Page 72 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Kat

There was a sorceress formed of moonlight who danced between the shadows of the wood alone.

Too powerful for her kin … too wild for the world to catch.

Until a demon prince sang to her untamed heart.

A storm of silver and endless night. A love pressed between the shadows.

A courting of nightmares that danced into the everlasting night.

Song of the Eternal Night – Unknown

I woke to the barest brush of something against my temple. I was curled around Emrys’s pillow on his side of the bed. A bed Emrys wasn’t in.

I forced myself onto my elbows, taking in the room bathed in morning light. A rustle came from the pillow, catching my attention. A small paper bird perched there, its head tilted expectantly.

A note. I pushed the unruly hair from my face.

‘You have something for me?’ I held out my palm for it to hop into. The paper unfurling immediately.

Croinn.

You were too beautiful to wake.

Lady Ramsey sent summons. I assume she wasn’t best pleased by our delivery yesterday. I promise not to fight with any mirocs.

Yours, always.

Emrys

Of course. Gideon had said as much. We’d dropped those fey at the eastern border with no warning.

I pressed the note to my chest, tumbling back to the pillows and staring up at the canopy above the bed.

I should be relieved he felt better – that he’d gone back to working on all the things we still needed to do.

Yet unease remained, prodding incessantly against my ribs as if I had missed something.

I pulled myself from the bed, and moved to where I’d left my leathers, pulling out my mother’s note where I’d tucked it into the pocket. I pressed it to my nose again, seeking her scent that had long faded.

Leaving nothing but dust and the bitterness of ink behind.

‘I miss you.’ I ran my thumb over the parchment. Over the familiar curve of her writing. My only wish was that they found each other. That all the stories were real and something existed beyond this. I’d face whatever the ancestors sent my way, as long as they could be together again.

I tucked the last fragment of her safely away in Emrys’s desk, grabbing my robe and making my way downstairs.

I didn’t get far before the bustling presence of Alma greeted me. Seemingly her usual self. Her dark curls pinned beautifully away from her face, a simple blue cotton dress making her green eyes appear sharper than ever.

‘The dead awaken at last,’ she teased.

‘How are you?’ I demanded. Pulling her into a tight embrace. Surprised that she let me. Wondering where she’d gone and how she’d missed the rebellion. Thanking the ancestors silently that she had. Also for how quickly she seemed to now be recovering from her changes.

‘Remind me never to take a bite of a hunter again,’ she mumbled against my shoulder before pulling back, and there was something about the avoidance in her gaze – I couldn’t help feel that she was hiding. Every inch of her covered.

‘I’m certain you already know Lady Ramsey summoned them before dawn. As you can guess, Gideon was thrilled.’ She rolled her eyes before doing her own inventory of me, as if she needed to check every freckle across my nose. There was a strange intensity in her stare – unsettled, perhaps.

‘I should have been with you.’ Wondered if she was angry with me – even distantly. Her small smile didn’t falter, but the sharpness in her gaze softened.

‘You can’t save me all the time, Kat. The hunters and the verium wasn’t your fault.’ She hooked her finger around one of my own.

I’d promised her safety and I’d failed her. Failed to find any purpose to all this chaos.

A rattling turned our attention to the doorway where William stood grinning, cheeks flushed as he hopped on the balls of his feet as if unable to contain his excitement.

‘Good, you’re both here,’ he began. ‘We have something … wonderful to show you!’

‘Who is we ?’ Alma demanded, her hands falling to her hips. A dangerous pose – I’d learnt the hard way.

‘You have to promise not to get mad.’ The boy held his hands up in surrender, but he barely got a moment to finish before the dark head of a hound poked between his legs.

A hound formed of dark matter and smoke. Like a …

‘What the bloody fuck is that ?!’ Alma seethed, grabbing my arm as if to wrench me behind her. Her hands twisting into claws in an instant.

‘Look!’ William smiled, dropping to one knee to scratch behind the fiend’s ear. ‘Isn’t he delightful ?’

‘Please tell me that’s not the gobrite,’ I half stuttered, unable to put it all together.

Did we lock the cage again after Gideon had removed the shard? I couldn’t remember.

‘I want to call him Orin,’ William announced, ignoring me. ‘It means dark ghost. He does his business outside and everything.’

‘It should be in its cage ,’ Alma warned as she bared her teeth at the creature. The fiend’s ears went flat, head bowed as if scared.

‘He looked sad.’ William’s face fell.

‘I’m sure it’ll cheer up when it’s ripping out our throats in our sleep,’ she snapped.

‘I already have you to worry about for that, darling,’ Thean interjected as they suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

They were in a feminine form, billowing shirt, tight riding trousers and corset, a multitude of weapons at their belt as if they’d been on patrol. Hair braided and twisted around their head like a crown, dangerous amber eyes gleaming with irritation.

‘I think whatever you did to trap it made it lose its power, Kat,’ William reasoned, petting the fiend’s head again. The bastard creature had the audacity to tilt its head in enjoyment. ‘It’s quite tame.’

Then I saw the delight in the boy’s eyes, an almost shy pleading. Asking something with no words.

‘I am not talking Emrys into letting you keep that thing,’ I protested. Aghast he’d even think it was an option.

The boy’s face fell. The fiend whined. Sulking.

Bollocks. How was I going to convince Emrys to let William keep a fiend as a pet?

Thean sighed, pushing their hands into their pockets as they glared at the creature, which instantly cowered, lowering itself to the ground. Simpering. ‘The beast is completely null. I assume Emrys’s performance last night has rendered most dark summonings contained in this house quite impotent .’

The dark respects its master. What was more masterful than the power of Serus given mortal form?

‘The relic must have been powering it. Or corrupting it. Maybe they’re all like this really,’ William offered weakly, which didn’t reassure me one bit. ‘Didn’t you say skelmor were peaceful creatures?’

Then the thoughts began to click within my mind, turning like cogs.

I’d used Kysillian flame to conceal the gobrite.

The old texts talked of Kysillia’s flame cleansing the dark – only maybe it didn’t mean destroying it.

The dark summoning of the gobrite had been changed by my flame. Brought into submission.

‘If we knew how to get the other books open, that might give us a clue as to why the relics affect them so much,’ William sighed.

Because the Compendium of Souls would hopefully explain this ancient magic better than any other tome. My magic sparked in my fingertips, stinging my thumb and forefinger where I had held my mother’s note.

A note she’d left, on the paper from that text.

‘It was open,’ I whispered.

The Compendium of Souls had been open. My mother had written a note from its page.

Lady Leanna Grey. A lord’s daughter.

There were no powerful compendiums in the Greymark line or mages. So why did the Mage King suddenly want her? Why would he want a consort of inferior blood? Why would he care when he was bedding and sacrificing fey to try to reawaken the Old Gods?

I moved to the desk in the study, looking to the overlong family lines. Finding the Greymark one. How it twisted and weaved through all the others. Picking up the scraps at the end of every branch, as if they were always the last option.

A reluctant bargain.

They mixed with every line. Whored their daughters to keep favour in the courts. The fate my mother was destined to face.

Lord Turner said the King wanted the seals more than anything. More than any desire.

I turned to Alma. ‘In the Greymark house – you said the scent was familiar.’

She frowned. ‘Because it smelt like … you.’

Why would a king want an unknown girl for a queen? The question mocked in the back of my mind. Blood. The Greymark blood had mixed with every line. My blood.

Never speak my name. It was a promise my mother made me keep. Not out of fear for herself – out of fear they would know I was hers.

I turned, grabbing one of Thean’s blades and I pressed it to the heel of my palm. The barest bead of blood appeared. I dragged the Compendium of Souls closer and let a drop hit the cover.

No. It couldn’t be that simple. The answers couldn’t have been with me all this time.

The lock clicked, the book flicking its pages open of its own accord. Forcing me to move back as if a fiend could burst free at any moment.

Only nothing followed, just the answer sitting silently before us.

‘He wanted her to open the books,’ I whispered. All that pain for nothing but this. He would have broken my mother apart for nothing but this. For curses that should have been left to rot.

Blood from every line. I saw then how deadly she was, what my Kysillian side had concealed. Why my mother held her secrets so close to her heart.

The words lining those stained pages were a dark scrawl, strange and unknown to me. The wishing stone at my neck fluttered. Emrys’s magic concealed within it – an Old God’s magic. Magic that this darkness feared.

I pulled the stone over my head, letting it touch the page. Watching that bright white light illuminate the text.

‘Show me.’ The dark language was sloppy from my lips. Only it didn’t seem to matter as the ink began to ripple and curl, twisting and forming new shapes. Shapes I recognised as the coast of Elysior. A map.