Page 31 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

‘She says she’s fine,’ I sighed, feeling my shoulders sag with my worries. ‘It’s late. I should leave her to rest.’

Alma always was too light a sleeper and my presence probably wasn’t settling her as I wanted it to. Not when those creatures beneath her skin guarded her so closely. When they could probably sense the unease in my own magic.

‘You don’t believe her?’ he observed. Easily able to read me.

I worried about the things she wouldn’t say. How heavily they haunted her. Then I remembered what happened in that Council chamber. The tight overwhelming emotion that bloomed in my chest as I looked at his beautifully stoic face.

‘I shouldn’t have told her about Hale like that. She – she burnt the chocolates he gave her. I didn’t think.’ I ducked my head, hating how I’d hurt her. Shamed by my thoughtlessness.

‘Kat.’ His fingers came beneath my chin, gently coaxing me to meet his eyes again.

‘You didn’t tell me. About what you did for Alma.’ That he’d got her away from the Council, done it without a second thought.

‘She should never have been there,’ he answered so effortlessly. No. None of us should have been. He pulled back slightly to pull something from his pocket.

‘Here.’ A torn piece of cloth lay across his palm, stained with ash and blood.

My blood. What they must have taken from the Institute after that creature in Hale had attacked me.

‘It was in an old cemetery just beyond the Institute grounds. One of the old lord’s mausoleums had enough Verr artifacts to make the summoning. ’

Blood summoning. One of the oldest offerings.

I pressed down my unease of Emrys being so close to the Institute again. So close to the remnants of Montagor’s attack.

‘It’d be safer if you destroyed it,’ he offered, jaw tense. Unsettled.

‘Surely Gideon won’t be pleased by that.

’ I took the blood-stained rag from him and moving into the hall where the house had thankfully put my room – or his room – just next door.

I went to the fire. My magic rising quickly, the rag combusting against my skin, rendering it to ash as I let it drop into the orange flames.

‘I think I’ve had as much of Gideon’s opinion as I can stomach for the evening,’ he commented darkly from behind me.

I turned, listening to the creak of the house as if it was taking a deep, relieved breath. Settling with all it cared for under its roof. Emrys considered the fire next to me with a tired, distant expression.

‘Do you want to be left alone?’ I was cautious of his emotions. Of the whirlwind that had been his life since I’d entered it. Also – that I’d stolen his room. Or the house had.

His answering smile was small. ‘Not by you, Croinn.’

He lifted his hand to push the hair back from his brow and it was then I saw the spotting of blood on his shirtsleeve, how the darkness shifted beneath his skin as if to catch my attention, shadows dancing over his knuckles.

‘You’re hurt.’ I crossed the space between us, hating the tension that came over his limbs as I reached carefully for his hand. The slight flinch, his eyes too alert in an instance.

‘You won’t hurt me, Emrys,’ I reasoned. Pulling back his sleeve gently to see the curved slash beneath. Not too deep.

‘Those back claws of the beast were surprisingly sharp.’ His brow furrowed, as if he’d forgotten he had the wound at all.

‘Those claws could have anything on them,’ I corrected, looking at the wound more closely for any other sign of contamination.

I tugged him from the fire to where healing supplies lay scattered on the desk.

The house materialising a bowl of steaming water and cloth without command.

I made quick work of cleaning the wound and soaking a cotton ball in healing tonic as he perched on the desk’s edge like a well-behaved patient.

‘You’re lucky Gideon didn’t see it.’ I scolded him playfully, listening to his small huff of amusement. ‘Has he always been so …’

‘Difficult?’ He finished as the shadows cut across his pensive expression. ‘He has his reasons. Witch blood isn’t the kindest curse to possess.’

No. Most of the witches in the tales of old were driven to madness with the weight of their gifts. Most witches were renowned not only for their powers, but their prickly dispositions. Why most of them were dead – having crossed the wrong foe.

‘Lady Blackthorn was a witch then?’ I frowned, finishing cleaning the wound and moving onto applying the balm.

‘Of a long ancient line. One I doubt even she knew the full truth of. She was raised in the rebellion. Used by them. Even Emmaline was nothing more than a creation of their meddling. One of the Countess’ breeding experiments.’

Unease shifted through me at those words. My father had warned me of that. How the rebellion had its own breeding practices, mixing magic to raise more potent warriors for its battles. Horror stories I’d wished were just Council exaggeration.

Only the saint worshippers had to get their ideas from somewhere, and it was the ancient fey that had favoured purity of blood first. That had put the survival of their own magic above all else.

I wrapped his wounds in a thin, clean bandage. Watching the shadow of his magic beneath his skin, twisting as if intrigued by my touch. Deep shadows lingered beneath his eyes, a strange tension in his limbs. As if small tremors were moving through him.

‘You’re in pain.’ I pressed my palm against his cheek, expecting to find he had a chill, only his skin was perfectly warm.

‘I can’t remember not taking it. The bark.’ Shame coated his words. How quickly he curled his hands into fists. How close to the surface that darkness was.

The beasam bark. The suppressant to his magic.

‘You’ve stopped.’ I hadn’t even contemplated what the withdrawal from it would be like for him. With just how potent and temperamental the bark could be.

‘I can’t sense things I should with it. Fairfax wouldn’t have happened if—’

‘That wasn’t your fault.’ I ran my thumb across the sharp line of his jaw. ‘Not everything is your fault, Emrys.’

Those solemn dark eyes watched me with such caution. As if trying to find the lie. Disbelieving it didn’t bother me as his fears told him it should.

Those eyes became pitch-black as they took me in. Standing before him in disarray, in my nightgown that had seen better days, still wearing his coat.

‘What you said in the Council chamber.’ His tone was gentle but quiet. Haunted. As if every word I’d said in that chamber lingered for him even now. ‘Did he ever hurt you like that?’

What Daunton had done. The sharp claws of fear buried themselves in my heart, threating to shorten my breath but I refused to be cowed by my memories. Not here. Not with him.

The importance of what he was asking me. Why he was asking. What nobody had bothered to ask before. Would rather pretend it hadn’t happened at all.

‘No.’ I shook my head.

His eyes ran over every inch of my expression as if seeking out the hint of a lie. ‘You’d tell me?’

Something sparked in my chest at the depth of emotion in his eyes. It mattered to him. Everything about me mattered to him.

‘I’d tell you.’ Truth. I knew I’d tell him because those words were safe in the small space between us.

Then came the cold brush of shame against my skin. For not telling the truth sooner. For never speaking of it.

‘Kysillians don’t bear scars. It’s a shame to hold a mark on your skin, a reminder that you were bested by a lesser being.

’ The words rubbed uncomfortably against my throat on the way out.

Seeing that darkness in his eyes harden with wrath.

His thoughts going to my back, at just how marked I was.

‘I thought it was punishment from the ancestors. That I was weak. Why they hurt Alma. Why they cursed Master Hale.’

A harsh breath left me as the weight of those fears finally escaped the confines of my chest. Emrys’s hands had come to rest gently at my waist, my own finding their way to his forearms. Holding on as if fearful I could fall apart.

‘I believed it for so long.’ My eyes came up to meet his dark ones. Seeing the burn of my lavender reflected there. Seeing the harshness of his features with his worry for me. As I looked at his own scars that had never bothered me. Never made me see him any differently.

‘Only now I know, none of it was my fault.’ My hands slid up until they rested at the side of his neck, over those marks on his own skin. How he came closer, as if trying to shield me even here. As his hands slip around my back. The strong warmth of his touch comforting me.

‘None of this was your fault either, Emrys,’ I whispered, as I brushed my thumb over the scarred side of his cheek. Seeing that shift of darkness beneath his skin. ‘It doesn’t frighten me … to see you as you are. Nothing about you frightens me.’

Just as it didn’t frighten me to see Alma in all her forms.

I’d seen the evil of this world. Felt the callous cruelty of it as I held onto him. As I felt that magic brush across my skin, I knew there was none of it in him.

My thumb dragged across the rough stubble of his cheek. As I saw the tiredness in his features, the weariness in his shoulders with his exhaustion. ‘You need to rest.’

‘I don’t think the house has given me a choice on that,’ he answered dryly, leaving me to peek over his shoulder and see the door had vanished.

A nervous laugh bubbled from my lips. Making his decisions for him.

‘Will you come to bed?’ I asked quietly, ignoring the sting of heat at my cheeks. It was only sleep after all.

Where I thought I’d see amusement, he was looking at the bed. Pensive.

‘I promise not to debauch you,’ I blurted out like a fool, remembering the last time we’d both been in this room. Realising maybe it was too forward. Too much. ‘You don’t have to if—’