Page 158 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
In every life.
Mortals had no equivalent but he’d learnt it for me. A Kysillian devotion. A binding promise for life.
He loved me and he was saying goodbye. Because we were never meant to be.
No. I wanted to scream the word but there was too much blood in my mouth.
‘You’ve been bested, Serus, remind our masters of it when you return,’ Montagor mocked. A dark summoning rose in his palm again. The blade turned further in Emrys’s chest. He’d kill him.
Only Emrys’s gaze remained on my own. As if I was the last thing he wished to see.
No. I gasped, desperately reaching within but my flame was silent. Chest too tight. The taste of blood too acrid on my lips.
Araya, my father’s voice called in the back of my mind. I shook my head. I didn’t need ghosts. I needed my power. Needed my flame.
I cried and thrashed. Those hunters tightening their grip, my magic useless. So cold. So weak.
You’re named after a warrior who never summoned a flame. Never held that blade and yet she was more powerful than any elder.Those words pierced my panic. Stilling my heart for a moment. Words my father had given me all those years ago.
I wasn’t just a Kysillian. A danger to this world or its chaos.
I was his daughter and I needed no flame to prove that.
Show me, Tauria,his ghost whispered into my ear and I could see that warm smile that never faltered in my memory.
Mine. Emrys was mine, and I wouldn’t lose. Not like this.
The fury in my blood made my breath steady, made the pain abate for the barest moment.
A horrid destructive boom came from above, shaking the chamber. Dust raining down as cracks spread across the stone. Chunks of brick fell from the supports above, the hunters crying out. Then water followed.
Something was wrong. Something above. Making Montagor pause for the barest moment. A mercy from the ancestors or from the fate I had no idea.
‘Kinsfyre!’ I roared, the command pulling on my aching muscles and bruised skin.
Montagor turned, those dark and deadly eyes meeting my own. Not understanding the true danger before him.
Kinsfyrewas the name of my father’s blade. Kysillia’s heart.
Not my father’s blade. Not anymore. It was mine, to protect what was mine.
Emrys lurched. The blade leaving where it had wrapped around his finger. Soaring towards me. I threw out my hand to claim it. Fingers curving around the hilt as it materialised. All the fire the sacred blade had stored roared free. Enveloping me and the hunters closest to me. They screamed, recoiling, but that fire didn’t let them go.
Not as it roared across the chamber. Catching on the shelves and the scrolls there. Heating the glass until they exploded – summoning smoke streaking through the darkness – awakening the other slumbering magic here forcing all the hunters and fiends Montagor had brought back. Consuming them.
Fire consumed me, melted the dart in my thigh until it ran down my flesh like molten blood. Rendering the hunters closest to me to ash that caught on my lips.
Then the fire guttered out, steam and the stench of burning flesh remained. I felt the deadly sting of Montagor’s brewing summoning, whatever defence he’d thrown up to save himself.
I lurched forwards through the smoke. Letting the blade lengthen despite the pain in every limb.
Montagor recoiled, teeth bared. He raised his summoning arm, lips parted to command the shard from Emrys’s chest.
To kill him.
I threw myself forwards just as fast as my father taught me. Despite the agony – I’d faced worse than this monster. I turned and brought the blade down. Severing through Montagor’s summoning arm.
He screamed, stumbling back, blood gushing from the stump to splatter the stone. I screamed too, baring my teethas I pulled the blade up to slice across his face, making him tumble back against the stone floor.
