Page 80 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Forty-One

Kat

There was an endless roaring in my head. A horrid wailing. A banshee screeching for a feast. Only to realise it was coming from me.

The only way to kill an Old God is with their own blade.

Blood slipped too easily between Emrys’s fingers. His back arched, lips parted in a silent scream of pain as he fell to his knees.

‘Emrys!’ I cried out, lurching for him, only for something sharp and ice cold to strike my thigh. Sending me down to the dusty ground with a cry of agony. A metal dart protruding from my skin, my blood or Emrys’s staining my slip.

No. My limbs suddenly too heavy and tight. I grasped at my thigh as agony poured through my limbs, fingers meeting cold metal. Sticking out of my flesh, blood rushing between my fingers.

No.

I tried to summon my flame. It spluttered uselessly. A chasm opening in my chest with distress. My magic severed from me as only coldness slipped into my blood and I panted for breath.

They’d taken my flame.

Emrys. I needed to help Emrys.

Hands grabbed me, my arms twisted and pulled behind my back. That pain in my thigh intensifying. I kicked and fought. A scream tearing from my lips, shouting Emrys’s name but my strength was gone.

Wild red-rimmed eyes of hunters, skittered laughter and the horrid screech of fiends. Darkness swirling around the outskirts of the room, a dark summoning awaiting command. Prickling my skin. Endlessly cold without my flame.

My arms held too easily, legs useless as fingers gripped my hair, wrenching my head back.

An inhuman roar came from Emrys’s direction. The scuffle of feet before the horrid sound of a fist meeting flesh. The bitter bite of Emrys’s magic trying to reach me but it was the barest brush against my skin. Too far away. As if that shard was like having a dart buried in his own skin.

The shard of an Old God’s blade.

‘Emrys!’ I kicked at my captors, anything to cross that distance between us.

‘I wouldn’t,’ came the calm and careful voice that made terror take a vice-like grip on my heart. That stone fluttering wildly against my breast. Illuminating Montagor from the gathering of shadows that clung to the corners of the vast chamber we’d found ourselves in.

No.

Something cruel was carved in the severity of his features, too angular to be found handsome.

‘Such a wild and savage thing,’ Montagor taunted as he crossed the distance between us.

His eyes full black, veins spreading from their corners as if a dark fiend took up residence under his skin.

Eyes sunken as if he’d devoured nothing but dark magic and hate.

A calmness to him as he straightened his gloves before crouching before me.

One captor released their grip on my hair, but my head fell forwards weakly. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t summon.

‘The ancient blade has debilitating effects, I’m told,’ he continued, either oblivious to my fear or relishing in it. ‘You should thank your pet, Emrys, for giving me the idea. Those golden beasts needed some way to bind our kin after all. Before they sent them beneath.’

Montagor peered down his straight nose at me, those gloved fingers taking hold of my chin brutally. ‘They used our own power against us.’

‘I’m going to kill you.’ Emrys surged against the two hunters who held him, teeth bared, a feral sound ripping up his throat.

He almost broke free despite the wound in his chest, more blood seeping down his front.

A wildness in his dark eyes that he didn’t care.

Cared about nothing but the distance between us.

‘I wouldn’t move too much,’ Montagor cautioned dismissively over his shoulder, his predatory focus coming back to me as he reached for the curve of my cheek with his finger. I wrenched back, despite the pain and the absence of my flame. It wasn’t far enough.

He grabbed my loose hair, twisting it around his fist. Using it to tug my head brutally to one side. I bit back my cry. Breath panted through my teeth.

‘If you lay another finger on her, that darkness won’t recognise you when I’m finished with your bones.

’ The voice that came from between Emrys’s clenched teeth wasn’t of the mortal realm, his magic like midnight smeared across his skin.

The blade kept his magic trapped within, but barely.

I could see the dark corners of it, swirling in warning.

Montagor ignored the viciousness of Emrys’s resistance, bringing the fistful of hair to his nose.

Holding it for too long. Dragging too much in as revulsion crawled up my throat. Then he drew his blade from a sheath at his side, pressing it against my throat. Hard enough that I felt the warm trickle of blood down my skin. He dragged that blade against my flesh, up to the tip of my ear.

‘Say please and I might let you keep them, troll.’ He almost brushed those words against my lips with his closeness.

He wanted to hear me beg. Only, I was done begging.

I spat in his face. Rewarded with his choked surprise before a blow came across my face that sent me down to my side.

Light danced before my vision. The tang of blood in my mouth.

An animalistic roar erupted from the darkness. Emrys. The bitter vengeance of his magic lashing through the room but unable to strike. The stone beneath cracked deeper, a quaking as the shelves began to crumble around us.

Hands were on me, twisting my arms behind me as they dragged me back to my knees.

‘I’ve been seeking such sacred things for so long. Listening to those whisperings in my dreams, Emrys.’ Montagor straightened his coat and smoothed down his hair as if surprised by his own lack of control. ‘I followed where others wouldn’t dare.’

He turned to where Emrys was sneering, dark veins covering every inch of face. Four hunters had hold of him, struggling by the shadow of fear in their crazed eyes.

‘Where should it lead me but right back to you, brother.’ He smiled. ‘I know you have the Old God’s blade. Now the question is … how long will your pet have to suffer until you give it up?’

The blade. It had driven Montagor to Emrys. Driven him here.

The only way Montagor could win. If he took down Serus’s power – and with that blade in his chest, Emrys wouldn’t be able to fight it.

Shadows wove themselves between Montagor’s fingers. He moved them the barest inch and the shard twisted in Emrys’s chest. Making him roar again. Making blood spill and spread across the stone.

‘Stop!’ I screamed.

‘Listen to your pet, brother,’ Montagor mocked, his attention coming back to me. ‘Are you so righteous and loyal to Blackthorn’s commands you’ll let your Kysillian whore die for you?’

‘I need my hands to summon it,’ Emrys sneered in response. Not looking at me, at the horrid sob that left my lips. As I slipped in my own blood, trying to move.

‘I know,’ Montagor nodded. ‘You can suffer first for all the time you’ve cost me.’

He turned to see me, watched every painful pant of breath from my lips with cruel satisfaction.

‘I will say … after your performance in the Council chamber, you’ve given me the most alluring idea, troll.’

He grinned. Something about the hideous enjoyment of it was so familiar to me. Suddenly I was so small under that gaze. So weak and cold.

Then a dark summoning filled his hands as he spoke. A summoning I knew. One I could recount in my worst nightmares. Knew what was coming as the hunters released me. As horrid laughter filled the cavernous chamber.

Curse casting. Torture through summoning. A horrid roar came out of Emrys and that was the only sound before my own screams consumed every one of my senses as Montagor pushed that darkness towards me.

How easily it slipped into my flesh like a knife.

Agony tore through my limbs. As if my bones were twisting within my skin.

Sharp brutal claws grating against my tendons.

The horrid pain of my magic trying to rise but trapped too tightly within my flesh.

The taste of copper on my tongue from my blood where I’d bitten down in the torment of it.

Agony erupted in every part of my body, the wildest sounds escaping my lips until my voice broke.

Then it abated as if it had never been. Leaving me hollow with the barest brush of that pain rushing through me.

I panted, too shallow and sharp. Bloody spittle dripping from my lips. The air as thick as water in my lungs. Drowning. I was drowning in panic.

‘ Valin !’ Emrys roared, almost desperately, but it wasn’t enough. He was weakened and so was his command.

‘Begging,’ Montagor laughed, his voice distorted with that darkness. ‘How unlike you, brother.’

‘Take it,’ Emrys commanded. Voice too hard. Words too sharp.

Take his power. Take everything if it gave me a chance.

Then those dark eyes met my own and for a moment they were so pale and clear. There was nothing but Emrys looking at me.

‘ Aest’rea .’ His voice broke saying it but I wouldn’t have missed a word.

I love you.

In every life .

Mortals had no equivalent but he’d learnt it for me. A Kysillian devotion. A binding promise for life.

He loved me and he was saying goodbye. Because we were never meant to be.

No . I wanted to scream the word but there was too much blood in my mouth.

‘You’ve been bested, Serus, remind our masters of it when you return,’ Montagor mocked. A dark summoning rose in his palm again. The blade turned further in Emrys’s chest. He’d kill him.

Only Emrys’s gaze remained on my own. As if I was the last thing he wished to see.

No. I gasped, desperately reaching within but my flame was silent. Chest too tight. The taste of blood too acrid on my lips.

Araya , my father’s voice called in the back of my mind. I shook my head. I didn’t need ghosts. I needed my power. Needed my flame.

I cried and thrashed. Those hunters tightening their grip, my magic useless. So cold. So weak.