Chapter Seventeen
I should have stopped him, shouldn’t have wanted his comfort, but I was too exhausted with the turbulence of my own emotions.
Alma was back, but for how long? This magic was beyond us both, and the answers didn’t dwell in any books.
I was quiet, occupied by my chaotic thoughts as I found myself sat before the fire in the study. Emrys asked permission to examine my arm, rolling up the ruined sleeve of my shirt. I did my best to ignore the gentle drag of his fingers as he checked for any further wounds.
He worked silently, with mortal instruments, no spells, or incantations, just a numbing ointment, healing balm, needle, thread and bandages.
There was a slight hesitation to each of his movements, indicating his reluctance to hurt me. His brow furrowed with concentration. Then perhaps my tiredness made me delirious in human form. I imagined smoothing out that frown with my fingertips.
‘I thought healing wasn’t your specialty?’ I asked, mesmerised by the grace and speed of his work.
‘War wounds are,’ he replied in the businesslike tone of a healer considering how much to charge for their services as he gently cleaned the wound.
The firelight played off the textured scarring of his skin. Every small movement of expression seemed to pull at the tight skin, but he remained unbothered. I was drawn to the sharpness of his features. The scars did little to distort his handsomeness.
Then again, I feared every intelligent word out of his mouth was more attractive to me than any face could be.
Then I wondered how such a quiet and studious man had been thrust into that life of bloodshed and war.
He wrapped the wound, then stood and moved to the sideboard, the cotton of his shirt almost sheer in the firelight as the muscles played across the expanse of his back with every small movement.
I shouldn’t have noticed. Perhaps it was the exhaustion conjuring such wanton thoughts.
‘You have an affinity for healing.’ He moved to the small drink stand tucked in next to the bookcase and picked up a decanter filled with amber liquid. He gripped two glasses in one hand, placing them on top of a large priceless book on the side table and pouring a generous measure into each before holding one out to me.
I took it, and settled back in my seat, watching him drink deeply from his own. I followed suit, needing it more than I was willing to admit. My attention was once again drawn to the scars on the one side of his face and how they twisted down the strong line of his throat.
‘A gift from my mother,’ I smiled sadly, instantly rewarded with the memory of her smile. The softness of it, the endless kindness in her eyes.
‘She was a healer?’
‘A natural one. Her family didn’t approve of … magic.’ I swallowed awkwardly around the words, the hint of a lie. ‘Of fey either.’
Despised would have been a better word. Enough to make her run and never look back. I could feel the intensity of Emrys’s eyes, trying to work out what I wasn’t saying, so I pressed on, offering what truths I could.
‘She taught me, until she became too sick.’ I swallowed another sip of drink. Letting it burn a path through me. Refusing to allow myself to say more. To take myself back to the night she went. The night a part of myself died too.
‘You must have been young.’ Emrys’s words were almost lost in the crackle of the fire.
‘I was eleven.’ I turned to see him, a hardness to the grey in his eyes. Emotions I couldn’t understand. ‘I thought that was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. Losing them. I suppose this world endeavoured to prove me wrong.’
A silence came between us, one filled with exhaustion and doubt. Then the revelations of the day came back to me. The papers he’d shown me, the incantations on them, and the depth of the sickness that had worked its way through the land.
‘The darkness infecting that wood is old,’ I said, frowning. ‘Old enough to scare beings who’ve been settled for centuries.’
‘So is the greed that summons it from beneath the earth,’ Emrys replied, sounding as exhausted as I felt, but there was a small smile on his lips as he tapped the scarred side of his cheek. ‘From personal experience, I fear this won’t end well.’
My attention was focused on those scars, the depth and brutality of them, leaving me to wonder how someone could survive such things.
‘You want to ask about it,’ he surmised, working out every curious thought in my head, sending heat flaring to my cheeks.
‘I shouldn’t.’
‘You won’t offend me.’ He rolled his own drink, the liquid turning gold as it caught the light.
‘It isn’t that.’ I dropped my gaze to my own glass. No. It was because wondering how he survived forced me to wonder why my father hadn’t. Fearful of the power of whatever beast could have kept him from coming back to us.
I shook the thought away, looking up once more to see him studying me over the rim of his glass.
‘How did you end up in the middle of all this?’ I asked, braver with the drink at my lips.
‘A lord’s job is to serve his king and any son in his line.’ He shrugged, downing his drink as if to chase the bitterness of the words from his tongue before sitting forward and bracing his elbows on his knees to finish the story. ‘But this house could serve him no longer when he sold his soul to the Old Gods. My father dedicated his life to fighting this darkness. Since he’s not here, I owe it to him to continue.’
‘Even with the Council being so difficult?’ I frowned, knowing he could have easily abandoned all of this and the Council’s hypocrisy. There was nothing in it for him apart from frustration and the agonising torment of watching the world fall apart.
‘They have no choice,’ he replied. ‘The dark leaves a mark on all of us, even them. They need me, unless they want the demons they sold their souls to for a king’s love to come and collect payment.’ He smiled sadly, his gaze drifting to the fire, uncomfortable with the admission. ‘I made a promise.’
I finished my own drink, trying not to cough at the burning sensation in my throat.
‘I’m sorry I ruined the investigation at Paxton Fields.’ I sighed.
‘We got everything of value from the excursion.’ He reached out to take my glass, a strange foolish rush moving through me at the barest brush of our fingers.
‘I haven’t seen ruins like that in a very long time.’ I leant back in the chair, trying to behave myself as I forced my aching shoulders to relax. ‘My father took me to the Kysillian temples when I was six for my blessing.’
‘That must have been a sight.’ Interest lit his features, his head tilting to show the strong line of his throat. ‘The Kysillians guard their temples well from the stories.’
I smiled. Deep in the north was where the Kysillians were said to have settled now. Out of reach of the Council rules and oppressive laws.
‘I can barely remember it now.’ I rubbed a circle against my palm, remembering the rough feel of the statues, of the ancient pillars and the burn of the magic encased in stone. ‘It feels like no more than a dream.’
To be loved. To be safe.
‘You said he fought.’ A darkness fell over Emrys’s expression. An understanding. ‘He was there until the end.’
There . In those killing fields.
I nodded, swallowing around the sadness clogging my throat. ‘He didn’t have a choice.’
No. He was nothing but fodder for their cannons.
‘Those Kysillians in the settlements in the north never came for you?’ he asked softly, those curious grey eyes fixed on nothing but me.
I frowned. ‘Why would they? I’m mortal-touched.’
The Kysillian elders would see me as a half-breed, no better than a mortal or lesser fey, despite how dominant my Kysillian blood would always be. I would never look mortal. Neither would any children I produced, if I was capable.
Darkness seeped into the corners of Emrys’s gaze. ‘Their misfortune.’
‘From my records of misconduct … maybe a blessing to them,’ I countered, inclining my head, unable to stop the self-mocking smile that came to my lips.
He blinked as if I’d surprised him. My reward was watching that darkness slowly leave his expression as he returned my smile, so easily I felt it soothe something raw inside of me.
‘My misfortune then,’ he corrected wryly.
A comfortable silence fell between us, filled by nothing but the crackling hearth, and all the things left unsaid. I watched the fire shift ravenously, performing under my assessment of it.
‘I should get back to her.’ I sighed, knowing I was doing myself little good getting too attached to Emrys’s company. The calmness and chaos he supplied all at once. I had too much to think about and all of it was impossible when he was looking at me.
‘I have something to help.’ He stood to full height, moving to his desk and opening the drawer. He came back to me with a vial of blue liquid that glowed with its own light, shifting from blue to green.
A strange substance I’d recognise anywhere.
‘Transfiguration draught,’ I breathed.
His smile was sharp with amusement. ‘Not many would recognise it.’
‘Where did you get this?’ I asked, still stunned as I felt the heat of the potion against my palm. The secret to brewing transfiguration potion had been lost for years.
‘William found one of Emmaline’s old potion notes. He thought it could help,’ he replied easily, turning his attention back to his desk, hiding his expression from me.
‘What did she need it for?’ I wondered if he would tell me that truth. Surprisingly, he turned back to me, leaning against his desk with his arms crossed.
‘To become a man. Emmaline had many schemes, but changing form to antagonise our father was her favourite.’ There was a challenge in his eyes that accompanied those words. Testing me. If he thought I’d be offended by beings changing gender and form, he evidently hadn’t read my notes clearly.
His eyes moved almost reluctantly to my desk, the carvings beneath and the person he used to see sitting there. I didn’t know how that must feel, to be reminded every day of what you lost, for this house to bring nothing but that pain, and yet he remained.
‘How did she die?’ The question left me before I could consider the rudeness of asking.
‘In the wars. One of the skirmishes. At least that’s the story that they told.’
The wars. The image of her sunk beneath a muddy battlefield or tossed into a pit as nothing but a rebellious nuisance made me sick, especially because I knew my father would be right there with her.
‘She’s out there somewhere, in an unmarked grave. Lost like all the rest of them.’ There was a depth to the guilt that coated his words. As if the entire war was of his own making, despite him being young when it had begun.
No matter his guilt, we couldn’t change the course of history. No matter how many times I had willed my father to run, to keep running and survive, that wasn’t the story his life was destined to tell.
‘And what was it all for? We didn’t change anything.’ Coldness coated his words, and as he looked into the fire, a hardness came over him that made me realise just why the Council feared him. A ruthlessness that lay beneath. It should have unsettled me, but I was too familiar with the ravenous emotions of grief and rage.
Wondering if he wished for privacy, I moved to leave, only for him to catch my hand – gently – but it was enough to hold me in place.
‘It’s hard to remember it happened when some of us carry it so well … others crumble and then some simply act as if it never happened,’ he whispered, his voice suddenly coarse.
‘I don’t know which one I am,’ I answered, feeling the emotion well in my throat. I’d never had my pain sit before me so vividly.
His eyes were jet black as they considered me, raw with too many emotions. ‘None of them, Croinn. You haven’t stopped fighting.’
Every day. I was fighting every day. It was why exhaustion clung to my bones, why every day felt like a trial all its own.
‘I didn’t realise I was too until you crossed my path.’ His smile was faint, but his eyes remained dark. ‘It reminded me of something I’d forgotten.’
‘Not to leave cursed books open?’
His answering smile was sharp and devious, making my magic rise for a different reason.
‘To fight. I could see the jaws closing around you … saw you standing right in the centre of it, not begging or bargaining for a way out. No. You were looking right at the beast. Daring it to bite.’ That warm and uneven smile came back to his lips. ‘Ready to take down the whole Council despite knowing you’d never win.’
‘I suppose it’s nice to have company in the madness,’ I whispered, accepting my pain and his.
‘I suppose it is.’ He nodded, as he let my fingers go, in a dismissal that hurt worse than any word.
That sting remained as I reached the doorway and took myself off to bed.