Page 46 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kat

The house – seeming to know the trouble we’d got tangled up in – decided to dump us in Emrys’s room, much to Gideon’s grunted annoyance. The smell of Lady Ramsey’s tobacco following us back.

‘Get yourself cleaned up before you give William a bloody fright,’ were Gideon’s parting words as he dumped Emrys’s coat on the desk and strode for the door, muttering something at the coin in his grasp.

I pulled my cloak off as Emrys perched on the edge of the bed. His head bowed in contemplation as his bloody knuckles rested on his knees. A shudder rolling through him with a flash of darkness across his skin before it settled again. As if it had taken everything in him to hold it in.

‘Here.’ I pulled my bag free of my belt and tipped the contents onto the bed next to him to find my healing kit. Thankfully, the house materialised a bowl of hot water and a pitcher. As well as a small pile of clean towels.

‘At least the house is being helpful.’ I wet and wrung the cloth quickly, moving around the bed so my skirt filled in the space between his spread knees. ‘It must have sensed your idiocy in going against a miroc.’

He tipped his head back so his troubled gaze could roam over my face as I worked on his knuckles. ‘Lady Ramsey enjoys harmless fun.’

The splits in the skin looked worse than they were. By the pale scarring beneath the wounds, Gideon was right. This clearly wasn’t Emrys’s first fight.

‘Harmless?’ I raised a brow as I reached around him for the milky healing tonic from my pack. ‘This is the best one I have.’

The last one I had, which meant I’d need to brew more.

When the world stopped falling apart. Ignoring the dread of that thought, I pulled out a ball of cotton, soaking it quickly before pressing it against his split skin.

The healing tonic stung but Emrys didn’t even flinch, despite how his magic shifted beneath his skin, as if in discomfort.

I watched the angry cuts settle and stop bleeding before quickly swiping some thick balm over each one.

‘You left your side unguarded,’ I admonished quietly as I pushed the shirt from his shoulders, letting my fingers trail over the faint bruises beginning to bloom across his shoulder and his side, just below that strange crescent moon mark over his heart.

My fingers moved to the scratch across his pectoral, wondering if it was from the miroc’s sharp horn as I pressed the cloth to it.

How solid and warm he was beneath my hand.

I dragged the cloth downwards to wipe at some stray blood.

Then over to where the Countess had touched him.

Foolishly. Drawn by nothing but strange primal urges.

As if my magic could sense her on his skin.

Emrys caught my hand, stopping me. Probably a good idea considering I was apparently intent on scrubbing him raw.

‘Croinn?’ The bastard inclined his head. Almost teasing.

‘Don’t smile at me.’ I let the cloth drop. Flustered that I’d been caught. I snatched up my tin of balm, pushing back his hair to put some over the cut above his eye. ‘The Countess isn’t someone we need the attention of.’

‘She’s occupied with Montagor for the moment.’ He rolled his neck as if it ached. Good. He deserved the discomfort.

‘She seemed far more occupied with you ,’ I snipped, irritated by the fear coiling in my gut.

Once the cut above his brow was beginning to mend, I turned away from him. Needing something to do with my hands. To process all the things I didn’t understand.

‘Kat.’ Emrys’s fingers hooked into my skirt, halting my retreat, and despite all my strength, the barest tug sent me stumbling back into the warmth of him. His hand resting easily at my hip.

I turned my head, hearing the depth of that concern, seeing the crease at his brow. How he knew me well enough to understand. ‘The Countess has the blades of the old kings. Three of them. On that bloody bracelet.’

Her holding Kysillian relics unsettled me. Enraged me more than I’d admit. Hating the feral noise in my head at the sight. The thought that perhaps I was the vicious creature the Council always feared.

Emrys went so still, those eyes pitch-black in an instant as I turned in his arms.

‘You didn’t know?’ I asked.

A frustrated breath slipped from his lips as he shook his head. ‘No. I thought they were just another relic. She’s had them a long while.’

If she controlled all seven blades, she controlled the elders’ will. Kysillians were ruled by the conquering of blades. The last to hold all seven was said to be Kysillia herself.

A testament of power; and Kysillian power was dangerous enough in our own hands … but in the Countess’s? I shuddered at the thought. Emrys’s arm becoming firmer around my waist as if sensing my unease.

Then another thought occurred to me. ‘That ring on her finger—’

‘A dark artifact. Some say she’s held it for decades,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘It’s how she seals their vows. With dark magic. Nothing else is as powerful.’

Because no magic was as dangerous to fey as that of the dark beneath. It was why the Kysillians feared it so, because it took no purity of blood to wield it. Why they all had those same marks on their flesh.

‘How can she claim to be different from Montagor if she uses the same power?’ I demanded. Hating that they had no choice but to follow her. That the fey desperate enough had no choice.

‘Dark magic corrupts. I don’t imagine this is how she thought her rule would go. How desperate her hunger for power would make her when she began.’

No. Because we never learn.

‘Callen is a sacred name. One of the Kysillian kings.’ I couldn’t help my confusion at that Kysillian’s presence.

How it chafed against everything the Kysillians were supposed to believe – how he could be in her service.

Yet so was my father, and perhaps it was that truth that made me the most uncomfortable.

‘Callen has been under her control for over a decade. The Kysillians owed her a debt, so they traded a warrior they had no need of.’

How easily they’d traded their own blood. Showing how far the Countess’s reach had stretched. So even the fey elders were playing her games.

Then something occurred to me. Something I’d missed. My eyes fell to where my father’s hilt gleamed amongst the bedcovers where it had slipped from my bag.

‘You’re not surprised I recognise those sacred blades?’ That I’d know them so well despite not being raised by the elders. Would know them because I wielded one the same.

‘No, Croinn.’ His smile was small. Knowing. ‘A sacred blade is hard to miss.’

Of course, because he was Verr. He would have known it upon sight. Yet … it hadn’t changed anything. He’d never asked about it. How he’d just accepted that piece of me. Even knowing what darkness had created him.

‘It didn’t bother you?’ That I was Kysillian. That I held a blade that promised to end Verr.

His thumb dragged over my cheekbone. ‘You could have chosen to drive that blade right through my cursed heart and it wouldn’t have bothered me at all, Kat.’

My breath caught with the depth of that confession. My fingers tracing the line of his jaw. This beautiful foolish man.

‘Tell me you’re all right?’ He bent his head, lips moving gently across my cheekbone.

I couldn’t – I wasn’t. Not since I’d seen how far the lies had run.

‘Master Hale said my father’s name,’ I answered, unable to bear the pain of it, like a bruise on my heart, any longer. ‘He knew it. All that time he knew it because—’

My hands slid up to rest on his shoulders. Anything to steady myself. Emrys’s hands gently captured my face, as if I was something delicate between his palms.

‘He made him leave somehow.’ I opened my eyes to see the darkness of his own. Darkness that I knew was in reaction to my own pain.

‘Kayin,’ he answered softly and, unlike when Hale said it, there was something comforting about Emrys speaking my father’s name. As if making him real again for the barest moment.

‘Did you ever see him?’ I asked childishly, holding out the smallest hope for any truth in all of this.

He shook his head, a worry at his brow as if he wished to tell me something else. ‘I was never that far north. There were stories. The lords made bargains with many elders – Kysillians included – to protect the seals.’

‘I know he’s dead.’ I swallowed. I knew it deep in the marrow of my bones. ‘Maybe one day I’ll accept it.’ Accept that his death would be a mystery that would elude me. Torment me so differently than my mother’s had, where I was forced to witness every last one of her moments. Helpless.

He seemed to sense the depth of that grief in me as he brought me closer, pressing a kiss against the hair at the side of my head.

‘If I told you the number of times I anticipated Emmaline walking through that door, you’d think me mad.’ His fingers played with the loose ends of my tangled hair as if lost in the thought. ‘Wondering what she’d make of all this. Of what she’d make of me.’

‘I’d think she’d find you quite remarkable,’ I answered against his chest, letting my fingertips trace the muscled contours of his back. Dragging in the faint beasam bark scent, chasing away everything else. Calming me for the barest moment.

‘Did she kill Emmaline?’ I asked, knowing I’d hate the answer but needing it all the same. I’d known the tales. The Countess was vicious, and her amusement was fickle.

He was still for the longest moment before he answered. ‘We’ll never know for certain but Emmaline started to amass support. The rebels trusted her. Would follow her anywhere. The Countess saw that and I suppose we’ll never know the truth of what came next.’

Because they were all bound, just as Thean had warned me in Fairfax Wood. All the things they could never say. Yet I couldn’t shake the way Callen had looked at me. Almost as if waiting.

The Kysillian troubled me more than I wanted to admit. Seeing him beneath the Countess’s rule unnerved me. Made me wonder how my father had been in that predicament and how he had got free of it.

‘Can many stray from the Countess’s control?’ I frowned.

‘If they’re clever, but it’s never for long.’ His gaze was distant and I knew he was thinking of Emmaline. ‘She trades in money, blood and land.’

‘There is no saving them, is there?’ The question was too sad and too small from my lips.

‘Considering the bitch won’t die. No. And destroying a relic is harder than it seems,’ Emrys finished darkly, his thumb running over my knuckles before something else crossed his expression, dark magic flashing beneath his skin as those eyes became full black. ‘I felt your fire, Croinn.’

I flushed, dropping my gaze. ‘I didn’t like her touching you.’

It felt hard to admit those words, to give into the territorial urge of them I knew was in my blood.

Emrys captured my chin, forcing me to see him once more. To find the handsome, wicked creature smiling. ‘You’re shamed by that.’

‘I didn’t feel … in control of myself.’ Not when I wanted to render her to ash. To pour flame down her throat for nothing but spite.

‘Good, I need company in my madness.’ His lips pressed a teasing kiss against my jaw, my fingers digging into his shoulder as I tipped my head, offering him more, as his kiss found my pulse.

‘M-madness?’ I stuttered, wondering if I was supposed to be affronted.

‘There is nothing controlled about the way I feel about you, Croinn. And nothing is more seductive than your fury.’ And he sealed those words with a kiss.

A kiss I was hungry to return. Perhaps restless to claim my territory. Emrys pulled me closer. Equally as desperate, as if every breath of space between us was wasted.

Then the door crashed open, William half-hanging off the doorknob with one hand braced on the frame.

‘Sorry, but—’ the boy panted before his eyes went wider. ‘Where are your bloody clothes?’

‘William,’ Emrys half groaned, his forehead falling into the curve of my neck.

‘Thean’s back … and they have a witch’s finger,’ the boy blurted out.

Emrys went deathly still. The floorboards beneath us gave a wary groan. Then he raised his head, his expression murderous.