Page 7 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
Too tired and troubled to bother, I pulled the key from my bag and retreated into my room, not allowing myself to be relieved until I was pressed back against the closed worn, wooden door. Thanking the ancestors for the small mercy of Alma’s absence as I took in the confined space, a magical lamp still burning in the corner as the moth-nibbled curtains let moonlight spill into the room.
Home,I lied bitterly to myself, ducking under the low wooden beams to my small, dilapidated desk, untying my bag from my belt and dumping it on top. I leaned over the desk to push the small murky window open, letting the night air try and cool my flushed skin.
I needed to change, hide my clothes, put my nightgown on and pretend it all wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I pushed my papers into a neat pile as the wind disturbed them, hiding the ones from the ruins deep beneath all the others. I was almost done covering my tracks when a sharp smack to my arm and the distant slamming of the chamber door startled me.
‘Ouch !’ I snapped, turning to see the annoyed face of my assailant.
Alma stood there, brow creased, dark curls in disarray beneath her maid’s cap. The imprint of scales beginning toshow on her left cheek with her wrath. Her vibrant green eyes alight with fury.
‘I can’t believe you have theaudacityto be reading !’ she hissed, hands resting on her small, apron-covered hips. Her maid cap flopping onto her brow before she pushed it back with irritation. ‘Look at the bloody state of you !’
‘Alma, I wasn’t—’ I grimaced, not prepared to duel with her.
‘Don’tAlmame !’ she seethed, her cat-like pupils thinning into reptilian slits as she smacked my arm again for good measure. ‘I bloody told you not to go down there. You could have brought a ghoul back with you like last time !’
I winced at the memory of the flesh-eating ghoul still locked in a tin box beneath the floorboards under my bed. How thunderstorms made it rattle and try to escape. Reminding me I’d forgotten to put it back once again.
‘That wasn’t completely my—’ I began, but the sharp glare she sent my way made me swallow down the lie. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘If I have to listen to one of those fucking saint-loving maids say another horrid thing about you in the kitchens, I’ll lose my mind.’ She tore the maid’s cap from her dark head and tossed it onto a stack of my papers with disdain.
‘I needed a book on Vercarus theory to finish my paper. The last copy was in the Fifth Library before it fell. I really think it’s going to work this time.’ Or at least I did, before Finneaus Ainsworth and a demented dust sprite had ruined everything.
‘I don’t care about bloody papers, you menace. I care about you.’ Her words were followed with a heavy sigh, defeat clear in the fall of her narrow shoulders. A softness darkened her feline gaze. ‘The last fey student to go wandering off anywhere near the ruins got themselves killed, Kat.’
I flinched at the memory. The white sheet-covered lump at the bottom of the restricted stairs. An unlucky tumblewhile practising with an unpredictable spell. Out after curfew. Enough to deserve a death sentence for the likes of us in the Council’s eyes.
Lie.The word hissed mockingly through my mind, bringing the sharp pinch of a headache that threatened to return with all my worries.
‘We both know I’m not that lucky,’ I smiled, only her serious expression didn’t falter. Worry burning fiercely in her eyes.
‘I’m serious, Kat.’ Those words were softer, weighted with everything that had come before.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’ I ignored the weight of that truth as it sank like a stone in my gut. Clearly, my fate was to be locked in these dusty walls until the Council came up with some use for me, or worse, dispatched me the same way they had all the others.
Alma’s petite form flopped down onto the stool with a heavy irritated grumble that was close to a growl.
Quiet. Demure and still. Master Hales’ command coming back to me. The same simple rules Alma was forced to follow. To pretend. To lie.
Alma didn’t have magic. This was the falsehood we had dedicated ourselves to for the last ten years. She possessed something beyond simple magic and the Council’s control. As I watched, those scales slipped back beneath her smooth, tan skin.
Wild magic. Too feral and easily spread to be taught reason. To be leashed.
It was why she’d ended up at Daunton, the lost children’s home with me all those years ago. Another unwanted creature for the horrid Lord’s entertainment, in a place for beings nobody was looking for.
The last place she should be was here with me. Right under the Council’s watch. But greed had always blinded mortal men,and a Kysillian in their control was enough to distract them. Enough of a danger to keep them occupied and keep their gaze off Alma, the poor serving fey Master Hale had taken pity on.
I didn’t allow myself to wonder why Master Hale had brought Alma with me. Whether it was his guilt for the wars, for the fey that had died in these very halls that he didn’t save, or to show a little lost girl he meant no harm … but the older I got, the more the truth burned through those lies, leaving me with a sour taste in my mouth. Alma had been something to keep me in line.
She was the only thing of value to me that they could take away. The reason why I’d shackled myself to the Institute’s peace treaty until I could graduate, why I’d become their toy to keep the rebellion quiet, to keep a revolution against mortal power at bay.
The games they played and my place as a pawn at their centre left me exhausted and burdened with guilt for the things I pretended I didn’t see, didn’t hear.
A guilt I couldn’t escape, even as I worked at getting out of here, travelling beyond the Council bounds. Maybe finding a Healing house to practise in, or even a small teaching position in a fey village. Anything. There was a whole world beyond these walls.
Thoughts of my past might have kept me from sleep, but that small glimmer of a future pulled me back to the present, to consider the profile of Alma’s dark, annoyed face. Her gaze distant, looking at the tiny window, how it sagged sadly, dark mould staining the wood. Her brow furrowed with too many thoughts.
‘You seem irritated,’ I mused, regretting the words as her sharp murderous gaze came back to me, ‘by something other than me for once.’
