Page 41 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
Something crashed inside the smoke, the ground shaking with the force of it. The sharp bitter smell of a magically ignited flame burning my nose.
‘Emrys!’ I choked out, desperate as I spat grit from my mouth.
All that answered were the distant moans of injured, the rumble of destruction. A familiar shape lay in the dust and debris just before me. Master Hale’s cane.
‘Master Hale ?!’ I stumbled to my feet, skidding as rubble caught under my boot, forcing me sideways into a fallen column. I tripped over my ruined skirts, trying to clear my vision as the room seemed to sway beneath my feet.
Through blurred vision I saw a sprawled form in the rubble through the smoke, a half-destroyed desk trapping his legs. Master Hale.
‘Master Hale.’ I pushed the desk aside, listening to his grunt of pain as I took hold of his shoulder. A horrid paleness to his blood-smeared face. He groaned, blinking up at me with distant confusion.
‘Stay still,’ I commanded, tearing at my skirts for anything to stop the blood, pressing it against his temple but his clammy hands grabbed for me. His hold too tight, eyes too blood-shot and pupils too large.
Another boom cut through the chamber. A scream followed as I curled into myself and heat flushed my skin, unable to make sense of anything with that acrid smell burning my nose.
‘Kat!’ the echo of Emrys’s voice came to me, making me turn, but there was nothing but a wall of smoke.
‘Emrys! We’re over—’ I tried to call, but Master Hale tugged me closer, almost brutally, forcing me to look at him.To see as he frantically shook his head, clawing at the sleeve of my dress, trying to drag me even closer.
‘Master Hale, you need—’
‘Kayin,’ he begged, wheezing and coughing, only it was too wet. Blood slipping through his teeth and onto his lips.
Kayin. One word that froze me in place.
A name I’d never spoken.
One he couldn’t know.
A horrid sound slipped from my lips as a sharp talon of fear pierced my heart.Kayin.My father’s name. After the ancient Kysillian king. The endless sun of the north.
Magic flickered in my veins, not powerful enough to fight the terror chilling my blood. The wishing stone fluttered against my breastbone.
Master Hale shouldn’t know that name.
Couldn’t.
His grip tightened. Nails digging into my flesh. Shaking his head as if willing himself silent.
An animalistic sound slipped through his cracked lips as he hunched over. A wheezing rattle as his back heaved. ‘Couldn’t. Couldn’t find him.’
The room groaned in warning, the sharp snap of flames, the distant crash of something else collapsing. Another scream, but none of it mattered.
Things I shouldn’t have forgotten filled every space in my mind. Hale’s reluctance to talk about the past. The impossibility of him finding a creature like me.
His unwavering kindness. His need to see things right.
Lies. That voice hissed once more and I knew it to be true.
‘Stop.’ I tried to pull myself back from the nightmare, but his nails dug in like claws refusing to let me go.
‘Kat!’ Emrys called out to me through the smoke.
I needed to move but I couldn’t stop staring at those horrid blood-coated lips.
‘I didn’t mean to tell them where he was!’ he begged, shaking me wildly as a wailing moan escaped him.
All warmth was sucked from my flesh.
