Page 76 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Beware of the places the world forgets. For the memories that remain there are creatures all their own. Feral with their despair and looking to share misery with their bite.

We were greeted by total darkness until the wishing stone around my neck flared bright like a guiding light, chasing most of the shadows away but leaving us with an overwhelming stench of earth rot, covered with incense and the bitterness of old dead magic that hung in the air.

Endless stone corridors branched off in different directions.

Some alcoves filled with shelves that were piled with nothing but dust as if all records had rotted in place.

A terrible sadness lurked in the dead air – the kind that came with all forgotten places.

Made only more unsettling by the distant echo of noise from high above.

Where the streets were alive and trading.

Where life was existing, but not down here.

A trickling of water echoing through the gloom, reminding me of the canals that snaked through the town above us.

I turned to see the doorway we’d come through was suddenly nothing but a stone wall. Emrys didn’t move, didn’t look behind him, just tightened his hold on my hand as if to ease me.

My pleasure smoke-addled mind suddenly completely clear.

‘A thieves’ trap,’ he whispered, not sounding as concerned. Despite the fact my heart felt like it was pounding in my throat.

A thieves’ trap, designed to keep unwanted guests trapped until the master returned. Only this house’s master was long dead.

‘Thean said there might be a collection of forsaken things down here.’ I shivered as my breath clouded before me.

‘Nice and vague,’ Emrys grumbled, moving forward with ease. As if a thieves’ trap wasn’t an impossible maze to get out of. He seemed to have a sense of direction. Following that instinct that would draw him to the artifact we needed.

‘You’ve never seen a thieves’ trap before?’

‘A few. Never this old.’

There was silence for a long moment, so quiet it felt like we were wandering through the past. Coming to nothing but a labyrinth of shelves piled with trinkets – old scrolls with frayed ribbons and orbs with smoke shifting inside of them. Just like the ones summoners used above.

Curiosity made me want to reach out and touch them, only for a distant sound to meet my ears. A quiet, strange mewing.

‘Can you hear that?’ I whispered, stepping closer to Emrys, my fingers stinging with the flare of heat from my magic. He nodded, moving us further into the maze until the shelves opened up, bright moonlight spilling down in a single beam from a crack in the stone high above.

Candle wax formed puddles on the cobbled floor, a trail leading to a circular space with what appeared to be a pile of moth-eaten cloth at the centre.

Rusted chains snaked around the strange small chamber.

Only for that pile of cloth to move, revealing a dusty, haggard face.

Thin white hair clinging to an almost skeletal head.

Lips missing, permanently peeled back to reveal large yellow teeth.

I should have felt fear or shock. Yet the stone around my neck didn’t even flutter. Instead that sound came back to me, the desperation in it.

‘Can you see that?’ I could feel its sorrow, like an icy chill biting into my skin. Unnerved by how still Emrys had gone. How close that ancient text was to the skin across his knuckles. As if that darkness inside of him was close to rising once more.

‘Our dark prince can see me well enough, fair Tauria.’ The creature’s voice was a creaking sound, like an old hinge, disused. Dust tumbled from its dry, parchment-like skin Milky white eyes staring back at me.

‘It’s a fate.’ Emrys’s voice was terse as he moved in front of me. A shadow blade forming against his palm even though we both knew it would be of little use.

There were little records of fates for a reason. For few survived their wrath.

Some fey were better left forgotten. Too deadly to exist even in memory. I’d read that warning once and never understood it. Not until I felt how my magic thrashed and knotted inside of me.

Fates weren’t gods even if some worshipped them as such. Powerful creatures of ancient magic. Formed long before the world itself, or at least as we knew it.

‘It was told a prince from beneath would set me free. I am glad it’s you, Serus.

For you mean me no harm.’ The creature inclined its head, curious.

Almost childlike. The chains that held it scraping against stone.

No. Those chains were rune bound. Aged magic.

Older than any of the records. ‘You come seeking truth, little prince?’

Tension rippled off Emrys, shadows weaving restlessly between his fingers. Knowing that in a moment he could unmake the creature with the brutality of his magic. Because Verr came first. Even Kysillian flame feared them.

As the fate moved, dust slipped from its shoulders like pale ash. Tipping its head. Contemplating us with those sightless eyes. ‘You seek something in the dark.’

‘Tell us and we can help you,’ I offered, knowing bargains were foolish, but I couldn’t think of any other way out of a thieves’ trap.

‘Lies I’ve heard before,’ it laughed hoarsely, dragging those long black nails across the filthy stones between us as if wishing to write something. ‘Only, you do not lie, do you … Serus?’

‘I do not.’ There was a darkness in Emrys’s voice that made it sound not wholly his own. As if that name drew something out of him.

The creature’s head jerked to one side as if to see us better, like a string-puppet. Thinking. Slowly the chains scraped against the stone as it raised its thin hands, skin crinkled like old paper with age.

Emrys’s face remained stoic as he looked down at the endless length of chain curled around the chamber.

‘Can you heat the metal?’ he asked out of the corner of his mouth. If he was set on letting this thing free, I couldn’t argue with him. Not when we didn’t appear to have any other options.

I moved closer to the bolt on the wall strung between the decrepit shelves, unfortunately closer to the creature. Finding it to smell of nothing but earth and old books.

‘Let’s hope my flame doesn’t wake anything else up in here,’ I sighed, knowing what the potency of my power could do as I let them twist around my fingers, hoping whatever was in the metal would respond to my touch.

The creature moved too quickly, those thin bony fingers so long they wrapped around my wrist twice like a shackle. Smothering my flames.

‘Release her,’ Emrys’s anger turned the air glacial between us. The room plunging into almost full darkness, except for the stone around my throat, casting the fate’s face in pale light.

The creature clicked its teeth in dismissal. The dry ancient voice attempted to soothe as it peered up at me with those milky unseeing eyes. ‘Fear not, I mean Little Lady Greymark no harm.’

The creature released me, humming to itself as it sank back to the stone floor.

Then I noticed it had a smear of my blood on its pale long fingers that vanished inside its moth-eaten robe.

Emrys’s hand curled around my arm, forcing me back behind him as the fate stopped its rummaging, before shaking its curled fist then opening its hand and releasing a scattering of small white stones to tumble across the stone floor.

Not stones. Bones.

‘I offer truths, for a debt unpaid, Little Lady Greymark. Your grandmother was a vain and insolent child, married to a cruel and greedy man. A barren wife has no value to an old house. So she made a bargain with a creature she believed to be a healing witch.’

The creature held up a single bony finger almost in warning. ‘One child. To bring power. To bring a new legacy to the House of Grey.’

I shook my head. Unable to bare the story no matter how closely it matched what little my mother had said about her past. About the people who had made her.

‘The witch obliged.’ The fate nodded. ‘Only, the witch had been wronged by the Greymark house, so she planted her revenge right in your grandmother’s womb.’

Where witches meddle, only anarchy follows. That story hissed through my mind, spiking my dread. I found my hands curving around Emrys’s forearm, feeling his muscles tense beneath my touch. I needed something to tether me. To make this madness real.

The fate bared its large yellow teeth. ‘A weaver was born. To unpick the threads of that house. A daughter destined for a king. To birth chaos entire.’

A weaver.

A weaver was an ancient witch, one beyond simple fey. One that could command their own fate. A deadly gift. Why none survived beyond stories. A myth better forgotten. A living curse.

The fate was taking about my mother.

‘She wasn’t a weaver.’ I shook my head. She would have told me that. I would have known. She was mortal, the most magic she possessed being to create enchanted bags or small summonings.

I had a dream.

I hope you see it.

I hope it’s real.

Only for the memory of those words to echo back to me.

Live, Tauria. That command lingering even now. Had she seen this?

‘Did she not weave her own destiny?’ the fate continued, ruthlessly. ‘Your mother chose her king, she chose her chaos and she chose her death.’

My head stuttered in my chest. A cold dread seeping into my veins. The fate leant forwards to collect their bones and examine each one as if they were priceless gems. ‘Only, weaving destiny bears a heavy price. One I fear you can’t afford to pay, Tauria.’

‘I’m not a weaver.’ The words scratched my throat on the way out. I didn’t possess that magic. Couldn’t. Yet it sounded like a lie as the words sat in the dead air between us.

‘Are you not?’ The fate smiled, showing all their teeth. They held up their hand, curling three of their six fingers against their palm. ‘By my count you’ve weaved thrice in surviving your flame.’

My heart pounded, unsure if the ground had truly shifted beneath my feet as everything snapped into a painful reality.