Page 61 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

Chapter Thirty

Kat

Never take their beliefs as your own, Tauria. Not until you see with your own eyes where it could lead you.

Even Kysillia’s stories can be twisted for them to gain power from your ignorance. In that devout blindness, you lose something you can never get back … your morality.

Serus? A small strange voice called through my dreams. Icy pinpricks against my flesh chased me from my strange dreams. Waking me to find myself still curled in a collection of pillows, soft dawn light illuminating the specks of dust that danced through the old room.

Confused about where I was.

Then I saw the broad expanse of Emrys’s back as he sat up, hands in his hair, a slight tremor making the muscles twitch. The pale slashes of scarring across the taut muscle I hadn’t noticed before. How that darkness slipped and danced around them across his flesh.

I gathered the blanket to my front. Yet as I touched him, I could have sworn I heard a small curious voice whisper in the back of my mind. Serus?

Almost beckoning.

‘Emrys.’ Those tremors subsided under my touch but he remained so still.

‘He’s doing something.’ The words were harsh from his lips with an unsteady breath.

Montagor. Dread churned in my stomach as I leant closer, letting my hand rest at the nape of his neck. ‘You can hear him?’

His head made the barest twitch as if he wished to shake it. ‘It’s something else. Like a strange shadow in the corner of my mind. Something waiting.’

I moved closer. Pressing myself against the trembling might of him. ‘Has it always been like this?’

‘Once,’ he swallowed painfully, eyes closing as his dark fingers rubbed at his temple as if it pained him. ‘Nine years ago. Something changed. Even the bark couldn’t keep it at bay.’

He finally turned to see me, those eyes nothing but darkness. ‘Then Montagor came back.’

‘Came from where?’ I frowned, letting my hand cup his cheek in the small comfort I could offer him.

‘He was confined to a saints’ house in the south from when he was a boy,’ Emrys answered, a dark expression taking hold of his features.

‘He killed two governesses as a child and began to demonstrate … distressing behaviours. Father said the lords suspected it was a result of the summoning that created him, something … wrong with the blood mix.’

My frown deepened. ‘What about the wars?’

‘Montagor didn’t serve in the wars,’ he answered, making me jolt with surprise.

‘His records are in – were in – the Institute halls,’ I countered. I’d read them. The glossy stories of victory over the dark, which didn’t make sense when compared to the unhinged cruelty of the man. Why he’d ever turn on the King only to emulate him.

Emrys huffed out an unamused laugh, jaw tight with disgust. ‘A fabrication to get him a place on the Council. He was crazed. Inhuman. Then nine years ago when I felt something … he appeared in the Council chambers soon after with his new title. Unaffected and devout to serve.’

I didn’t miss Emrys’s slight flinch or the tension in his body. The prickling of his magic against my skin, as if reaching out for comfort. I slid my hand into his own where it had fallen into his lap as if with defeat.

‘I thought someone had broken a seal. Only nothing followed. Just this …’ A strange dark shame burnt in those eyes before he broke my gaze, looking to the dim sunrise through grimy windows. ‘Something … something felt wrong. Yet, the sensation left as quickly as it arrived.’

There was no hiding his pain, nor how that darkness moved across his knuckles as his grip on my hand became tighter.

Something had changed in Montagor and whatever existed in Emrys had sensed it.

‘A summoning?’ I frowned. What kind of summoning could ease his madness. Or at least have given it a new direction?

Nine years ago Elysior was at peace, or supposed to be. How would a dark summoning have happened? If Montagor had a relic all this time … why wait until now to use it? No. He must have only just found it; only just been given the urge he needed with Fairfax’s obsession with that seal.

‘You think he felt it too?’ I asked. That it drew Montagor back to some semblance of mortal sanity.

Emrys nodded, turning more to see me. ‘I think it made Varin take notice. Made him wish to seek power. To return.’

Varin. One of the princes from beneath.

‘Do you think there are others?’ Other Old Gods given mortal form? Yet if there were, why didn’t they seek power and violence as Montagor did? Were they as peaceful as the other Verr Emrys had found? As Emrys himself?

Acarus, Duar, Than and Orus. The Old Gods’ names tumbled through my thoughts, then of course Acara, the seer – sister of Serus.

‘None from the King after Montagor, Blackthorn made certain of that. I don’t know how anyone else could attempt it without me sensing it.

Even with the bark.’ His words were quiet, shamed.

When those eyes lifted to my own they were a solemn grey.

‘I wasn’t myself. Gideon put up with me for a few years but I don’t think either of us were ever the same after the war.

We went as brothers with a family to defend and we came back … something else.’

He broke my gaze, turning to see where the dawn light seeped through the windows.

‘We were rats fighting in a trap. He didn’t forgive me for saving him. Didn’t forgive himself for not saving Emmaline.’

He ran his palm down his face, trying to pull in a steady breath as his head fell in defeat. ‘I wish I wasn’t like this.’

‘I don’t.’ I brushed my fingers across his jaw. Watching that magic weakly ripple beneath. Those now dark eyes met my own. ‘There is a lie here somewhere, Emrys. This darkness isn’t what they said it would be.’

No. There was a feeling in that darkness and in that pit I couldn’t shake off. Not evil or consuming. Just desperation. Fear that I’d mistaken for my own.

He shook his head ever so slightly but I saw his hesitation. ‘They killed it for a reason.’

‘They’d kill me too,’ I answered, watching those dark eyes come back to me. The magic rippling across his skin in threat at the mere mention of that truth.

The stories had to be wrong, because how could such evil darkness make something as wonderful as him?

‘They can be wrong,’ I played with the hair at the nape of his neck, seeing the swirls of silver in his gaze. ‘They have to be wrong.’

Had to because there was nothing wrong about the man in my arms. Nothing wicked or strange.

‘None of it makes any sense.’ Verr couldn’t be cursed.

Couldn’t be so hateful if they remained above.

If they were beings just trying to survive, and their presence had done nothing to corrupt those seals.

It was mortal men who had. Mortal men who had hungered and sought to awaken the Old Gods.

‘I know deep down you believe that too.’

He’d seen. Other Verr. He’d been searching for that very reason.

His forehead pressed against my own as he dragged in a deep breath.

‘I’m scared of what I’ll become.’ Those words were too soft from his lips. Too hopeless.

‘I’m not.’ I pressed a kiss to his shoulder, his fingers curling into my hair to hold me. I should have felt relief, only the depths of how he cared, of how much I loved him made something else bloom inside of me. Childish, desperate fear. How easily things could be taken away.

A wild, deep sadness suddenly clawed at my ribs.

‘My only fear is that they’ll take you away,’ I whispered into the barest inches between us. The words broke apart, small fragile things I was too scared to hold. ‘That they’ll take it all away.’

To be left with nothing but the pain of it. To be lost once more. I didn’t think I’d survive losing him, not as I’d survived losing everything else.

His lips brushed my brow, gentle in his reassurance before ducking to the shell of my ear. ‘There is nowhere I could wander where I wouldn’t find my way back to you, Kat. In this life or the next.’

I wrapped my arms around him, perhaps desperately.

‘Promise?’ I demanded softly, feeling the sheer strength of him as he held me just as tightly as I held him.

He took my hand from around his side, interlocked our fingers and slid it up to that cursed scar over his heart. The crescent moon. The mark of Serus. ‘I swear it on my mark, Tauria.’

A dangerous promise tangled with his very being, sealed with my true name.

Unbreakable.

My fears quelled as he fell into the cushions and pulled me to lie on him.

As I pressed myself against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart against my cheek.

The reassuring curl of his magic around my limbs as if it wanted me closer.

Knowing how such promises could be broken so easily.

Knowing the depth of my parents’ devotion to each other, yet seeing how horribly it all ended.

Only that wasn’t the point. Emrys gave me his devotion anyway.