Page 117 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
None.I tossed and turned with that answer on my lips. A foul taste coating the inside of my mouth. I couldn’t sleep with the absence of my beasts. For so long I’d hated them. Hated all the awful things they’d brought into my life. How they’d given me nothing but this pain, yet now I missed them horribly. Felt too vulnerable. Too soft and small in their absence.
Despite the sun only barely threatening to rise, I went downstairs. Needed something to do. Needed to forget. I pulled on a stern navy dress the house produced for me, long having abandoned the maid’s attire I’d hidden in for so long. The stiff fabric against my skin gave me some control. How easily I could hide everything behind the tight lacings and pleats.
Nobody could see. And if they couldn’t see … it never happened.
I rubbed at my fingertips, still wrinkled from the bath. How long I’d hidden in the murky water. Only getting out for the house to make me another. The only mothering I’d allow it to do for me. Anything to chase away the emptiness inside me.
That sensation of falling didn’t leave me. The lurching of my stomach unsettling me, how quickly I could be disarmed.
A clatter and grumbled curse came from one of the rooms off the hall as I reached the bottom of the stairs. The entrance hall was made of grand pointed arches, the wood darker and the carpet a deep red underfoot. Reminding me of the blood smeared on my thigh, the splatter of the hunters … but mostly how Thean had drunk from a vial of it and how rosy the blood had made their lips.
Another bang and curse reached my ear, pulling me thankfully from stupid thoughts and drawing me into the study to see Gideon at his desk. Shirt rumpled and rolled to his elbows. Hair in disarray where he’d been tugging at it.
‘Do you sleep?’ I accused. More annoyed perhaps that I’d somehow found company when I wanted to be alone. Or that I’d allowed my thoughts to wander to the voyav once more; they’d left and even the sting of that rejection didn’t stir the beasts within.
‘I could ask you the same.’ Gideon pulled off his spectacles, rubbing the bridge of his nose. ‘How are your wounds?’
‘Fully healed.’ I clutched my forearms, uncomfortable with his concern but Gideon was a healer. It was in his nature to care – even if he apparently loathed it.
He released a sigh, dropping his spectacles onto the pile of papers before him. ‘The voyav is being useful again then.’
His features tightened, clearly he didn’t appreciate that we’d owe Thean anything.
‘You don’t trust them.’ It wasn’t a question. Only Gideon’s mistrust of Thean seemed defensive more than anything else. Fearful of their unpredictability perhaps. Especially around those he cared for, I knew the protectiveness of biting first better than anyone else.
‘I don’t trust the secrets they keep,’ he added dryly and I couldn’t fault his reasoning as he opened the drawer and held out a small paper packet to me. ‘Here. The verium should be almost burnt out of your system but this will get rid of the rest.’
He’d spoken to me about it last night. A gentle knock on my door that I’d answered with bared teeth. I’d made him agree not to tell William, Emrys or Kat. He’d allow the deception on the grounds I took a tonic he produced, accepting my privacy before he left.
I should have rejected his help now. My beasts would come back, they always did. Yet childish fear curled around my ribs. The fear they wouldn’t, that I’d be left to face my mistakes alone. I took the packet, opening it to see a pale shimmering powder inside. The stench making me wince even without my more primal instincts.
‘It tastes like bad bog weed, so best to get it down in one,’ he offered unhelpfully scribbling something down in a notebook.
I tipped the packet to my lips, aiming for the back of my throat. Swallowing it quickly with a wince. ‘You’re familiar with verium?’
‘I’ve been shot enough times with a dart. Got an awful scar on my arse to prove it.’ He rose, making an attempt to tidy the mess before him. ‘The last Mage King had an obsession with using them on the battlefield.’
Then I noticed Gideon was still in his leathers. Smeared with dust and dirt from what had happened in the Greymark house. An imposing form, much like his brother – the only thing they shared perhaps. That golden hair catching the light was too perfect. I supposed he was handsome. He was a creature I might have entertained in the Institute stables orstorage cupboards when I was bored – anything to pass the time. To quell the darker thoughts in my mind. To feed the restless hunger of my beasts to have a reward.
Only, the healer sparked nothing in me now. Not even for me to try and shame myself as I had before, to destroy something in me just to distract myself from the hollow ache of my own relentless misery.
Something had changed in me and I didn’t know how to feel. A tightness to my chest as if I’d outgrown my bones. My agitated focus roamed against my will around the cluttered study, with its decorative arches and endless shelves with carvings of creatures from Elysior. Creatures I was desperate to become again.
I hadn’t seen the voyav. Told myself I didn’t want to. Didn’t want to be reminded of how much I’d needed them. What their care had meant to me. Unable to find what they could have gained from the exchange.
How foolishly vulnerable I’d been. Telling them things I should have kept between my teeth.
They’d left. That was the only thing that mattered.
A croaked growl came from Emrys’s desk. Turning me to see the bastard fiend sitting there in its cage. Its head tilting in consideration. Its small wyvern-like form not distracting me from its deadly nature.
It’d tried to kill Kat. The thought made me bare my stupid mortal teeth.
Only then my anger faltered. If she’d never been foolish enough to become entangled with that book … we wouldn’t have found our way here. Wouldn’t have learnt the truth. Wouldn’t have seen things as they actually were.
‘Why is that thing up here?’ I rubbed my temple, wishing to feel the hard press of my scales.
I should have made the house take the creature away, only it was clear I’d take anything to escape the hollowness lingering inside of me. I spread my fingers, tensing them, waiting for the flash of scales but it didn’t come. As the weak morning light spilled across my too-mortal flesh.
