Page 48 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
‘She shouldn’t summon!’ Gideon warned too late.
‘Outside!’ Alma ordered. On command the house raised the floorboards beneath my feet. Sending me sideways only instead of falling against the bookcases, I stumbled into the space that opened up like a doorway between them, out into the bitter cold day. The low winter sun stung my eyes, as grass tangled around my boots. The vicious wind stirring my ruined skirts where the house had sent me into the wilderness.
Just as I’d wandered through those nightmares. The cold wind whipping around me as the first drops of rain brushed my cheeks; nothing compared to the endless flow of my tears.
I’d killed them. Killed those girls in Daunton and fooled myself into believing they mattered. All that time, I’d suffered it so they would matter. But they didn’t. They never would.
There was nothing but the darkness of the wood in the distance. No memories. No voices calling me back. How far I’d wandered and yet how this pain remained.
A scream clawed its way out of my throat the same moment my fire burst from my palms. Rain sizzling away as I was engulfed in the inferno of it. It swirled and danced around me. Vicious and ruthless as it roared. My dress became ash, floating away on the wind of my own making. Leaving me in my slip, unable to be consumed by flames because Alma always enchanted them.
Always took care of me. Always. Even when I failed her.
The agony of my grief kept clawing its way out of my throat. As I screamed my fury towards the bruised sky, at the ancestors for not showing me a better way. For leaving us. For allowing them to suffer it. For never saving them.
Forgive me. The memory of my father’s voice whispered so gently as if in comfort … but I feared there was no forgiveness left in me.
Then, as quickly as the fury came, it was gone, simpering and weak within my bones. Leaving me with nothing but ragged useless breaths. Exhausted with its rage until all that was left was the consuming nature of its grief. The earth was scorched beneath me, left to nothing but ash.
I fell to my knees, rain pounding against my skin until arms came around me. A soothing bitter chill of magic that the ruthlessness of my own submitted to. The sheer size of him curling over me, blocking me from the storm.
Emrys.
He said something against the curve of my throat but it was lost within the taunt of those voices in my mind.
Tauria.
My sacred Kysillian name that the dark shouldn’t know. The thing I should never have let out.
Then the darkness took me back.
Chapter Fifteen
Kat
To burn is the cost of our fury,Avaya. Our fury can end this world, that power must be feared. The kings burnt to save us, but perhaps … they burnt to save us from themselves, as much as that darkness beneath.
Greed and power are never far apart – no matter what the stories say. For even those heroes never wished to fall, Tauria.
The roaring crackle of fire filled my ears now, lurching me into waking as the reek of smoke filled my nose.
Avaya.That name followed me into waking. A word of fire and smoke. What my father had called me to show his love. It meant starlight in Kysillian. Because he called my motherAya, which meant little flame. How easily I’d forgotten that.
The smell of books, old magic and the lingering scent of beasam bark chased that memory away. I was in the Blackthorn study. It was drenched in orange light as the sun sank across the wood beyond the window.
Home.I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes, realising the smell of smoke was coming from me. I was still in my slip – the only thing that had survived that fury within me.
I looked at the bandages across my wrists. Gideon’s cravat had burnt away with the ruthlessness of my summoning.But someone had washed and dressed my forearms in clean bandages. A glass sat waiting on a small table next to me, a healing tonic too.
My trembling fingers rubbed the fabric at my wrists. How brutally my fury had hollowed me out. Most of it a blur. Just the memory of Alma’s quiet broken reassurance left. The strength in Emrys’s hold as I’d been moved to the chaise as if he remembered that I hadn’t wanted to go to bed. Didn’t wish to be left alone in the dark.
A horrid taste lined my mouth and I reached for the healing tonic. Sick of my weakness before I picked up the glass, drinking deeply before I pressed the cool glass to my forehead, trying to steady myself and find some sanity.
‘Please,’ I whispered to nobody. The small table next to me rocked slightly, nudging against my knee, offering some small comfort.
A murmur of voices reached my ear, coming from beyond the room, from somewhere down the hall. Probably everyone trying to work out what to do next, while I’d fallen apart so easily.
‘Pull yourself together,’ I sighed as I untangled myself from the blanket, seeing my enchanted bag abandoned on my desk. I rooted through it for my training attire, only for pages of my notes to come out. All my scribbled workings on incantations and research into wild herbs.
