Page 32 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

‘All right, Croinn.’ He pulled me closer, the ghost of a kiss brushing my forehead before he withdrew gently, reluctantly. As he slipped into the bathroom, I took a moment trying not to panic as I moved to the bed and turned down the sheets before combing my hair into a loose tangle down my back.

I tried to find my nerve. Obviously I’d shared a bed with Emrys before. However, reminding myself of that wasn’t settling my nerves. No – it made my magic surge , making my skin too warm. Playfully excited.

‘Behave,’ I hissed as I pulled off his coat, hanging it up neatly. Fidgeting as I tried to sort out the side table still littered with healing items. I should have rifled through his coat pockets when I had the chance, I might have found something interesting – something to talk about.

‘Kat,’ Emrys half cursed, startling me as I turned to see he’d come out of the bathroom. Pinching the bridge of his nose, his shirt missing. His hand flexing slightly, as if he was holding on very loosely to his control.

The muscled contours of his chest catching the firelight, that scarring running from his jaw all the way to the waistband of his trousers. A path my fingertips had trailed before.

‘Is it paining you?’ I asked, frowning as I looked at the bandage on his arm. Knowing the healing tonic should be working.

‘Can you get under the covers please?’ he sighed as if in discomfort. ‘There is only so much of you in that nightgown I can take.’

I laughed, tugging up the strap of my nightgown where it had slipped down my shoulder. ‘There is nothing alluring about my nightgowns.’

Frumpy and too large considering they never made them long enough for me.

‘You haven’t seen you in them.’ He turned to see to the fire, which was perfectly fine without his inspection.

Ease settled through me as I climbed into the bed. Pulling up the covers, a shiver moving through me at the cold sheets beneath.

‘Better?’ I asked, putting all my attention into straightening my pillow.

Ignoring the fact no part of me was averse to him right now.

Tired or not. Especially not my magic, which swooped through me with strange flutterings.

The wishing stone around my throat thankfully better behaved as the house was nice and quiet.

Then I noticed the shadows beneath his eyes as he got into the bed, the tiredness in his gaze as I settled on my side. Curling my hands beneath the pillow to fight the urge to reach out and touch him, knowing I wouldn’t be able to stop.

Unable to deny that there was something so natural about lying in this bed with him. Close enough to feel the warmth of him sink into my skin. To feel the brush of his magic.

‘What keeps you awake the most?’ I worried.

‘Too many things,’ he answered. ‘Mostly the things I can’t change.’ A log snapped in the hearth, making shadows play across the handsome angles of his face. ‘Some nights I can hear them.’

His words were cautious, as if hesitant to speak that truth. So I remained silent and still, wanting him to share this burden.

‘Voices that are too distant, as if they’re speaking in another room and I can never make out the words.’ He scrubbed his palms over his face, his sigh filled with defeat. ‘Then sometimes a woman is singing, hymns of the Old Gods. A wind calling my name, small and soft as if trying to rouse me.’

‘Why I’d read anything, study anything. Wander all the way across Elysior to avoid the restlessness of sleep.’ Then his head turned on the pillow, eyes so pale and light. ‘Maybe it’s just madness. An impossible strange thing.’

All I wanted to do was comfort him, but I didn’t wish to give him empty words, just like I’d never given them to Alma. Never truly able to understand the depth of that pain … but wanting them to know I’d always be listening. Always be here.

A impossible strange thing. That was what he’d called himself.

‘You’re not strange to me.’ I moved closer to his warmth. Wondering if some of my own truths would comfort him, would make him feel less bare. Less alone. Something to take his mind from it.

‘Should I tell you a story?’ I asked. He didn’t answer, just waited. As if anything from my lips would capture his attention entirely.

‘My father was born in the midlands. His mother was of ancient blood, a rare female that they bred with one of their elders before she was barely of age. Only, she never came into her flame. Was never able to wield it. So, despite eventually falling pregnant, they deemed any child of hers to be unworthy. A bad omen – so they cast her out.’

‘I thought Kysillians guarded their own fiercely,’ he asked, moving closer. His fingers absently pushed my hair back from my face, tucking it carefully behind my ear. Tracing the shape of it with such reverence.

‘They value Kysillia’s flame above everything else. To be powerless is to be impure in their eyes,’ I answered, glad his hand didn’t fall away. That his fingers curled absently into my hair. ‘Why they hate half-breeds, because most cannot summon.’

‘My grandmother was a storyteller. She knew all the myths of old, all the songs and histories of the fey. Even the Old Gods from long before.’ I reached for his other hand that rested on the mattress between us and ran my fingers over his knuckles.

Remembering the warmth in my father’s voice when he spoke of her.

The grief too that haunted every story he told.

Because perhaps he wished only to hear those tales from her lips.

‘She made a new life performing, travelling and teaching my father on the roads of Elysior. Just the two of them. Free in the wilderness of the world.’

A peaceful, simple life. Perhaps the type of life I could have envisioned for myself once.

‘Then came the King’s raids.’ The Mage King’s father.

I felt Emrys tense, because that would be his grandfather.

Another monster in a different tale. Who’d drenched the wetlands in blood for nothing but sport.

‘My father was thirteen when the attack came. His mother made him promise to get the fey villagers out, to protect the children and take them deep into the western wood. To the fey ruins there.’

Emrys’s body eased but his attention on my face didn’t waver. As if he needed every word.

‘My father did as she said. Only, she didn’t follow.’ No. Because she was Kysillian, even if those elders didn’t value her as one. She would die for her child. Die for the beings we were formed to protect.

‘She was captured and taken to the mines in the east. The Kysillians soon turned up to find my father hiding in the wood. To act as saviours in the aftermath. The elder who had sired my father saw his flame and claimed him. Took him deep to the north mountains and swore to find his mother. All my father had to do was complete the training of his blood. If he became the perfect champion – his mother would be returned and her shame forgotten.’

It was then I knew that grief could pass through families. That it could linger in magic. How painfully my magic grieved. For the woman that had borne it.

‘Every day my father asked of her. Every day they told him they were looking.’ As they locked him in training rooms, made him endure their trials and tests. ‘He was seventeen when he bested his sire and won his blade. When he left to find his mother deep in the east.’

My breath caught with the weight of it. Emrys hand slid around my waist, bringing me closer as I braced my hand on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath my palm. ‘He was three days too late. She’d died taking a beating for another prisoner.’

She’d held on for him. All that time she’d held on. Knowing my father would make it back to her. That he’d find her – because she’d called his name.

‘Her grave was marked with Azenia, the everlasting bloom. The sign of a true warrior.’ A blessing from the ancestors to grow where she had fallen. ‘So much of the flower grew, it drifted through the air like snowfall. As if the ancestors themselves wept for the cruelty of it.’

When the ancestors cared. Or perhaps they were simply shamed into caring.

‘My father burnt down the entire mine. Freed the fey and took back the east field with nothing but his will and sword.’ The mortals called it the firestorm of the east, blamed the rebels for another sabotage of their trade.

Only there was no victory in it. No justice. Justice couldn’t exist. She was gone, and all that remained was pain.

‘My father never forgave those Kysillian elders for leaving his mother there. For lying.’ I saw the darkness seep into Emrys’s gaze, his anger at the pain in my words. Reacting to it as if it was his own. I smiled. Smiled because the memory of her was a beautiful thing my father had gifted me.

‘Her name was Tauria .’ With golden hair, a soft smile and a kind, gentle nature she’d gifted my father. ‘The elders gave her that name to mock her with everything she could never be.’

With the fire she could never wield. With the Queen’s name she could never hope to honour.

‘My father gave me that name so if those elders ever found me, they’d know that I was made by her. And like her, not one part of me belonged to them.’

My fingers traced the edge of his jaw as I looked into his stormy eyes. Weighted with too much emotion.

‘So perhaps I’m an impossible thing too.

’ A deviant of fate. Perhaps we were equal in that.

Emrys didn’t reply, just ran his fingers through my hair, the soothing motion of it making me rest more heavily in his arms. Pressing my cheek to his chest so I could listen to the steady beat of his heart, as it soothed my magic, it was only when I was in his arms he finally slept.