Page 8 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
She shrugged, reaching back to rub her shoulder as if it were stiff. I saw the darkness at her nailbeds, the threat of the claws that could emerge at any moment. How weakly those fingers trembled. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Alma, I—’ I leant forward, trying to reach for her but a sharp knock at the door sent her surging to her feet, grabbing her cap off the table and forcing it back on top of her raven curls. Back into her role.
‘If these are disciplinary summons, I swear on the ancestors …’ she seethed, unable to finish before something slid beneath the door and she stormed over to claim it.
I waited for her to whirl on me with rage but she went deathly still, back tense and I wondered if she was even breathing.
‘Alma?’ I asked.
I’d gone through quite a few trials. Most done when Master Hale was in better health and had more support within the Council. Now, with fey rebel attacks growing in the north and the Council’s contempt for magical beings stronger than ever, I doubted I’d get much sympathy.
‘They’re not trial summons.’ Her voice was nothing but a trembling breath, turning to me as that paper shook in her grasp, green eyes wide as they shifted from owl to feline pupils and back again. ‘They’re partnership papers.’
I didn’t remember leaving the desk or crossing the room. All I remembered was the weight of that paper in my grasp, the fire at my back and the short, panicked breaths of Alma at my shoulder.
Papers in presentation of a Mage Partnership Agreement
between:
Lord Emrys Silverous Blackthorn and Miss Katherine Woodrow.
The words were embossed in gold, and the strange dark wax seal of the Blackthorn crest covered in thorns. The paper was thick, luxurious and sealed in an envelope with singed corners telling me it had been delivered by fire-post.
Lord Emrys Blackthorn.
The Blackthorns specialised in occult studies and were one of the Mage King’s most trusted before the war. The last experts in dark magic and its effects on the earth. There were many stories about Lord Emrys Blackthorn, the only surviving member of the family. That he served in the Great War. How he’d commanded the Lord’s rebellion to bring that Mage King down and quelled the dark entities who had consumed the south fields of Elysior.
Ever since the monarchy had been overthrown, the rebellion settled and the High Council of Elysior formed, Emrys Blackthorn had become something of myth. Some records claimed he was dead, others that he’d gone mad.
He was little more than a rumour that plagued mages’ meetings, whose name was spoken in whispered tones like one mention would summon him.
Dark magic had a habit of consuming those who paid it too much attention, which was the reason most rumours stated he was dead. Yet the papers in my hand were very real.
I supposed this new dangerous twist of fate was my own fault for wondering just how much worse this could all get.
Chapter Three
The clamouring chaos of the morning after was unbearable. The hissed gossip of my demonic worship, constant irritated scowls from passing tutors and the silence from Master Hale.
Worse were the muttered rumours about a potential sighting of the mysterious Lord Blackthorn in the Institute last night, which only sharpened my fear.
I’d already checked the partnership papers three times as Alma and I moved through the arched hallways and high-walled Mages’ Garden on our way to the portal office. Still real. Still there despite the impossibility of them.
I reached up to make sure the sharp points of my Kysillian ears were tucked neatly beneath my braided crown. A foolish habit considering my strange, luminous skin was impossible to hide, along with my bright lavender eyes.
The papers in my hands were nothing more than a crumpled cylinder that I rolled tighter with every panicked thought as my anxious eyes dragged over every detail of the portal office, drenched in the low winter sunlight.
It was a vast space, with a decorative, tiled floor of reds and golds polished to a high gleam so the chandeliers’ light could bounce around the room. The curving staircases to the higher levels were set back against the ceiling-high recordshelves, depictions of phoenixes sitting on each banister with torches in their grasp.
The stench of dust from the old books was pungent, as the smell of bitter coffee and men’s cologne sat thick in the air. The portal clerks scratched away at their desks, writing incantations for the Council Mages’ travel plans that week.
I’d hoped Master Hale would be here to greet us, but the waiting benches were all vacant. I glanced down at the pages in my hand that had sent Alma into a frenzy of nervous energy last night, only to get worse when a message arrived from Master Hale, a hurried note asking me to leave at my earliest convenience this morning. More things he wasn’t telling me.
I couldn’t decide what worried me more, that a supposedly dead Lord was offering me a partnership, or how unbothered Master Hale was about the whole affair.
Run.That voice mocked in the back of my mind just as a sharp pinch came at my forearm, jolting me to look down at the annoyed face of Alma.
‘Ow !’ I shoved her hand away, rubbing the underside of my arm.
