Page 33 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Eighteen

Kat

Beware the dark of the wood. Where demons linger in the shadows of the ancient pines. Luring maidens with sweet promises and handsome forms. For an old god’s desire is forever, and your soul will pay the price of their lust long after death, fair maiden.

Curse of the Old Gods – Unknown

Those old fables seemed to mock me as I turned another page in the book before me.

Fingers dragging across the rough, age-spotted paper.

Another tale of Mort. The first mortal king.

The first saint. He who had brought civility to a land of cruel beastly fey.

Who had taught the other saints all they knew.

As they huffed in their toxic smoke and justified their cruelty.

As they stripped this land of its magic and tried to meld it into their own blood. By any means necessary.

What had started all this mortal madness, hunger for power and for fey blood.

What had fed them first. Such strange dark tales spread before me, illuminated by soft buttery light that seeped through the barest parting in the curtains as I sat at the desk in Emrys’s room.

I was always too easily awoken, my thoughts too loud to rest so I’d returned to the familiar comfort of books.

I’d always thought the Old Gods to be no more than stories.

That’s what this world had diminished them to.

Only now I wondered if there was a reason for that.

The same reason the Council and the mad kings had diminished Kysillian power, and all the ancient fey before us.

Rendered us nothing more than children’s tales, so the horrid things they did wouldn’t seem so horrid at all.

Because for my own ancestors to lessen Verr into nothing more than myth was to reduce their power too – reduce the threat they could hold.

For why would mortals hunger for it so? Kysillians would never admit they could be beaten.

That they’d never conquered anything – never set anyone free.

My father had turned his back on the Kysillian elders, and I couldn’t help but fear this was why. Because their lies had led us so easily to our own demise.

I sat back in the chair, raising my hand and letting the smallest summoning free. Watching those dull lavender and blue flames twist between my fingers. Performing for my attention.

I feared I’d come into my flame too early. That I’d damaged something, causing its ferocity. Only Kysillia’s flame wasn’t the same as other summonings. It didn’t arrive at puberty when you were best prepared. No, it came when Kysillia willed it, when it was needed.

Then came the fear, of what exactly she saw for this world – to grant me such devastating power and the endless hunger that came with it. That its limit was set simply by my own conscience.

‘Croinn, please tell me none of those are cursed texts,’ came Emrys’s sleep-roughened voice from the bed.

My flame extinguished with a flick of my fingers as I turned to see him up on one elbow, his other hand pushing the dark messy hair off his forehead.

The movement making the definition of his bicep more apparent.

Air a little harder to pull through my lips as my eyes traced where the covers had fallen to his waist.

‘Good morning.’ I smiled tentatively, rising and making my way over to him. ‘Do you feel better?’

‘You should be resting,’ he cautioned, his suspicious gaze moving back to the desk as if anticipating a fiend or a cursed illustration was about to burst free.

‘I think I’ve learnt my lesson where cursed texts are concerned.’ I tugged the sleeve of my nightgown back up where it had fallen off my shoulder. ‘I feel much better. Besides, I have a lot of catching up to do.’

He caught my hand to rub his thumb over the ink stains on my fingertips, where the scribbling of my notes had got away from me.

‘You shouldn’t be anywhere near this.’ His voice was still rough from sleep but the warning was soft. I knew he didn’t just mean those forbidden tales, fiends or seals. He meant himself.

Only this warning was different. Different than just a lord with a fey. This was blood. Verr and Kysillian. Two creatures that had torn the world apart.

There is no worse fate than a girl who lures demons to her bed.

Only those warnings couldn’t turn me from the memory of him.

Reaching for me across that cursed earth.

Calling my name as if he’d want it to be the last thing on his lips.

He’d come for me, even knowing that darkness would take him too.

He’d kept vigil at my bedside. Driven himself to madness to see me well, fighting the Council at every turn – even thinking I wouldn’t want him like this. That his darkness would be too much.

He was giving me a choice. Even now.

‘It’s where you are,’ I answered without hesitation. I’d made my choice in this very room. It hadn’t changed. ‘I’m not afraid, Emrys. Not of this.’

Not of him. Not of the things that came before, or what I’d done. I was my choices, my mistakes.

I’d always choose this delicate thing between us. No matter the punishment. No matter what came next.

Only in the tense silence an odd vulnerability overcame me as I stood before him in nothing but thin cotton and disarray. Worry made me bite my lip. Shrink slightly inside as I dropped my gaze. ‘Unless you—’

Only for him to catch my chin between his thumb and forefinger. Demanding my eyes, seeing that his were now pitch-black.

My breath caught. ‘Emrys.’

His other hand slipped around my waist, tugging me closer until I fell into that bed with him. As he gathered my face between his hands, dark veins spread across his skin with how close that magic had risen.

‘I thought you were a dream.’ He pressed those words against my pulse. The confession so soft as his fingers curled into my nightgown, desperately. ‘You’ve ruined me, Kat.’

’You sound entirely too pleased about that.’ I wanted to tease but I was too breathless with that strange desire that only he could stoke.

He answered with a kiss. Gentle but commanding. My fingers curled into his thick hair, greedily. Relief making me sink into him, deepening that kiss, as I quickly found myself pressed against the pillows with the warm solid weight of him on top of me.

I arched closer as my nails dug into the strong contours of his back. Sliding greedily over him. Needing more.

A crazed sound slipped from my lips. Emrys responded to it with his own low hum of hunger in his throat as his hand curved around my waist, pulling me into the hardness of him. His lips drifting to my neck as I arched desperately for more of his attention, gasping wildly for breath.

My hands running over the strong lines of his bare chest as I’d hungered to do last night.

The stutter in his breath. The torment I’d caused him broke my heart. So I tugged his hair, bringing his lips back to my own.

Real. We were real.

There was a craving in it. A desperate need to be devoured. His hand ran up the thin fabric to brush my breast, lips tracing the curve of my jaw. Drawing another wanton sound from between my lips as his tongue dipped to trace my collarbone.

I panted, driven mad by the drag of his stubble across my sensitive skin. My nightgown slipped down, almost exposing my breast and his lips followed.

I curled my fingers into his hair, keeping him in place. My thighs brushing his side as I brought them up to cage him. He took the invitation, his rough hand cupping the back of my bare thigh. My skin too hot and too tight. Wanting the thin cotton gone. Needing nothing but him.

‘Emrys,’ I pleaded before he tortured me with another deep kiss. A sound of desire rumbled in the back of his throat, making my stomach swoop with anticipation as his hand found its way between my thighs.

‘Bloody fucking saints!’ The frantic, too-high-pitched words cut through the room, making Emrys go rigid before he whipped around towards the door. Cold dread washed over my skin. Shame burning my cheeks as I clung to Emrys’s biceps, hiding beneath the sheer size of him.

‘ William !’ Emrys snapped, detangling from me in a blur of movement. The covers thrown over me as he got off the bed.

This couldn’t be happening.

‘You could have locked the bloody door!’ There was a crash and a bang, as if William had run head first into the wall in his desperation to escape.

‘ It wasn’t there to lock ,’ Emrys answered through his teeth.

Flustered, I tried my best to untangle myself from the bed sheets, stumbling out of the other side of the bed, trying to fix my nightgown where it was tangled around my hips. Twisted around my body with the insistence of Emrys’s touch.

Emrys’s bare broad back blocked the doorway. The creaking of the wood of the door frame telling me the house was beyond amused.

‘Bloody bastard,’ I muttered as I grabbed my robe from the foot of the bed, pulling it on as I went to the doorway to save William from Emrys’s annoyance. Where the boy sat stunned on the hallway floor

‘Emrys—’ I began, only to stop when I reached his shoulder. To find it had got worse.

Alma stood there too, come to get me ready for the day. One dark eyebrow raised.

Bollocks.

‘I’d … we—’ Useless sounds tumbled from my lips.

‘This isn’t the worst thing I’ve caught you doing,’ was all the mercy she offered in her dry, slightly exasperated tone as she helped a flustered William back to his feet.

‘ Alma ,’ I hissed, cheeks burning but her irritated eyes slid to Emrys.

‘If there aren’t ghouls under the bed, there are usually cursed papers beneath her pillow,’ she warned, taking hold of William’s arm to steer him away from the door. The boy looking at the ceiling as if praying for the house to somehow take away his memories.

‘Good luck, my lord.’ She smiled wickedly.

‘That was one time ,’ I leant around Emrys to call after her.

‘Gideon is looking for you two,’ she threw back in warning as she shepherded a still-spluttering William down the corridor.