Page 15 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

‘Kat,’ I corrected again, getting the sense he was using the formality to annoy me.

Gideon muttered to himself, and began to tidy the table before him. ‘Refrain from using your summoning flame for the foreseeable . We’re uncertain of the limits of the venom, or if your blood will fully accept the healing.’

‘If it doesn’t?’

‘As Emrys and your vicious little companion say, we’ll find something else.’ There was a heavy weight of exhaustion to his words. He held out two vials he uncovered from beneath a stack of papers. They looked like the ones Emrys had given me for Alma.

‘What are these for?’ I frowned, letting the warm vials roll across my palm.

‘Miss Darcy – Emrys did a fine job of complicating the incantation Emmaline wrote. That should settle Miss Darcy’s changes more efficiently and make them easier to recover from. Also … it should speed up the recovery of her arm.’

Her arm. I almost flinched thinking of how much pain she must have been in. Pain she’d endured for me.

‘Thank you.’ Shame made my voice thick. At all the trouble I’d caused. ‘Thank you for helping her.’

‘If you wish to repay me, go back to bed.’ He rubbed his jaw with his gloved hand and leant back in his chair.

‘You’re troublesome enough without wandering the house.

Emrys is due to return from another futile attempt to distract the Council.

I don’t think I can face another evening of his scolding … especially fucking sober .’

How easily I’d forgotten what had passed, lost within my own nightmares. The Council, Lord Percy and Fairfax. My stomach plummeted with dread. ‘Distract the Council from what?’

‘ You .’ His reply was so matter of fact. So simple and yet it was like a sharp slap to cold skin. Unease straightened my back as I reached for my magic inside myself but instead found nothing but that endless silence. It saw no threat here and I wasn’t in a rush to rouse it from its slumber.

‘Gideon!’ William’s voice shrieked into the room.

Spinning me towards it with such speed I almost tripped over my own feet.

Gideon lunged from his chair, reaching across the table to grab my bicep just as the stricken boy came skidding into the room, panting for breath with rosy cheeks and knocking a small stack of papers off the sideboard with his hurry. ‘Kat’s gone mis—’

His wide brown eyes landed on me, going impossibly wider as he straightened. Pressing a hand over his heart and sucking in a deep, relieved breath.

‘I appear to have located her,’ Gideon answered wryly, releasing my arm. ‘Against my will.’

I don’t think William heard him.

‘Bloody saints, Kat.’ The boys smile wobbled on his lips as he looked over me with disbelief, before throwing his arms around me, his breath not quite steady under the crushing pressure of his embrace as we tumbled backwards a step.

I couldn’t help the small laugh that slipped free – no matter how it tugged painfully at my ribs – as I pressed my palms against his back, holding onto him.

‘Hello, William.’ I used my finger to untangle a curl from around his horn, finding a small dry leaf stuck there from his work.

He tipped his head back, tears in those warm brown eyes as his smile wobbled on his lips. ‘You’re back.’

I swallowed down the emotion building within me. How stupid I’d been and how he deserved to suffer none of it.

‘I feel much better. I just wanted to stretch my legs.’ I ignored the weight of the lie as he pulled back, rubbing his cheeks with an embarrassed flush, realising my state of undress. Only the minute William stepped back to release me, a weakness ate into my bones, almost buckling my knees.

‘Easy!’ William cried out, arms coming around me as if I was an oversized doll he was attempting to carry.

‘I’ll be all right.’ I flushed, grasping onto his shoulders and trying to find my balance.

‘The bloody house shouldn’t have let you out,’ Gideon cursed, striding around the table.

The floor raised to trip him on his way to help William, forcing him to stumble as he took my arm once more, the cupboards rattling as the jars inside clinked as if in reprimand.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ he cursed again at the floor. ‘Behave.’

‘Come on. Let’s get you back to bed,’ William huffed, taking a firm hold of my other arm. ‘Gideon, don’t fight with the house. It’s still annoyed about you ripping up the east flooring.’

‘Why would you do that?’ I demanded, turning to look at the healer. Concerned as to why he’d go so far out of his way to annoy the house.

Gideon kept his gaze ahead, jaw tight with displeasure, clearly keeping his disagreements with the house to himself. I wanted to press for more but then I realised they were both guiding me back into the hall. Back to bed.

You gave your blood too freely, little troll. A dark, horrid voice mocked in the back of my mind. The memory of that pit, waiting to devour me as I slept.

‘I don’t want to go back to bed.’ Panic tightened my throat, making the words sound like a squeak from my lips. I was too scared to go back to the nightmares. To remember, digging my heels into the hardwood floor – jarring them both.

‘You need to rest, Kat,’ William tried to reassure me as they continued to guide me through the door.

‘The house also needs to stop—’, Gideon choked on his words. ‘You interfering menace !’

I looked up. We weren’t in the bedroom. The house had taken us to the study.

A relieved breath escaped me before I filled my lungs again with the familiar and comforting smell of books.

The stacked bookcases. Pointed arches and decorative carvings instantly putting me at ease.

How low the fire sat in the hearth, the wooden carved griffins peering down from the beams above in curiosity.

Home.

‘Let’s sit you down anyway,’ William offered nervously, eyes moving to Gideon whose jaw was clenched so tight I worried if he’d have any teeth left as he glared at the ceiling.

William dutifully guided me to a chaise before the fire – one that had never been there before and was oddly cleared of any clutter.

‘I’ll be fine here for a little while,’ I tried to reason as William helped me sit. The cushions rearranged themselves behind my back at the house’s command as a thick blanket slid off the arm and across my lap.

‘I’ll be the bloody judge of that,’ Gideon huffed, moving to rifle thought his desk like an ill-tempered thief.

The house gave a clatter of the desk drawers in answer. Clearly unbothered by Gideon’s annoyance.

‘You do look pretty awful, Kat,’ William added, biting his lip anxiously as he fussed with the blanket on my lap.

‘Thank you, William.’ I grimaced, as another biting twinge consumed my side. Then Gideon was back in front of me, a murky vial of liquid in his hand.

‘Drink all of it.’ He uncorked it, making me almost retch at the stench, like rotten eggs. Even William went a bit green. The healer’s eyes narrowed, anticipating resistance from me.

I could have refused, only I had a horrid feeling Gideon Swift would have no issue with plugging my nose and forcing the mixture down my throat like I was a petulant child. I decided to save William from the harrowing sight.

I took the vial and did as I was told. Thankfully, it tasted far better than it smelt. Finding the mixture sweet on my tongue.

‘Well done, Kat.’ William grinned. ‘I can make you some nettle tea, that’ll help with—’

Only he didn’t get to finish.

A gentle teasing shiver ran down my back, like fingers tracing my spine. The light of the fire dipped. A rush of footsteps turned us all to the doorway.

And there he was.

His hair was in dark disarray, shadows cutting across his jaw. There was a breathless dishevelment about him, his coat half-unbuttoned. As if he’d run all the way here. That rich scent of beasam bark filled my lungs in an instant – or maybe it was simply the memory of it.

Emrys.

A sadness lingered in his features – and it broke my heart. He was alert, as if some great threat was about to befall us. Endless dark eyes focused on nothing but me.

Tauria. The softness of how he’d called my name made a quiet sob come to my lips. I could see the image of him pressed flat against the bloody, ashen earth, his arm reaching for me as his mouth moved, desperate and pleading. Screaming something over that firestorm.

Me. He was calling for me.

‘William, I think you left some west herb stewing on the stove.’ Gideon cleared his throat.

‘No, I didn’t—’ William barely finished before Gideon took the scruff of the boy’s shirt, pulling him towards the door in a forced march, a clumsy scuffle that Emrys didn’t seem to notice.

No. Nothing broke his focus on me. Such a stillness to him I didn’t think he even dared to breathe.

You thought you could keep him, Tauria? That dark voice came back. Filling my memory with the torment of his screams. Panic made me try to move, fingers curling over the arm of the chaise.

‘Emrys.’ His name came broken from my lips as I felt the dampness of tears on my cheeks, breaking the spell over him, and in the blink of an eye he was before me, his gloved hands capturing my face so gently.

Thumbs brushing away my tears. Looming over me as I grasped the sleeve of his coat. Desperate to make him reel.

‘Kat.’ His gaze traced every inch of me. Unbelieving. One hand moved to cup the side of my throat.

Such deep emotion burnt in those eyes as they flicked from black pools to stormy grey. Breath slipping unsteadily from his lips. I held onto him. Desperately.

‘You’re here,’ I half sobbed in my quiet hysteria, forcing myself further into his arms as I pressed my face to his chest and dragged in deep breaths of his forbidden scent. Allowing it to calm that small part of me that still didn’t believe it.

‘Croinn,’ was his only answer, breath unsteady as he crouched before me and wrapped me in the strength of his embrace.

Croinn. The gentleness of that word soothed over some raw place inside of me. The soft reverence of it.

Real.

He’d found me again.

‘You should be in bed.’ His voice was so hoarse. Pained.

‘I want to stay here,’ was my muffled response, not wanting to move. As I trembled with exhaustion.

‘We can stay here.’ His words were soothing, but I couldn’t stop the brutal pounding of my heart as panic spiked inside of me.

Serus . That darkness had called. The hunger of it. How viciously it had wanted him.

I pulled back the barest inch to see him. ‘H-how long—’

‘Thirteen days.’ I knew by the raw hurt in those eyes and the tension in his jaw he’d know every moment. Every second if I asked.

Devastation ploughed through me. All that time. How silent my magic was. My hands shook and his shirt slipped from my grasp.

‘Kat.’

‘I’ve ruined everything.’ The words broke apart on my lips. Breaths too short with terror. What the Council would do. All the things I’d failed to hide. ‘I should never have come here. You and William—’

‘Don’t.’ He captured my face once more, so gently. Hurt shadowing his features as if my words were a knife I’d driven into his heart. As if I could mean it. ‘Don’t say that.’

I shook my head. He needed to understand. ‘It’s all my fault.’

‘No, it isn’t, Croinn.’ He brushed my lose hair behind my ear as if it was something priceless.

‘Gideon said the Council—’

‘You don’t have to worry about that.’ He shook his head, a coldness creeping into his eyes that told me he’d be having words with his brother. ‘The Council are too busy trying to find evidence that isn’t there.’

‘Fairfax … the seal.’ My fists curled into his shirt.

A soothing sound slipped from him. His fingers curling into my hair. That dark gaze didn’t break from my face, seeming to watch every breath. Cautious, as if they could stop at any moment.

‘The chamber collapsed. The house with it.’

It couldn’t be that simple. My sins couldn’t be concealed so easily.

‘Was anyone hurt?’ I shouldn’t care. Not about those horrid people, and yet I couldn’t stop.

‘You,’ he answered without hesitation. As if that was all that mattered. Settling me further into his arms as I dragged in another beasam bark breath, feeling the shy brush of his magic. Cautious as if I wouldn’t want it.

A warmth pooled in the pit of my stomach from the tonic as my limbs became weightless.

Kat. My name from his lips. How he had called it over and over. I remembered it. Remembered it tethering to something deep within my chest.

I curled my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck.

‘I heard you. You were calling for me,’ I whispered, my words feeling slurred. My tongue too heavy as my eyes kept drooping shut.

‘I was.’ His voice was quiet, almost unsteady.

Because I’d asked him to. Even if he didn’t know the power of that word. He’d done it all the same.

Something in that made me sink back into the warmth of him. The shadows not so dark and the oppressive weight of my fears no longer lingering.

You thought you could keep him, Tauria? That voice kept coming back. Bringing with it the truth that clawed at my heart. How desperately that darkness wanted him. How I knew there would be nothing left of him if it did.

I held him tighter. Feeling the gentle thump of his heart against my cheek and the reassuring brush of his magic.

Real. Here.

He was here with me.

The thought settled me, enough to close my eyes for a moment. Only then I couldn’t open them again as I rested more heavily against his chest, but he didn’t move. Just kept hold of me.

‘Stay,’ I whispered instead. ‘Stay here with me. Please.’

Here where it was real. If only for this moment.

‘Where else would I be, Croinn?’ He pressed those words against my temple in a whisper of a kiss. His finger tracing the shape of my ear as he had once before. Seeming to be drinking in my scent as I devoured his.

‘ Tauria .’ It came so softly, the brush of a kiss against my brow, but as I turned towards it, sleep pulled me back, and there was nothing waiting for me in the darkness of my dreams. As if they were too fearful of him to linger.