Page 128 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
‘Ancestors guard you,’ he greeted me in Kysillian, inclining his head. Some great distant pain moved through my chest hearing the warm greeting I last heard come from my father’s lips.
‘And guard you,’ I replied, struggling to keep my voice steady.
The nymph shifted with irritation, a sharpness to their eyes on my lips, understanding. Making me wonder how they could know Kysillian.
‘Why would Montagor care about settlements south of here?’ Gideon interjected.
‘They’re after fey ruins. The bastard remains in hiding, sending his rats out to forage,’ Aster answered, but from his curled lip I could tell he didn’t wish to offer us anything. ‘The real question is what areyouafter, Blackthorn? I don’t suppose it’s good luck that has drawn you across our path. Maybe the work of the dark fates. To seek a position of power in this coming war?’
‘The Reavers wish to get the fey to safety. I offered my assistance in their plight. As I always have,’ Emrys replied,unbothered by how his words might incriminate him in the rebellion’s eyes.
‘She doesn’t like excuses,’ Aster countered, dampness in the air intensifying with the nymph’s power.
‘She doesn’t like the truth either,’ Gideon retorted.
Where I expected feral brutal loyalty at such an insult, Callen and Aster remained quiet, almost solemn in the face of such a truth.
‘Be careful, Blackthorn, you have no idea the lengths she will go to win this. The bargains she’ll make with monsters themselves.’ Callen’s eyes gleamed with warning, but there was no anger. Not even a threat in the flare of his magic. Nothing but a strange desperation, as if conveying a message with no words at all.
‘Montagor is ravaging these lands because he wishes to control dark artifacts. The more he acquires the further his reach will grow. It’s only a matter of time until it leads him to a seal,’ Gideon answered, uncaring for the threat.
‘How can you be certain of that?’ Callen frowned, only those eyes sharpened with concern at the darkness laced within the words. The threat of what Montagor could be up to.
‘A children’s tale,’ Aster scoffed, yet Callen’s lavender gaze grew hard with worry.
‘Is that why your Countess hunted it too for a time?’ Gideon countered. A smooth rhythm between them that told me they’d all met before.
My hackles rose at Gideon’s slight. What use would the Countess have for artifacts? Especially of the Old Gods?
I felt Emrys’s power bite but I kept my gaze on Callen. On the blood we shared, on the barest hint that he was not where the ancestors willed him to be. Just as Thean wasn’t.
‘This won’t be a war if Montagor possesses anymore relics,’ I spoke in Kysillian again. Wondering if they too found it strange tosee another of us in the wilderness of the world. ‘He’s going for the seals. He’ll need Kysillian blood to finish this.’
Callen stayed silent, but there was no hard edge to his gaze or those words.
A heart seal was bigger than all the others if the tales were to be believed. It had taken seven kings to seal it, therefore it only stood to reason that it would take seven Kysillian lives to open it. Powerful bloodlines.
Fear bit deep into my bones, the scar at my neck almost burning in warning at that truth. How fey had already been taken so senselessly beneath Fairfax . All that pain and blood … for nothing. It was a drop in the ocean of what was to come.
‘They tried to take mine,’ I offered, pulling the collar of my leathers aside to show the marked skin at my neck. The paleness of a scar only a demon could leave.
Callen had gone very still. Either sensing the ferocity of it and the truth in my words or repulsed by the weakness in me to allow my Kysillian flesh to be marked in such a way. So visibly.
I’d been bested. Time and time again. Yet I stood here still and I refused to be ashamed. Because as I looked at that blood mark on Callen, he’d been bested too – and there was no shame in it. Not here with me. Not if it had let them survive.
‘Fairfax was using ancient blood. An experiment Montagor seemed interested in,’ I continued in mortal tongue, unafraid of what that revealed. ‘Surely you’ve heard thattale.’
The rebellion would have known. They knew everything. The cruelty they allowed because beaten fey were a weapon they could wield to their advantage. Desperate fey would pay any price for protection, a price their Countess liked to reap.
Callen gave no answer. Couldn’t because I’d seen that ring on her finger. The artifact she used to hone her power. Howruthlessly she kept these beings like pets. Wore our sacred blades as jewellery. I knew that pain and I knew the shame of it.
‘Callen,’ the Nymph reprimanded, as if knowing every thought in the Kysillian’s head. A worry formed at Aster’s brow, one that spoke of something deeper than simple camaraderie between the two.
‘You shouldn’t have wandered across my path, Blackthorn,’ the Kysillian warned, a slight panic filling those lavender eyes. ‘She wants your attention too much.’
Fear coiled tightly in my chest at that warning. The Countess wanted Emrys. Of course she did with her interest in the seals and Verr relics.
Yet Callen turned back to me. ‘A free Kysillian is a gift these days. It seems the ancestors watch over you. So, who am I to make you stray from your path, Nuva?’
