Page 120 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
Emrys moved closer to it, I saw the rush of that strange darkness beneath his skin. His body tense.
‘Nhair.’ The command seemed to drain all the warmth from the room as it rumbled from Emrys’s lips, the morning light fading as if clouds had passed over the house. I felt the chill rush down my spine, hackles rising.
Darkness respects its master.
The beast in the cage began to chortle and growl. Turning itself in circles as if distressed. A horrid retching sound coming from it as it began to convulse.
‘Is he choking?’ William asked, worry furrowing his brow.
‘Good riddance,’ I huffed.
‘Alma,’ William whispered, scandalised. Yet it was Kat who moved, with caution, towards the thing, touching the side of her neck. Right where that bitemark was.
Emrys’s dark gaze darted to her instantly.
Thean remained quiet too. Watching the creature with sharp amber eyes, jaw tense as if suspecting something was far worse than the creature simply choking. The voyav reached for that shadow blade at their thigh, taking a step closer to me.
I wish they hadn’t. Wished they’d keep their wretched scent to themselves.
The gobrite retched one more time, a clank of metal upon metal before the fiend let out a little uncomfortable whine, its tail curling around itself as if embarrassed. There, at the bottom of the cage, was a small shard. Gleaming like—
‘It’s a relic,’ Kat whispered. ‘The fiends from the compendiums are hiding relics.’
Everything crashed together in my brain. The blood. The compendiums. The fiends.
It was why the old lords had protected and hidden them so reverently. Why Montagor was suddenly seeking compendiums. Why he’d been after the Ainsworth one.
And Montagor believed he’d just found another one. That was the only reason why his hunters were in the Weymouth lands – why he would send them to the boundary of rebel territory.
‘Fuck,’ Gideon cursed – and that was the only warning we got of how much worse this was all about to become.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kat
The hunters tore through the west and east. Nothing but cruel men given permission to do cruel things. Their loyalty driven by hatred. Driven by the poisonous greed that this land was theirs, that it hadn’t existed before their saint had deemed it so. That their king’s dogma was true, and they were destined for a greatness that would never come.
Reaver records of the east – papers of the second purge
Weak men hunt the innocent. For cruelty and hatred are the only pleasures they’ll ever know.My father had taught me that. Words never truer as I watched the hunters move through the cobbled streets and the quiet distress of fey echoed back through the narrow village.
Images of the purges, the cruelty of the kings before, flickered through my mind like pages turning in a book. The hot fury of my magic bit into my bones, making my veins glow with a lavender hue. My father’s blade in my hand and vengeance singing in my blood.
Fuelled by the cold bite of Emrys where he crouched at my side, so still and watching in the shadows, those dark veins across his jaw, down his throat and twisting between his gloved fingers. Nothing but focus in his pitch-black eyes. A predator on the hunt.
Of course, he’d woken the morning knowing this threat was coming. Those instincts in him correct. Varin was moving, only I didn’t think he was here now.
We’d barely had time to prepare. I’d managed to find some new boots as William put on his own leathers. Demanding to come despite Gideon’s grumbled reluctance. But up against hunters who hungered for something – and with verium in their arsenal – we needed all the help we could get.
‘Thean, you should be hiding,’ William whispered sharply behind me.
‘I’d rather die than scuttle about in the mud, darling,’ was the voyav’s dry reply from where they leant against an old woodshed, partially concealed in a strip of shadow.
Gideon sent the voyav an irritated glance from where the rest of us were all crouched in the mud. All except the voyav, who appeared completely bored by the danger just around a few corners. Of course, I imagined Thean’s usual order of business was to kill first and wonder later. Or perhaps never wonder at all.
‘Here she comes,’ William hissed, thankfully saving us all from another spat between Gideon and Thean.
I don’t know when William practised the art of holding a cloak out like a magician to catch Alma’s bird form and knowing when to drop the bundle as she shifted. So it fell to the ground to cover a crouched Alma, as her head poked out. Her eyes gleaming with anger and the impression of feathers still against her flushed cheeks. Her flight and landing weren’t as smooth as I’d seen, her recovery still ongoing, but she’d refused to be told what to do and I wasn’t going to make decisions for her.
