Page 104 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
Only this was nobody’s home. Not anymore. That monster had killed her here. That little girl from those stories. Killed her love for this home, and the woman she calledMera.
Motherin the common fey tongue.
She was alive when you burnt her, little troll.No. My mother was dead. My fire wouldn’t have hurt her. Couldn’t, because it was my father’s first.
Just as it could never hurt me.
I’d let them twist my fear with their lies. Let them control me. They’d taken my flame from me first and how easily I’d let them – let monsters like this win.
My father had created this darkness. His rage had formed it. Then I could see so clearly, as if the ancestors wished to fuel my vengeance.
Could see nothing but the memory of the barest pale marks over my mother’s flesh. Evidence of where that magic had bit too deeply into her – where her father had tortured her. Tried to break her.
Then the muffled sobs as she woke some nights. My father’s voice easing her back to sleep. Or as he’d sit up with her, deep into the darkness until the dawn. How his fingers would run through her hair as it caught the cottage’s firelight.
The illusion of happiness for my childhood was chased away, reminding me of the dark ink-blot that had been at its centre. The pain this world had caused my parents.
Fury ignited my veins, the summoning too familiar, my magic moving before I could think of the spell.
So I roared and I let my vengeance free. Just as my father had before me. Let my flame erupt, let it take that stone path in the wood. Let it race up the withered remains of those roses. To the rooms I remembered from her tales. Let it seep into every part of this cursed forgotten place.
‘Kat!’ Gideon warned over the firestorm. Only there were no warnings left. My hands didn’t tremble and my will didn’t break.
Not anymore. Not as the firestorm grew, as it roared and feasted, circling us in a scorching wind. Devouring with its vicious desire to be free.
Until the manifestation roared, thrashing wildly, becoming white smoke and sharp bone. Slipping through the wooden cracks, slamming itself restlessly into the burning gaps. Trying to get free. Trapped in this house with us. In a cage of its own making. As I poured all my grief and vengeance into these ruins.
The deafening shatter of glass and wood followed, lavender chaos pouring from my palms, rumbling like thunder as it tore through the house. As the taste of smoke and fury lined my tongue. The malice screamed for mercy. Only I didn’t stop.
I didn’t let go, letting that fire burn and seek. Ravenous as it had been when my father wielded it for the same kill. My flame remembered because I gave it no order and yet it feasted.
I hoped the man that hurt my mother was still in there. If only a fragment. I hoped he felt every moment of it.
My flame twisted around us. A protective circle that foul creature couldn’t penetrate.
The house imploded on itself, crumbling into nothing beyond the wall of fire that surrounded us. My flame not easing until there was nothing but dark ash on the breeze. A perfect circle of wood remained beneath our feet, the boundary I’d set.
Fire guttered in my palms, shoulders sagging as my hands fell weakly to my sides. Breaths unsteady as they came panted from my lips. The black charred, mangled remains of the old house. Dead.
The storm had broken above. Raindrops hissing off my hands. Dripping down my face with the ferocity of how it pounded into the earth.
I should have screamed to the heavens. Should have bared my teeth to the ancestors for all my pain. Only then it was understood, they deserved none of me.
Movement came from behind me, turning me. Wild and feral with short breaths, only to see the dark form of Emrys. Those intense eyes scanning over every inch of my face as rain pasted my loose hair to my cheeks. More himself but still consumed by the darker side of his nature. Seeing him considering me for any harm in the middle of my destruction, ash smeared on his leathers and the sharp line of his jaw.
A sharp flickering light began at my wishing stone where it had tumbled from my leathers. Gideon’s eyes were on it, then he dug into his pocket, pulling out a crystal wrapped in thin chain. The dark stone covered in ruins. A witch’s totem, and the stone was flaring with a pale blue light. A warning.
‘Something is coming,’ he cursed, pocketing the stone once more. Turning towards the vastness of the wood. We were too far from the Portium door. ‘We only have two fucking weak portal stones. They won’t carry all of us.’
I looked up at the seared trees. The potency of my magic. How high the smoke from the house had risen even with the storm. An easy target.
‘Go,’ Emrys commanded his brother as his hand slipped into my own. ‘Follow Alma back to the house and we’ll meet you there.’
‘That stone won’t carry you that far.’ Gideon’s eyes moved between us, worry pressed there like he’d resist. Then the distant horn sounded accompanied by the bark of a hunting hound.
‘Now!’ Emrys commanded, and we ran.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
