Page 77 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Kysillians burn. I’d spoken that truth. Knowing that was my death and yet I’d survived it.

All the things that were never meant to be.

I’d called chaos three times. When my mother died.

When I’d killed Daunton. And beneath Fairfax in that pit when I’d sealed the dark with nothing but a mere command.

I’d refused to die. Refused to allow my magic to die.

I’d found my way here, right where my mother wished me to be.

Live . That word mocked me once more. A command I could never ignore, not if my mother had woven it into my destiny. She’d made certain it was her final word. To protect me from the chaos inside of me. A command that my father’s magic would never disobey.

‘What a deadly creature your parents made. The fire that eats the world with no consequences to her fury,’ the fate added. Kysillian fire was given limits for a reason. For all the danger it could cause.

I should have died yet here I was. I’d orchestrated every step of my own destiny, just as my mother had done hers. I realised Thean had been right all along. I didn’t know myself at all.

‘That’s enough,’ Emrys commanded and the creature slunk back, head bowed recognising a threat greater than itself. Before it laughed dryly. ‘How well you guard those of your heart, Serus. Just like your mother.’

He froze. So still I wasn’t certain he was breathing. ‘Keep your cursed words behind your teeth.’

Shadows leaked from the corners of the room. How those dark runes seeped across the side of his neck and jaw. His face nothing but a mask of hardened rage.

Only his anger didn’t stop the fate. Not as they pointed a gnarled finger right at his heart, where his mark rested.

‘How easily you erase her, little prince. Just as Blackthorn intended. For imagine what you’d become with the truth?’

Emrys’s body tensed, his eyes pitch-black in an instant. ‘For how powerful would you become, if you knew how tightly she wove herself around your life threads. Streams of moonlight through the darkness within.’

‘I’m certain she wished for none of it.’ Emrys’s response was near guttural, such raw pain pressed between the words at the horror of how he’d been created.

‘You think the mighty mad king simply took her?’ the fate laughed darkly. ‘ She ? A creature able to make bargains with the darkness beneath? A sorceress divine? A consort of the Old Gods?’

The fate shook their head, limp strands of hair clinging to their wrinkled forehead as the motion released another plume of dust.

‘Your mother was a zalec. A sorceress of the night.’ Ancient forgotten magic.

Just like this fate. Nothing but a children’s rhyme not to go too deep into the forest. Of dark witches who sang to the moon and had death in their veins.

‘A child of the night who was too powerful for her kind. A wanderer, a creature without bounds. A raven-haired beauty who found a demon king in the darkness of the wood. Hiding in the shadows of the world who had slipped free of his bonds from beneath.’

Emrys’s breath stuttered as if he’d been struck. His eyes moving rapidly as they fought to sense the lie that wasn’t there.

‘Serus. Prince of the crescent moon. Son of the Old Gods.’ The fate nodded, amused with their tale. ‘She loved that darkness dearly and he loved her with the deadliest of devotion. Then a greedy mortal king trapped Serus with a curse and tried to twist that darkness to conquer this world.’

The fate flicked its long fingers in warning.

‘Your mother wouldn’t allow it. For her love to be defiled.

For Serus to be used against her, nor her child.

So she summoned and she tricked. She stole her beloved’s power back from that monstrous king – right in his bed, and wove it into her unborn son. ’

My heart pounded against my ribs.

Why Emrys was different. He was born different, just as Gideon said. Serus had willed it so.

The fate’s head tilted as if with sympathy. ‘Madness cannot pierce your heart as it has all the others for there is nothing mortal in you, little prince. Nothing of that king’s seed, for that is not how you were made.’

Emrys wasn’t the King’s child. No. He was born of the Old God himself. Why he was nothing like Montagor.

‘What a fanciful tale you weave.’ The voice that left Emrys’s lips was not of this world, a coldness licking up my spine as I saw the darkness spread beneath his skin. Shadows curling in the corners of the room, a strange trembling in the stone beneath our feet.

‘She didn’t die pathetically on some birthing bed with neither name nor will,’ the fate scoffed, as if disgusted by the idea. ‘That King was dead long before you cut off his head on a battlefield, boy . She made certain of it before she followed her lover to where they could be together once more.’

The fate clicked their long fingers before they dragged them across the dusty stone, making strange rune shapes in the dust. ‘A bargain was made. One born of her love for the darkness beneath. For her dark prince and for the world that would not accept her.’

Then I understood the marks the fate made. From the dark sorceress’s text, of promises and bargains with death.

Savera Nor. An ancient bargain. A deadly devotion.

His mother had given her life for his. For Emrys – a being that shouldn’t exist – because the children of the Old Gods couldn’t take mortal form while the earth was sealed.

She’d willed it by sacrificing herself, her magic.

Paying every price to save what she loved.

Emrys’s magic silenced in an instant as the weight of the fate’s words seemed to sink in. As he read those symbols so clearly. Understood them in an instant.

Blackthorn had lied to him. Lied so awfully and Emrys had never seen it. No. Because he was Verr, he was loyal to his core.

‘You wear her name well, Emeri .’ The fate’s haggard face softened as they pulled their gnarled hands back into their moth-eaten robes, those clouded eyes focusing on nothing but him.

Emeri. The name of a fey sorceress from long ago. Beautiful and wise who trapped demons in a lake and used their power to save her people. A blessed name from ancient times.

His mother’s name.

There was a tragic beauty to it. As I looked at Emrys’s face, all I saw was pain in those dark eyes. Blackthorn had known and not told him. Emrys had carried his mother with him all this time.

I moved closer, touching his face. Needing to help him with this pain but being unable to take it from him.

‘The Prince from beneath and his Starlight Queen,’ the dark creature mused, baring their teeth in some form of demented smile. ‘Be careful, little prince. Varin hunts viciously with that madness devouring his soul. He can hear another on the wind. Only he cannot see her as he sees you.’

‘Another?’ Emrys demanded but the fate clicked their teeth.

‘Can you not feel that she waits? That she calls?’ they reprimanded weakly before they flicked those long fingers in a dismissive gesture. ‘My bargain is made.’

The maze of shelves around us slipped away, revealing a passage. A way out, or a way to what we needed to find, I didn’t know.

Didn’t care. I wanted to get away from this. Only, the fate had made a bargain. Freedom for something we needed.

I stepped forward, gathering the length of that ancient chain as those sightless eyes took me in.

‘You’re free,’ I whispered as I let fire consume the chain, as I allowed the power of Kysillian flame to corrupt the enchantment wrapped around this being. To break the spell. As their bindings shattered and slipped from their form.

The fate’s head twitched just like I’d seen Emrys’s do when the darkness spoke to him.

Then I felt a sharp scrape against my mind. As if claws were trying to gain access, a magic I’d never felt before. My breath caught as I realised they didn’t wish to come in. They just wished to leave a message.

How powerful are your promises, Tauria? came the whisper of that strange voice. A warning almost. I’m sorry there wasn’t more I could do.

Icy dread churned inside of me. Those sightless eyes looked down at the wishing stone hanging between us as it suddenly began to burn. That horrid pain consuming the side of my neck, right over the bite as a cry almost left my lips.

In the blink of an eye, the creature was gone. The chains in my palms rendered to nothing but dust as they slid between my fingers.

‘Kat!’ The temperature dropped as something rolled through Emrys, his magic rising with such intensity my temples ached and the stone beneath my feet cracked.

Something was wrong.

A horrid whizzing cut through the air, turning me towards the darkness that surrounded us beyond that maze of shelves.

‘Emrys,’ I reached for him, but suddenly he was pushing me back, the might of him wrapped around me. The suddenness of it sent me stumbling into the shelves, ancient priceless tomes tumbling to the ground releasing a cloud of dust as I caught myself on the edge.

Too late.

Emrys was in front of me. Blocking something’s path. His breath so laboured, clouding in the little space between us.

‘Emrys?’ I reached for his face but he was so still, so tense.

Then I looked down.

Blood seeped into his white shirt, too much blood.

A dark gleam from something at the centre.

Right through his heart.

Only a sacred blade can kill an Old God.

Then I was screaming.