved.

Pain flickered across his expression before he turned, shouting a command to withdraw to the rebels that lingered close by. Spurring them into motion. A tiredness apparent in the fall of his shoulders. Aster watched him cautiously. Concerned.

Reminding me that Callen has been offered as payment to the Countess. A horrid feeling that it’d happened against his will. This strange entrapment, by elders we were supposed to respect. Who were supposed to guard us.

‘ May they guard you, Nuor ,’ I called in parting, watching his back tense. He didn’t turn back to me, as if to dismiss that ancient word between us, as if he wasn’t worthy of hearing it.

Nuor . Brother. What the warriors would have called each other before battles.

‘Move them!’ a rebel shouted to another who was moving two hunters, their hands bound. A group of rebels dragging those remaining hunters away from the wall – to whatever grizzly fate the Countess had planned for them.

I couldn’t look away. Seeing how the hatred burning in their eyes met my own. No different from those corpses that had risen again.

Then in a moment all I could see was those small bones glinting in the pit. There was enough fury in my blood to incinerate this village. To turn the very stone to nothing but ash. I knew it and yet I remained still. Allowed it to coil viciously inside of me.

‘Kat.’ Emrys took a gentle hold of my arm to guide me away, as if he could feel it stirring within me.

I needed to leave. My anger would fix nothing here. No. We’d been too late.

One hunter lurched forward from the rebel’s hold, screaming and snapping their teeth against their restraints. Forcing more rebels to try and drag them back.

‘Get them gone!’ Callen commanded. Only then did I see the momentary distraction. How one of the other captured hunters was so still in the chaos. How their bound hands reached for their belt. The gleam of green. The crazed toothy smile in the mass of bodies. Lost in the chaos.

Something was in his bound hands. A dark metal sphere, a green sheen to the markings on it. The runes I couldn’t mistake.

A vorg.

Dark storms came across the battlefields of the west.

Blood and screams. Tearing through the innocent and leaving nothing but terror in their wake.

Wild fiends locked in weapons. Bringers of nothing but death.

‘Emrys!’ Gideon cried a moment too late as the static of his aether hummed in the air. That vorg flared a blinding bright green. It imploded with a scream from the rebels closest to it.

The force tore me from Emrys’s grip. My back hit stone, debris striking my skin. A cry burst from my lips. There was no demon fire, nothing but the looming demonic storm freed from its trap.

Pale grey smoke and sulphuric dark flames. Sharp flashes of teeth and claws. Too many tumbled together, screeching and making the ground quake. Undulating and twisting with a deadly ferocity.

A demonic storm. One that stole my breath. Smothered my air before I could summon. Whipping all around me. Sparks flaring and guttering in my palms. Screams filled the air, chaotic shouts but I couldn’t see what was happening.

The terrified shriek of William.

Someone screaming my name.

Then there was nothing. Only darkness and pain as I drowned in the pressure in my lungs.

I tried to summon my magic, but no flames would catch.

The icy bite of fear stung my heart. Then that dark storm brushed my exposed flesh.

Like a hundred icy blades piercing at once.

A searing pain coming from the scar at my neck as if the galmoth’s fangs had dug in once more.

I bucked wildly as agony tore through me, screaming until my throat was raw with it.

Please , I pleaded helplessly in the back of my mind. Then bright white demon fire stung my eyes, air rushed down my throat. Clean and sharp. Filled with nothing but the scent of beasam bark.

The ground cracked beneath me. Deep fissures as the fine dirt began to bounce with the ferocity of the quaking. A boom made my ears ring as if thunder had broken above. The darkness abated in an instant, suddenly swirling across the courtyard from my panting form like a storm cloud.

The village came back into focus, cobbles and dirt splattered with blood.

Lifeless eyes looking at me. As the cloud of forsaken smoke continued to undulate and scream.

Being pulled by some invisible wind as flashes of bright ethereal light came from within it.

Whisp-like claws attacking itself, as it was pulled in and in on itself.

Smaller and smaller. That pale demon fire at its centre growing brighter. Until a dark figure could be seen in the middle of it. That pale summoning like bright white fire all around him.

Emrys. Burning the creature from within.

Until with one final demonic scream, that storm fractured in a deadly boom.

The force of it almost sending me back to the ground.

The fiend becoming nothing but thick ashy clumps that rained down on my prone form like snow.

I panted, palms braced on the cobbles beneath me.

Looking up at the imposing bulk of Emrys.

His hands were still outstretched, that blinding light between his fingers where he’d unmade it. Darkness rippled and danced across his pale flesh. Making his features sharper, deadlier. Something else was in there looking back at me.

Nothing but darkness in male form.

Serus.

The wishing stone practically trembling against my breastbone, as if even the power contained there wished to be free and return.

The distant moans of the rebels caught my ear as they regained their feet.

‘Emrys?’ I stumbled to my knees and then my feet, ignoring Gideon’s call of warning. The stillness in Emrys felt like a threat. I reached for his hand. His skin was ice cold, almost making me pull back, my magic flaring in answer.

Only for his dark shadows to strike out, wrapping twice around my arm to keep me in place.

He looked down at where my touch curled over his own wrist. Blankly as if he didn’t recognise me.

The breeze didn’t stir his hair. He didn’t even breathe. So still and strange.

The Old Gods know no mortal vices. They know no pleasure or pain. Only power. Horror clawed at my heart at that ancient hymn.

‘Emrys?’ I called again, only he didn’t move.

Didn’t look at me. So still and so lost. Until movement came from behind.

Those deadly jet-black eyes focusing on something over my shoulder.

A strange sound rumbling in his chest in threat.

I turned to find Gideon there, William tucked safely behind him.

A warning crackle of magic was building around us as the rebels took stock of what stood before them. A rumbling like a storm rolling overhead as the sky darkened.

‘It’s us, Emrys,’ Gideon warned, but I saw the flash of panic in his blue eyes. The movement from the rebels rising around us made the ground shake again, made that darkness in Emrys lash out and bite. Curling around my wrist almost painfully.

Those demonic eyes darted over every perceived threat, his lips pulled back in a feral display. A crack as the earth beneath his boots split, strange ethereal runes glowing up from the quaking earth.

Beneath. It comes from beneath.

‘Emrys,’ I barely breathed, heart breaking to see him so confused. So unlike himself. The version he never wished to be.

So predatory. That darkness moving beneath as if it was a living thing, curling around his limbs with such authority I felt the primitive side of my magic bite in response. Wishing to challenge what it was trying to take from me.

His head twitched, those eyes closing. The cold sting of his magic biting deep like claws. Painfully so. Something was speaking to him.

I stepped closer, until the icy sharpness of his magic sank into my exposed flesh.

‘ Eria , we need to go home,’ I called, needing him to listen. Hoping I hadn’t lost him so easily.

That strange twitching stopped as if the voices had been held at bay. The grip of his magic eased ever so slightly on my flesh as his eyes opened.

Endless darkness stared back at me.

Before it rose from his skin like smoke.

Gideon gave a cry of warning but it was too late as the ground moved beneath our feet, sending us tumbling into nothingness.