Page 71 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
A distant knocking made me flinch. Alma cursed sharply under her breath as she moved to the door.
‘She’s resting,’ her voice drifted back to me, harsh and sharp, even though it was whispered.
‘I need to speak with her,’ Emrys responded and I flinched at the pain that seeped through me, curling further into my knees. ‘Miss Darcy, I need to—’ There was a sternness in those words that should have silenced anyone, but Alma wasn’t just anyone.
‘You’ve done enough,’ she seethed and I could imagine the threat in her vivid virescent eyes. ‘Next time, send yourfriendsin my direction.’
‘I came back as soon as—’
‘Too late,’ Alma snapped. Then there was a click of the door shutting and Alma’s hurried steps back to me as muttered curses fell from her lips.
‘Let’s get you into bed.’ She brushed a clawed hand over my hair, scales catching on a few loose strands.
I didn’t move.
‘Kat?’ she asked softly.
‘I heard his voice in my head.’ Those words came broken from my lips, hating the weakness of my fear. How it seemed to echo off the bathroom tiles. ‘Master Daunton.’
She was closer instantly, her arms around me despite how wet and unstable I was.
‘He’s dead, Kat.’ She ran her hand over my damp hair again, those claws sharper now.
Murderer, that voice came back, and it was right. It would be right again. The smell of burning flesh almost made me retch before I could shake the memory away.
‘I can hear them still,’ I whispered, unable to stop the painful nature of that guilt. ‘That was a full house of lost children just like us … and I burned it down for nothing more than rage. Every night, I can hear them.’
‘They were dying,’ she protested gently, but the words were somehow still too loud in the cavernous bathroom. As if it mattered. I’d killed them all the same.
‘You don’t know that.’ She couldn’t know that. We hadn’t been in the dank basement that day, hadn’t seen how many lay there without care. How many were fighting to survive against all the odds, how many I’d stolen that choice from in one moment of rage.
How many were still alive when I’d lost control. How many couldn’t get out.
She took hold of my trembling hands and I let her despite the burns, needing her more than I ever had before. Leaning down so our foreheads met, and I was forced to look into her vibrant and truthful eyes.
‘Whatever monster you wish yourself to be, I’ll still be here, loving you.’ Her words were wrapped in steel. A challenge. Willing me to call her a liar, so she could prove justhow much she meant them. ‘I’m here because of you, Kat. Only you.’
Her for them. The choice I’d made. Alma for the rest of them. The choice Daunton had forced me to make, battered and broken as I was.
‘I won’t spend my life haunted by my death,’ she warned, a fierceness coming over her. ‘Neither will you.’
Those words sat like a promise between us.
All I could do was nod, swallowing past the lump in my throat. She was right. She always was. If I hadn’t unleashed such chaos, Alma would be back with the menagerie. She’d be dead by now, and I don’t know what would have become of me.
Slowly, as the water cooled again, she coaxed me from the bath, dried me and put me into a nightgown. That numbness not leaving me despite the fierce nature of her words.
She forced one of her precious chocolates between my lips before bullying me into bed and climbed into it too with her dress and shoes still on, wrapping herself around me. Not tight enough, though, as the coldness of my fear seeped into my flesh.
A heavy silence fell with just the cracking of the wood as the fire devoured it, but still she held on. Like she always had.
‘Of all the things I’ve endured, I regret not a moment of that pain because it led me right here,’ she whispered, voice catching on the words with the rawness of her emotions. ‘Right here to you, Kat, and there is nowhere else I wish to be.’
I wanted to smile, but all that left me were tears as I held onto her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
You belong to this suffering, Woodrow. You created it and your blood deserves the penance that comes your way.
