Page 144 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
The chant from the summoners seated at jewel-decorated tables with their misty orbs filled with trapped souls made ashudder roll through me. Dark summoning for entertainment, speaking to souls – or being distracted by them to have your pockets picked. Unfortunately, the glamour wouldn’t hide my revulsion. It also felt like painful pinching against my skin, as if it was too tight.
The brothel was in the centre of the Barton lands. The small town still thriving from what I glimpsed out of the filthy window before Thean had pinched me and forced me to pay attention.
A town with veins of canals running through it, long narrow boats moored on the murky waters. The streets were bustling with night markets, so many beings unaware of what lingered here. Whatcouldlinger beneath this building, and if it did … I didn’t want to think of what we would find.
I passed booths with worn curtains closed, devious laughter within. I made sure to keep my eyes on the plush blood-red carpet, avoiding the wet patches. Half-naked women and men lounged on chaises with pipes, blowing thick smoke into the already cloying air.
The madness of it all made me move more quickly down another dark panelled hallway, ignoring the drunken mirth and piano music as I passed another archway that led into what appeared to be a card room, keeping close to the long empty bookcases, holding nothing but discarded drinks now. Nothing caught my attention. The wishing stone around my neck silent.
I couldn’t see any passageways, or any way down to where a door to any lower chamber could be located. Mostly I couldn’t see through the smoke that curled like fog before me.
It was the bastard voyav’s fault for not warning me. Or perhaps it was my own for my impatience to try to solve everything myself once again.
Too many people, too much noise. Laughter and music. Naked bodies mixed with partially dressed or fully clothed spectators. A strange sordid mix of formality and depravity.
Fumes clung to my lips, an aphrodisiac to heighten pleasure. Something to make the working girls’ and boys’ jobs easier. Considering most mortals could barely last when dosed with the stuff. How they reclined in low chairs in a daze, pockets probably empty.
I ran my hands nervously over my skirts, or tried to. The thin silk did little but remind me of how much of me was on display, how sheer the fabric was in the barest light. Another deep breath threatened to pop the tiny pearl buttons stopping my breasts from being exposed.
I felt clumsy and ridiculous. Yet as I pulled in another lungful of that smoke, delicious pleasure rippled though me. But not for anything in this room.
Fucking beautiful.The dark tone of Emrys’s words seemed to brush against my oversensitive skin. Making me turn like a madwoman, anticipating him standing behind me.
He wasn’t.
Ancestors above. Maybe I’d breathed in too much. Then all I could think about was Emrys’s hands, the rough tightness of them on my hips. How they’d dragged up my thighs. The brush of his lips up the column of my throat.
I pressed my hand to my breastbone, the need to see him, to touch him, almost painful.
‘Fuck,’ I hissed, irritated with my own frustration and the wanton nature of my thoughts. I didn’t need to be distracted right now. I needed to find the bastard relic, or door – oranything.
The wishing stone flickered, almost mocking me.
With a frustrated groan, I made my way back into the hallway. I had to be missing something. I was so distracted I collided into something, making me stumble into the filthy wall.
A man stood in my path. His thinning hair in disarray like he’d already used the services and hadn’t even bothered to button his trousers back up. Any haze of mad lust for Emrys dissipated like a cold slap.
‘Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be alone,’ he leered, flashing me a grin to show blackened teeth as sour breath met my nose. I had nothing but pity for the poor creature who’d had to service this filthy bastard.
‘I have someone waiting,’ I smiled tightly, remembering I was supposed to be polite. Despite how the flames in the lamp just above his greasy head seemed to taunt me into singeing the bastard.
‘How much?’ He stepped more into my path, despite the weedy nature of his appearance and how badly I wanted to knock him back.
‘Too much,’ I bristled. Then those grabbing hands curled into the thin lace that concealed me.
Quick and sharp, with only a quarter of my Kysillian strength, I punched him in his lower abdomen. He folded with a wheeze, as if he was made of nothing but paper.
That’s when two other stumbling idiots entered the passage.
Bollocks.
‘Trouble?’ one of them asked. I parted my lips, trying to work out a lie, when I felt a familiar cold brush at my back. That flutter of desire came back. My magic almost preening through me, making my breath catch. The wishing stone hot where it hung between my breasts.
The men went rigid, as if they were nothing but puppets whose strings had gone taught.
A familiar strong hand looped around my middle, the same moment the scent of beasam bark touched my nose and I was pulled back into a hard chest.
‘I think you’ll find she’s mine.’ A dominance laced those words that matched the threatening pressure in the room.
