Page 4 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
There was no comfort for her. Not when her screams still echoed in my ears.
Fear clawed at my ribs, deep painful lacerations that fuelled the vicious anger inside me.
No.
‘She’d find a way.’ I pressed the words through my lips. Feeling the sharpness of scales slip across my cheek before they slid away again, buried back within my blood. The beast inside coiling to strike, to find a way out of my meagre, mortal flesh.
‘There isn’t a way.’ Gideon’s voice softened, regret lightening his features as his eyes drifted to Emrys’s rigid form.
‘There wasn’t one out of Daunton either.’ The words escaped before I could think. My secrets protruding too easily from the shallow grave I’d buried them in. My voice didn’t sound like my own. Too cold and distant.
It was the first time I’d said that word, almost making my lips tremble, but I tipped my chin, letting the feral rage in my chest consume everything else. All my sadness. All my fear feeding the monster that lurked beneath.
‘No way out of the beatings, the bitterness of the cold or the unmarked graves they’d make us dig deep in those woods.’
I refused to waver, leering forward until one talon was pointed at the healer’s throat.
‘Kat found one.’
A muscle moved in Gideon’s jaw but his stern expression remained.
‘She found it forme,’ I spat, my clawed finger resting the barest inch from his pulse point. ‘So if you think I’m letting you stop, you’re very much mistaken.’
All the things she’d done for me. How she’d saved me over and over and I had nothing to give. No brilliance. No intelligence. Nothing.
‘You’re not finished.’ Fury made my spine sharpen and I heard the popping of stitches in my dress with the threat of a change, anger boiling in my blood. I didn’t know all the stories. Knew nothing. Everything to save her was impossible and I wasn’t smart enough to understand any of it.
I wasn’t a mage. I had no hope of ever being one. All I had were beasts beneath my skin.
‘We’ve been through every record. The samples we need haven’t existed for a decade, long before the uprising.’ Gideon’s voice was tight but those regretful, blue eyes pooled with sorrow. ‘That’s the problem with basing magic upon monstrous things.’
‘There could be more samples in the—’ Thean began but their voice faded from my ears. A smell turned my focus to the desk beyond the healer. Bitter, earthy but distant. Almost faded. Familiar enough to pick at a memory in the back of my mind like a loose thread as I stared at the books and papers scattered on the desk.
I focused on the desk – the vials of scales, feather clippings and the beasts that each page depicted, following the scent, movingcloser until I could touch them. Smears of dark paint for shadow creatures, thick scales and golden stripes for eternal beasts.
They were hunted and they were killed for what they were worth.
Kat had told me that. Why most creatures were nothing but stories. How mortals longed for the magic in their blood, in their scales and fur. Buried in their very bone marrow.
The rattle of a chain, a feverish burn to my scaled skin and the sour smell of rotting straw. The darkness and the reek of damp. Memories I begged myself in the dark of night never to see again, only now I let them have me. Let their foulness tear at my heart.
What profit you’ll bring.The clammy touch of stubby fingers against my cheek. The inspecting glances. A vile caress and a spat curse.
I didn’t listen to the nightmare of those voices. No, I listened to my magic as it rippled over my skin with unease, lingering in the tips of my fingers and brushing my palm. Like a hand trying to guide me the rest of the way.
I moved closer to the source of that scent, the bickering voices of Thean and Gideon nothing but a distant mumble as I looked at the grey dirt in the vial on the table, barely glinting with the texture of the scale that remained. I turned it over to see the dark specks that endured, how they crumbled with the barest of motions.
Dead things are worth the most. Why is that, little rat?The Keeper had asked in the silky sweet voice he always used before the beatings. Before the performance.
‘They’re beyond value,’ I whispered to myself now, as my fingers curled around the vial. As I felt the curse buried in my blood sense it, hungry to change.
Only the dust in the jar wasn’t enough. It had regressed too far but that distant smell made a memory pierce through the pain of all the others.
Small fingers dragging over vials. The dusty rot of it clinging to the back of my throat, the sharpness of tobacco smoke in the shadows of forgotten places.
The promise of magic concealed within the vials. My skin almost burning with the urge to be cut, for blood to come free and release another monster from within.
‘What is this?’ I demanded, holding the glass vial out, silencing the room.
