Page 151 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
Icy dread churned inside of me. Those sightless eyes looked down at the wishing stone hanging between us as it suddenlybegan to burn. That horrid pain consuming the side of my neck, right over the bite as a cry almost left my lips.
In the blink of an eye, the creature was gone. The chains in my palms rendered to nothing but dust as they slid between my fingers.
‘Kat!’ The temperature dropped as something rolled through Emrys, his magic rising with such intensity my temples ached and the stone beneath my feet cracked.
Something was wrong.
A horrid whizzing cut through the air, turning me towards the darkness that surrounded us beyond that maze of shelves.
‘Emrys,’ I reached for him, but suddenly he was pushing me back, the might of him wrapped around me. The suddenness of it sent me stumbling into the shelves, ancient priceless tomes tumbling to the ground releasing a cloud of dust as I caught myself on the edge.
Too late.
Emrys was in front of me. Blocking something’s path. His breath so laboured, clouding in the little space between us.
‘Emrys?’ I reached for his face but he was so still, so tense.
Then I looked down.
Blood seeped into his white shirt, too much blood.
A dark gleam from something at the centre.
Right through his heart.
Only a sacred blade can kill an Old God.
Then I was screaming.
Chapter Forty
Alma
‘Careful, little nightmare. The blush will give you away,’ came the silky taunt from my side. My plan of moving into the reek of the overcrowded rooms to dissipate the allure of the voyav’s scent hadn’t worked.
‘It’s the powder,’ I snapped, averting my gaze back to the table. Hoping it was just the pink powder William had assaulted my face with. Seeming far too cheery when presented with the task of dressing us up. Ignoring every protest I’d made as if he’d been given a doll to dress with firm instructions from the voyav.
Only this time this whole thing was both mine and Kat’s stupid idea. At least she’d had the mercy to be glamoured.
I wasn’t so lucky. I’d been forced into a silk monstrosity. It clung to my hips and waist. The bodice was low enough to reveal the swell of my breasts and disturb the old withered men at their gambling table. Despite the young women draped around them. Some missing most of their clothes altogether.
Thankfully the lanterns and pipe smoke in the den were enough to cover the rest. Though I doubted anyone in here was sober enough to care.
I’d heard of places like this. My Keeper had used them as a threat. Unsavoury and sinful places. Ones that had made mebeg and whimper at the mere thought. Thinking my Keeper’s treatment a blessing in comparison.
Most were underground. Set up in old sewer tunnels, ruins of king’s keeps or travelling markets. This one occupied the old lord’s house. Walls painted garish red and silks hung from the ceiling, threatening to catch on to the plethora of candles occupying the cramped main hall.
‘I was a maid, not a nun,’ I sighed, keeping that ridiculous pleased smile I’d seen on the other women’s lips, as if they were nothing but dolls to be paraded by children.
‘You had a lover?’ Thean inclined their head, their curiosity sharp. I didn’t know what surprised me more. That we were onto this subject, or the voyav’s apparent genuine interest in those amber eyes as they focused solely on me.
‘No,’ I snorted. A quick rutting in the back storeroom with a carriage doorman or delivery boy couldn’t be described as anything other than seeing to a need. ‘Quick and unmemorable.’
Never the same twice. Never allowing them to leave their claim.
I’d refused to be ashamed by it. The things my body wanted. The relief it sought.
‘My beasts have urges.’ Why most shapeshifters had found themselves in the trap of being owned. Having their bodies used. Their relaxed ease with sexuality weaponised against them.
