Page 131 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
Beneath. It comes from beneath.
‘Emrys,’ I barely breathed, heart breaking to see him so confused. So unlike himself. The version he never wished to be.
So predatory. That darkness moving beneath as if it was a living thing, curling around his limbs with such authority I felt the primitive side of my magic bite in response. Wishing to challenge what it was trying to take from me.
His head twitched, those eyes closing. The cold sting of his magic biting deep like claws. Painfully so. Something was speaking to him.
I stepped closer, until the icy sharpness of his magic sank into my exposed flesh.
‘Eria, we need to go home,’ I called, needing him to listen. Hoping I hadn’t lost him so easily.
That strange twitching stopped as if the voices had been held at bay. The grip of his magic eased ever so slightly on my flesh as his eyes opened.
Endless darkness stared back at me.
Before it rose from his skin like smoke.
Gideon gave a cry of warning but it was too late as the ground moved beneath our feet, sending us tumbling into nothingness.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Kat
The dark ones hold no form. Cannot be contained nor chained.
Those golden beasts didn’t believe our tales. So they made their own.
Poisoned that darkness with their own might, then brought the world crashing down on the innocents who had no choice in their blood.
The blessed saviours who watched it burn and concealed the blood of their own crimes in rivers of gold.
Compendium of the Lost, 1536
Serus?A strange small voice called as the world was torn apart and put back together in a smear of colour and wisps of darkness until reality lurched back towards me. A maze of bookshelves with tall ladders leaning against the intricately carved shelves, showing depictions of a forest and the woodland beasts that dwelled there. Every piece of furniture in the room was piled with texts, the hearth roaring, the comforting scent of books and old magic dragged into my lungs with every short panicked breath.
Blackthorn Manor.
Home. We were home.
‘Emrys,’ I panted, spinning in a circle. Trying to right my unsteady legs as I stumbled into my own desk, as if I was on a ship in a storm. Gideon was across from me doingthe same as he clung to the door frame. I could only see William’s boots from between the bookshelves, a retching sound reaching my ears.
We’d been thrown too quickly from one place to the next.
Whisps of darkness remained in the air as white dots marred my vision.
Emrys had ported us. With nothing but his magic. A power I couldn’t even comprehend. Void creatures were rare, none having been seen in centuries. Yet an Old God would have that power – or a child of their blood. The house released a weary groan, the doorway Gideon clung to sagging and beginning to quake.
Then I saw where the darkness curled in the centre of the room. How shadowed and cold it grew in an instant. How the dark form of Emrys braced his hands on the floor, head bowed, his fingers digging into the wood as if it was nothing but paper. How easily it splintered between his touch. His head twitched, limbs tensing as shudders rolled through him. That dark summoning beneath his skin twisting and pressing against his flesh, forming strange runes like those that had appeared by the cracked earth.
To summon such darkness is to be consumed by its hunger.
‘Emrys,’ I whispered.
He shook his head as if trying to get free of something, curling forwards as he pulled at his hair. Almost convulsing as the shadows deepened. Then, in a moment, he was gone, in a flare of dark smoke. The hearth flickered, light coming back to the room the same moment a crash came from above us, reminding me of those cursed bones in the Greymark house.
‘What on earth is—’ Alma called, rushing into the room with her robe around her, wet hair stuck to her cheeks asshe dripped water onto the floor. She was here. She was safe. Only there wasn’t a moment for that relief to soothe me. Not as another crash came from above.
‘Emrys,’ I moved for the doorway, stumbling sideways. My knees still unstable from the shock of the magnitude of the magic I didn’t understand. The house creaking in distress as all the cupboards and drawers rattled.
