Page 99 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
I felt Emrys’s warmth down my back, how his hands cupped my elbows in comfort. Bringing me back.
‘What is it?’ he asked, those dark eyes slipping over every inch of my expression as if he could sense the barest change in me.
‘Nothing,’ I lied. Unable to explain. How strange it was to stand in a place that had caused my mother nothing but pain. Somewhere she never intended me to be – yet we’d been guided here all the same.
Gideon moved down the hall, his aether cutting down the cobwebs from his path as Alma followed. Emrys waited for me, seeming to count my unsteady breath before I allowed myself to enter the house. The wooden beams above sagging with age. Groaning not in welcome but as if another great burst of wind could drag the walls down.
The once-painted ceilings were peeling, large chips of the art cracking under our boots. The irritated rustling from something nesting above as small streams of dust rained down. The main staircase had sunken in on itself. Forcing us down the narrow dark corridor with nothing but Gideon’s witch light.
‘How fucking depressing. I thought the Greymarks were merchants?’ Gideon huffed out a frustrated breath, raising his aether to fully consider the damage.
‘They squandered their wealth a long time ago. This was supposed to be a summer residence,’ Emrys added, his cautious gaze moving back to me. The remains of the banister had caught my eye. The side of the wood where someone had carved a flower, so small and unsteady as if done by a child’shand. I let my fingers trace the shape of it. Wondering if it had been left by her.
‘They left my mother here when she was barely days old.’ The words slipped free so easily as I stood somewhere I knew she never wanted me to be. ‘Lord Grey had no use for a daughter. So, he abandoned her here with a fey nursemaid to raise her.’
How old and cold this house seemed and how small she must have felt inside of it. Knowing this decay had taken decades, which meant my mother had lived in it in disrepair. How nothing but sadness remained as I moved further down the hallway, how endless and dark it was.
Alma watched me with concern but I reassured her with a small smile as she moved further into the house. Not needing to hear my secrets. She’d heard them all before.
She ducked into a side room, making Gideon swear as he went after her. The remains of furniture lingering inside still covered with sheets. Stained grey and green with mould. The damp leaves that had blown in through the gaps in the boarded-up windows.
The wood-panelled walls were vandalised. White paint flaked where it had been smeared. Marks of impurity from saint worshippers.
‘Kat?’ Emrys asked, at my side as the sight of it stalled me.
I turned to see him. How carefully he watched me as if trying to understand. ‘My mother didn’t even know she was a lord’s child until he came back when she was eighteen. Surprised to find his unwanted runt a beauty. Out of money and favour in the King’s court – he tried to whore her to a wealthy man.’
Such quiet consumed the room for that small moment. How the walls seemed to creak and groan, wary with the tale. OneI knew he’d find familiar. How many of the King’s followers had done the same. The horrid things they did for power. Even against their own.
‘She refused. So, they used a contortion charm on her.’ Shattered the bones in her right arm, so awfully she’d never regained full use of it. How deeply those pale scars had marked her. ‘Then they hanged her nursemaid in the town square as punishment. Her name was Katherine.’
Why I held that name. That simple mortal name. Why my mother had given it to me. So Katherine would know, wherever she was, that my mother loved her. Would always love her, the woman she thought of as her mother – no matter how brutally this world had torn them apart.
‘What happened to Lord Grey?’ Gideon demanded from the shadowed corner of the room.
‘My father killed him,’ I answered. Unafraid of that truth. How glad I was for it, how my magic flared in my blood. Pleased with its vengeance.
‘Good,’ Gideon answered, his blue eyes gleaming like his witch aether with his anger. Then came a wooden creak, drawing me to a lopsided sideboard in the corner. My hand moved for my father’s blade. Only for my magic to settle inside of me, as if taking a relieved breath. Familiar with this place.
The sideboard creaked again, hinge squeaking as the small cupboard opened slightly, small and weak once again. Too soon to be an accident. I crossed the room and pressed my fingers against the wood, feeling it. The slight irritation of magic, one that lingered deep in the grain of the wood. Weaker than Blackthorn house, but there all the same.
‘It’s enchanted,’ I whispered, wondering how the magic could have survived such destruction. Feeling the sadness pressed into the very dampness of the wood. ‘Is that possible?’
Emrys pressed his fingers next to my own, expression pensive. ‘It was an old tradition. Most witches were indentured to the house and had no choice.’
It creaked again, persistent and slow like the greeting from an old dog’s wary tail. The Grey family wouldn’t have cared for it. Not as Emrys or the Blackthorns had cared for theirs. Not as my mother would have. Making me wonder if that was why all her tales included an enchanted house. Yet she’d never spoken of this one.
There was no love left in this house. In this forgotten place that had been a haven for my mother once. Because it would miss her, and I wondered how she had survived the pain of that loss. Of knowing it would be left to ruin without her.
My magic flared. Dragging my focus to the wall next to me, where ivy clung to the remains of the plaster.
Here,a small voice called. My fingers curled into the dry leaves instinctively, and they crumbled beneath my touch. My magic burst from my fingers as the leaves fell charred to the ground. Embers illuminating what was hidden beneath. Where the wood was burnt and bubbled, rough and deep.
I fit my fingers into the gaps and it was like laying my palm into his handprint.
We protect what we love, Tauria.The ghost of my father seemed to linger at my side. The closest I’d been to him in thirteen years. My magic curled like a wounded beast inside of me. He was here. He’d protected her here and so had my magic, because he’d given it to me.
‘Kat,’ Alma called, breaking the spell of my grief. I followed her voice, finding her in what appeared to be the remains of a library, the shelves scorched as if someone had attempted to set it alight. I avoided the holes in the floor, the boards far too unsteady beneath my boots.
