Page 36 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
‘I’m certain one in the west owes me a debt,’ he said, surprising me. He slid a piece of paper across the table towards me. Resting on top of it was a tiny vial that looked filled with dirt. ‘What do you know about an endless rotting curse?’ He leant back against the table’s edge and picked up a glass of amber liquid that had been discarded amongst his books and notes.
‘It’s a bit early for drinking, isn’t it?’ I observed carefully, watching how the morning light played off the liquid in the glass.
‘As my brother Gideon remarked, it’s always noon somewhere.’ He considered me over its rim.
Gideon. The name startled me and I couldn’t help but frown. Knowing from records that the previous Lord Blackthorn only had two children. One son. One daughter.
Troubled, I shut the book in my hands and focused on the new mystery he’d presented me with.
‘It’s formed of residual darkness,’ I answered, turning the vial over and seeing it wasn’t dirt but a clipping of root speckledwith rot that curled against the opening of the vial, trying to find a way out. ‘Corrupted earth that’s seen dark activity. Or, if the stories are to be believed, where a Verr summoning has been attempted.’
But those were stories from long before the war. Long before a greedy cruel king had condemned us all. This sample seemed too fresh, too alive, but that couldn’t be.
‘Is this from an archive collection?’ I looked to him again, only for the bandage on his arm to catch my eye once more.
‘An orteritus gremlin got the better of me.’ He answered the question I was too much of a coward to ask.
I frowned, wondering how he was still coherent.
‘They’re poisonous.’ A bite from an orteritus being could send you into madness.
He smiled sharply, but there was something dark in it that had little to do with amusement. ‘It’ll take something stronger than a gremlin to take the likes of me down.’
I looked down at the sample in the jar, seeing how it curled and split. The infection of the dark was so strong.
Wrong. This was wrong. Impossible, even.
‘Do you think—’
The ringing of a distant bell silenced me. Less severe than the ones in the Institute but still causing a tension to come over Emrys.
A curse slipped from his lips as he downed the rest of his drink and let the glass clatter onto the table. Then he tugged his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Croinn.’
Chapter Twelve
The bell was a summons. A Council summons, which made Emrys’s irritated cursing make more sense. However, I couldn’t chase away the dread of what they had to say. If it would be something else about me.
Maybe that old crone had reported my time in the library to the Council. I wouldn’t put it past them to plant some ghastly deed on me. That I’d singed an ancient spell book or a misbehaving ink charm had ruined a priceless tapestry.
Unfortunately, all of the above were valid previous offences on my record. Unease coiled more tightly in my gut.
A squeak came from the table before me, snapping my attention back to the current problem at hand. Alma. Somehow sensing the thoughts that plagued me, despite still being in mouse form.
‘How about another attempt at serpentine focus?’ I sighed, turning over the pages of notes, flicking through to try and find the section I’d written on the process, despite it making no sense to me. But it might to Alma. It was her magic after all.
An annoyed squeak was the only response to my question, making me glance up. If her small mouse limbs were long enough, I believed she’d cross them in annoyance.
I couldn’t blame her; I’d recounted a madman’s notes on transfiguration to her for the past few hours. William, helpful as ever, supplying the few books Emrys held on the subject, but even he had given up hope and gone back to his own tasks.
‘We have to keep trying.’ I pushed stray strands of my hair behind my ears, my poor attempt at a dignified hairstyle having fallen out hours ago. Alma’s small ears twitched as she rubbed her paws together, either in frustration or trying something else.
‘Still nothing?’ I turned towards the sound of William’s cheery voice from the study entrance, where he wiped his hands on a small towel tinged green from his grass studies.
‘It doesn’t help most of the surviving instructions were written by a lunatic.’ I sank back in my chair, rubbing my temples against the threatening headache dwelling there.
‘You’ll figure it out.’
‘I wouldn’t be so certain.’ I huffed, eyes reluctantly drifting towards the shelves and my last encounter with Emrys. His helpfulness. All it did was unsettle me, so I turned my focus to the other side of the room and the mysterious third desk that resided there, the items on it dusty and untouched, waiting for its owner to return.
