Tales of a Monstrous Heart

Chapter Thirty-Seven

There are princes who sleep beneath the earth made of nightmares and endless dark. Children of the Old Gods. Creatures of death and all the things that should never have been. Be wary of their calling to return curses to the world above, to drag everything beneath. For the night to be king once more under the endless crescent moon.

– An ode to the Old Gods – Unknown

Too late. That horrid voice mocked in the back of my mind as I looked down at my fingers, aching from the chaos I’d set free.

The most monstrous part of me. The hideous taste of that acrid smoke mixed with the sweetness of magic on my lips. Things not even the warmth of being sat in Blackthorn Manor could chase away.

‘Alma’s fast asleep,’ William’s soft voice brought me back to the present as he crouched before me. ‘Remind me to put in another order for some chocolates from the village.’

All I could do was nod, my smile too weak as I rolled the porcelain cup of cold tea between my palms. Unable to move, to dare think of how badly I’d ruined everything.

The aftermath blurred into nothing but a smear of colour and sound in my memory. The cries of the guests, in too much shock. The protests of Lord Percy as Emrys and Thean dealt with him. The calming touch of Alma as her and William made sure we slipped away in the chaos of the aftermath. How Alma had collapsed with exhaustion, how putting her to bed had become my new priority. Unable to face the weight of everything else.

Sensing the deepening of my despair, William placed his hand to rest over mine, where it clung childishly to the stupid cup, forcing me to look up into his kind, brown eyes. To see the smear of soot on his cheek, the torn collar of his shirt and the knotted tangles of his curls.

‘It’ll be better in the morning.’ His smile didn’t falter, nor that endless kindness in his eyes. ‘Emrys will fix it. It’s not the first time he’s dealt with a wild fiend.’

Emrys . That one word seemed more painful than all the others. How could he? How could he fix what I’d exposed? The ruthless wildness of my magic. Nothing could fix me. All I could see were those dark eyes beneath me filled with warning and rage, no matter how gentle his touch had been in the aftermath.

I was a forbidden thing and I knew what happened to forbidden things. What happened to Kysillians who held a deadly flame.

‘Thank you, William.’ I took his hand, trying not to make it sound like goodbye. I glanced to the clock, seeing how horribly late it had gotten. ‘You should get some sleep.’

He hesitated, his eyes moving to the corner where the portal rested beyond. ‘Only if you’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’ I smiled, trying not to wince around the lie.

He left me reluctantly, the house releasing a comforting creak to spur him on. Seeming to understand I needed to be alone.

The Blackthorn study felt ominously quiet after the chaos, even as the house creaked and groaned, trying to converse with me in my loneliness.

How simple everything had been. How guilty Lord Percy was stood in that doorway and how easy he was to detain for Emrys as the servants rushed to put out the flames.

The guests had fled Fairfax Manor like rats from a sinking ship as the ballroom turned to cinders. Too fearful to even question how it had all come to pass.

I should have gone back into my bedroom upstairs. Tucked myself next to Alma and pretended to sleep. To hide.

Only I knew this wasn’t over. No matter how badly my limbs trembled, how content my magic was inside of me. Peaceful after its chaotic hunger had devoured that darkness.

I’d used my old bedroom to be rid of my ruined ballgown, to wash the stench of smoke off me and change into a thin nightdress. Skin too heated to be comfortable in anything else as I combed the ash from my hair that now hung loose over my shoulders.

I knew I needed to go back to Fairfax. Sit in that horrid room and wait for morning. Pretend I wasn’t unravelling, that I hadn’t let all my secrets out. To wait for the reckoning that would come from the council.

Too late , that creature mocked inside my mind, and it wasn’t wrong. I’d ways been too late.

Finneaus knew. He was in league with Montagor and he would have told him everything. He’d seen it. I’d burned him with it in my anger. The same wildness I should never have let the dark see.

Just as Lord Percy had mocked me with the same truth. How I could use magic when faced with Verr stone. Now what remained of Fairfax Manor was the proof they needed. No matter how that darkness had tried to return to Lord Percy. No matter how swiftly Emrys had acted.

It was too late. Just as the dark said.

My tears dripped into the teacup, a hollowness consuming my chest. Kysillians were vessels for Kysillia’s rage. The First Queen. Nothing but destruction encased within flesh, a last resort in case the darkness rose again. This was the reason those mortal kings and their saints had hunted us so fervently.

How they’d hunt me now. Just as my father said.

I got to my feet, pushed the untouched tea onto the table and wiped at my useless tears. Before I pressed my palms against the tabletop. I looked down at all those papers scattered across it. All the things I should have done. All the things I could never be.

The exhaustion of defeat made me bow my head, ready to give up … before I felt him. A sharpness to the air, a slight flicker of the fire. How the chill of his power manifested in the strange way it always did. An icy sensation drifting over my skin, turning me to the shadowed corner of the room to see him.

His shirt was torn open from the battle, hair swept onto his brow in disarray with ash smudges on his cheek. A hard set of defiance to his jaw.

‘You’re back.’ The words were too quiet, too foolish from my lips.

‘There wasn’t much to do,’ Emrys said. ‘The Council won’t be alerted until the morning.’ Emrys ran a hand through his dishevelled hair, moving easily through the room and towards me, but there was something distant about him. Something colder than I’d ever seen.

‘They’ll know soon enough.’ I straightened, curling my arms around myself. Knowing I had nobody to blame but myself as I looked to the fire. Worrying my lip as I tried to think of a way to twist the truth, to change the facts.

‘They can’t prove anything.’ His words were terse with defence. Unwavering. ‘A verbius is unpredictable in how it summons chaos. Elemental calling isn’t—’

‘You think Montagor needs proof?’ My words were sharp with disgust. None of them needed proof. I’d been born guilty. Too much chaotic magic in my blood and it wouldn’t be silenced now.

I’d been existing on nothing but borrowed time and bad luck.

‘They will listen to me, Kat.’ He strode towards me, hands curling into fists, resisting the urge to touch me.

I looked to the marks on his knuckles from striking something, hopefully Lord Percy’s face. I wondered just how he’d gotten the guards’ agreement. Wondered just how far he’d go. How easily he’d dismissed Montagor. He had power I didn’t understand, but it didn’t frighten me. Not as everything had before I’d come here. Before this strange forsaken thing between us.

‘They’ll …’ Fear clogged my throat. They’d test me again, call the truth seeker and then they’d cleanse me of my magic. Those where the consequences I’d ignored. The ones I’d seen numerous times before.

My struggle for words stopped as the warm stone flickered at my chest. Not as a warning but to catch my attention.

To remind me. How similar the glow of that stone was to the magic Emrys summoned, unfamiliar to me. My hand clutched it, a strange chill against my palm.

‘What did you wish for?’ I asked, wondering if he’d tell me. The stone didn’t have magic of its own. He’d given it something.

‘To keep you safe.’ There was no hesitation in those words, like he had no hope of keeping anything from me.

The stone couldn’t do that. Couldn’t protect me like that. No, but he could.

It had warned him. Every time. It was how he’d known to find me in those ruins. He’d known because he wouldn’t let me be hurt again. Just as he said.

Sensing my thoughts, something painful moved through his expression, his jaw tense before he turned to his desk, looking for something. A file he found at the bottom of the mess, holding it out to me but averting his gaze.

‘There was also this, for when the Council quieten down.’ His attention was locked on the fire, too distant from me and giving me no choice but to take that file from him. ‘I should have given it to you sooner.’

I flipped it open, only a few pages inside, all marked the same. The fey delegation symbol of the Kai, the golden winged bird of the north wrapped in the ancient runes of the earth.

Then my hand began to tremble, making the words not quite clear. Travel papers to the Northern Fields and anywhere beyond. Access to the teaching houses in the fey settlements, signed off by the remaining elders there.

Away from here.

‘You’d … send me away?’ I whispered, unable to bear the pain spreading too rapidly through my chest. The ground was not quite steady. Like it was crumbling beneath me, just like in those ruins.

‘It’s for the best.’ There was a distance in his voice I hated more than anything else. A stiffness to his shoulders, as if it took all his will not to look at me. He gave me his back, head bowed with more than just exhaustion.

‘I thought you said you couldn’t lie,’ I challenged coldly.

There was a warning in his stillness. ‘It’s safer, Kat.’

Safer. I shook my head, almost laughing at the cruelty of that lie. There was nowhere safe for me. ‘Tell me the truth, Emrys.’

‘The truth?’ His words were bitter as he ran a hand through his hair in frustration, looking at me darkly over his shoulder. ‘The truth is that I hate the fact you were safer in that Institute than you are with me.’

‘That isn’t—’

‘ Croinn .’ The word was breathless from his lips as he cut me off, his eyes filled with defeat as he turned to me. I knew what he saw, the remnants of a scratch on my cheek from that darkness, the disarray of my hair and the tiredness in my eyes. Evidence of everything I’d done.

My gaze fell back to the papers in my hands. Everything I wanted. Everything I’d ever dreamed of away from all of this.

Only I didn’t want it anymore. I wasn’t the same person I had been. I’d come too far, seen too much.

I didn’t want to run. Not as much as I wanted this delicate and strange thing between us. Not as I wanted him.

I dropped the papers onto the table, unable to bear the weight of them.

‘They’re letting those fey die, Emrys,’ I said quietly, my voice whetted into something stronger. ‘I’m not going to run.’

Couldn’t. Not when I’d tasted that pain. Tasted what the Council ignored.

‘So you wish to stay and be the next victim?’ There was a thread of panic in those cold words, concealed in his anger. ‘This is beyond Council games, Kat.’

I levelled a glare at him. ‘I’m well aware.’

‘I didn’t suggest it was up for discussion.’ His words were terse with irritation as he made his way to the door, ignoring me as I called his name, striding into the dark hallway away from me, his hands flexed as his side as if quelling the urge to destroy something on his way.

‘Emrys !’ I snapped again as I followed, planning on chasing him around the whole bloody house if I needed to. The house, however, saved me the effort. The doorway shifted as he stepped through it. Not to the hallway but his room. Trapping him.

‘The house seems to have decided we’re not finished,’ I mocked icily, coming to rest inside the doorway. ‘For once I agree with it.’

His glared at the doorframe behind me with murderous intent. However, the house was clearly unimpressed as the door slammed shut. I didn’t need to turn to see it had vanished completely, I could see it in the tense lines of Emrys’s body.

There was a rigid invisible cord between us, filled with unspoken things, and it was ready to snap. I could feel it like a dark cloud overburdened with the storm it had been forced to carry.

‘Kat, I need you to—’

‘My father ran because he wanted my mother more than he wanted a warrior’s death.’ My words were sharp with that truth, brutal and painful as they tore at my heart. ‘He went to the north to keep her safe from this world.’

Emrys watched me so carefully, taking in every piece I offered him. Every piece of me as if all my secrets were tiny trinkets beyond value to be collected.

‘He’s dead.’ I was unable to hold back the break in my voice. The truth I’d never been brave enough to admit to myself. Never voiced aloud. Always hoping he was just lost. Lost and trying to find me.

Now I understood. It was me that had been lost all this time.

‘He’s dead, Emrys. Along with everything he wanted to protect.’ My mother. That life. Me. It was all gone.

The horrid images of that cottage aflame came back to me, but I shook them away. I wasn’t what my father had wanted me to be. Instead, I was nothing but a pawn in a game he never wished me to play.

‘I am not my father,’ I admitted. The sting of magic against my palms as proof. Wild and deadly with lack of control. ‘No matter how much I wish to be.’

Brave, kind and strong. I couldn’t be him. Couldn’t live with this pain like he did.

‘There is nowhere in this world for me.’ I couldn’t go back. Couldn’t hide. ‘Nowhere but right here.’

‘Kat.’ He seemed unable to say anything but my name with the depth of brutal emotion cutting across his dark expression.

‘You’re angry with me?’ I watched the tense line of his jaw, his reluctance to look at me. ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Please . I didn’t mean to put William at risk. To—’

He moved instantly across the room to me with brutal intent. The firelight playing harshly off the scars on his face. Caging me against the door. ‘You don’t put yourself at risk for me .’ A rough warning lay in his voice as he came even closer, his energy washing over me with a comforting strength. Giving away his desires. ‘That could have killed you.’

Anger was pressed into each word, a wildness to him I hadn’t anticipated. Not for dragging him or William into all of this. Or for bringing Montagor here.

‘It didn’t.’ My voice broke on the words, the slight lie they contained. It could have killed me. Just as it almost had before.

‘What if it did?’ There was a wild wrath in him. Eyes dark with it. Darker than I’d ever seen them before. ‘What was I supposed to do, Kat?’

The shadows in the room lengthened, responding to him in a way I didn’t understand, threatening to suffocate the flames in the hearth. His rage was from fear, not anger. Those midnight eyes took me in, refusing to let me go.

‘What was I supposed to do?’ he beseeched me helplessly. Powerless before me.

I knew that fear. How easily everything could be taken. My eyes dropped to his throat, to the strange scarring there, evidence of the brutality of what he’d survived, but also of what he’d lost.

Now a few smears of ash from everything I’d done covered the marks. I reached for his collar gently, running my fingertips over it to wipe it away, to feel the relentlessness of his pulse beneath my fingertips.

The faint sweet, earthy scent of beasam bark was there between us, but also smoke, and the bitterness of wild magic. My chaos all over him.

Mine , that voice inside of me claimed. The teasing drag of his magic over my skin, curling around my limbs to seek comfort. Wishing to hold me when its master wouldn’t.

‘I can’t bear it, Kat.’ His words were hoarse, weighted with discomfort. Eyes such a solemn pale grey. ‘ Please . Let me let you go.’

No . The ferocity of my magic curled in my gut, filling me with a strength I needed. To fight for what I wanted. To stay. How ravenously I wanted to stay, desperate in the aftermath of all that destruction. As the fear of what could have happened, of never having him, spurred on that hunger. That need for this forsaken thing between us. No matter the cost.

I rested my palm against his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart beneath his ruined shirt, still damp from that rain. He didn’t reach for me, didn’t hold me to him. No, I wasn’t quite sure he was breathing as I let my hand drag to the line of buttons.

Slowly I undid each one, eyes lifting to catch his just as his shirt fell open. I found his eyes to be pitch-black with predatory focus as my hands slid across the warm contours of him. The softness of his skin stretched over the ruthless hard muscle. The smooth slashes of scars colder under my fingertips as I traced them.

‘You said you needed me.’ The words stuck around the lump in my throat as my fingers traced the wicked lines up his abdomen, over his ribs and across the muscular surface of his chest, until I rested my palm over his heart once more. Over a mess of silver scars there too, curved as if trying to form another strange crescent moon. ‘What if I need you too, Emrys?’

‘Nobody needs this, Kat.’ He shook his head, voice rough and filled with such loss. Such loneliness that I felt it call to a lost part of my soul. Searching for something in his. I’d always been lost, but he’d found me, just as he promised.

The thought made my breath unsteady as my hand moved upwards, brushing the strong column of his throat until I touched his cheek, watching as he leant ever so slightly into that touch.

‘I do.’ I let my fingers linger at the sharpness of his jaw, feeling the roughness of the scar that came to the edge of his mouth. Tracing softly the shape of his bottom lip.

‘I need you, Emrys.’ Needed his steady will, his interest and his temper. I needed his smile, the darkness of his eyes, the gentle nature of his hold. I needed his hesitancy, that longing in his gaze. Every part of it.

The depth of my words broke some spell over him, as he finally reached for me. His hands gliding down either side of my throat, a slow, gentle reverence about his touch as he ducked his head to catch my ear. Breath not quite steady.

‘You’re the most chaotically beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Katherine Woodrow.’ A faint smile tugged at his mouth with his surrender.

Mine . Something in my very bones sighed in response. I might have been chaos, might have been haunted by the cruel brutality of this world, but I was safe with him.

Finally. Right here. I was safe.

I wasn’t that clever with words, so I kissed him instead. Gently brushing his lips with my own, refusing to let fear or inexperience hinder me. The warmth of my desire spread through me as ruthlessly as my magic, commanding me to take my fill. He returned the kiss instantly, softly at first. Guiding and patient.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pressing myself closer. Skin flushed, biting at his lip and commanding him to open his mouth. To give me everything. To be rougher with his claiming as his hand dragged greedily across my waist, holding tightly as if I could slip away. Impatience mingled with a ravenous hunger.

My hands curled into his hair, thick and soft between my fingers. My lips parted and his tongue was inside, ruthlessly seeking more of me. I clutched at the muscled expanse of his back, hands dragging across the powerful enormity of him.

The bed post was suddenly at my back as my hands tore his open shirt off his shoulders. Fingers burning with the feral urge to touch him. Everywhere. Something in me needing to know he was all there. That it was real. That he was mine.

He broke away from the kiss with a curse, breath ragged.

‘Kat.’ The word was soft with breathlessness. Cautious. Trying to gift me back some sanity, despite how tightly he held onto my waist, despite the hunger in his gaze. ‘This is dangerous.’

I didn’t stop, my lips dragging across his jaw, down his throat. My hand tracing a line down his abdomen to the waistband of his trousers.

‘When has that stopped me before?’ I teased darkly, letting my tongue and teeth drag across his collarbone, tasting salt, chaos and the richness of his magic on his skin. Watching those eyes go liquid with desire as I undid the first buttons of his trousers.

‘Croinn,’ he cursed, and that one word snapped whatever loose hold remained on his gentleman’s restraint. I found myself up in his arms, bare calves locking around his hips. His hand was in my hair, tugging ruthlessly to have my mouth back on his. Something primal in me bent to his will in response. Hands roaming the hard broad planes of his shoulders, nails digging in with command for more.

His hands dragged over the skin of my backside where my nightdress had ridden up, the rough callouses of his fingers making a wanton whimper leave my lips. My head fell back against the bedpost, as the ruthless focus of those lips fell to my throat, down to the barest curve of my breast that my nightgown revealed.

I arched my hips, silently demanding him to move his hands, needing them between us. My movements made my nightgown slip off my shoulder, exposing more of me.

Then we fell to the bed as Emrys’s lips continued their torturous exploration of my skin. The cage of his body around me. My bent knees either side of his hips as I panted, fingers curling in his hair, but he pulled back the barest inch, only for his thumb to drag across my bottom lip. Savouring every one of my trembling breaths as he considered the disarray of me. Teasing.

That hunger in his gaze was of my making. Mine. So, I closed my lips around the pad of his thumb, biting it softly in demand.

Then he wasn’t teasing anymore as he captured my chin and kissed me again. The hard weight of him pressed me into the bed, the rough drag of his trousers against the inside of my thigh excited me. Warnings tried to fill my mind about fey girls and the things lords wanted from them, but I was far beyond warnings.

‘Kat,’ he whispered against my neck, as I panted for breath, his hands moving up my thighs as if we were sharing secrets. Unsteady, on the brink of something but afraid to tumble off. Giving me the power once more. Refusing to take it from me.

I tugged his hair so his eyes came back to mine, just as his hands reached my bare hips. I looked into the darkness of his gaze before I kissed him again.

I copied what he’d taught me, biting his lip and tightening my grip on his shoulders. He groaned into it, harder and deeper. His hold intensified as he lifted my knee higher, pulling me closer to his heat. My bare heel dug into the back of his thigh. His hand slid up my calf at a tormenting pace. The roughness of him against such sensitive places fuelled the madness.

His lips slipped down the side of my throat, the rough stubble of his jaw scratching gently at the top of my breasts with his kiss. His mouth found the nipple of my exposed breast and I lost all competent thought. Nothing but heat and desire, bending effortlessly to his will.

One hand fisted in his hair and my other gripped at his back, unable to catch my breath. I dragged my hand across the muscular contours of his skin until I held onto his bicep, feeling the tension beneath. The warmth of his fingers and the teasing drag of them against the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh. A moan escaped my lips before my breath was stolen as his fingers found their way between my legs.

‘Emrys,’ I pleaded weakly, holding onto him as his attention moved to expose my other breast and taste it too, His hand pressing and teasing places only I knew. Pleasure streaked through me, making my legs open wider, hips rising, commanding him to add more pressure.

His thumb answered effortlessly as his finger slipped inside, making me gasp, his lips coming back to my own to taste his name as he drew it from me. He curled his fingers with a stroke, his thumb dragging over the most sensitive part of me and I could only raise my hips, feeling the devious nature of his smile. Relentless as he did it again and again.

He watched every breathless plea leave my lips as my head fell back, hair spilling across his bed as that ruthless focus drank me in. Taking his own pleasure at the sight of my disarray. The bright light of the wishing stone around my neck reflected in his eyes.

I was too hot and restricted in my own skin, hands gripping and pulling until I could press my nails into his back. Feeling the tautness of him trembling slightly beneath my touch.

He built me expertly to the brink, only for my whimpered disappointment as he stopped, the cunning nature of his smile as he pulled back to kiss me again. Slowly. His knuckles barely grazing the inside of my thigh.

‘What do you want, Kat,’ he whispered wickedly against the shell of my ear before taking the lobe between his teeth.

My fingers dragged against the waistband of his trousers, feeling the hardness of his desire against my palm.

‘You,’ I answered breathlessly against his lips. Driven half to madness with that desire, even if it led me to nothing but ruin.

Pleased with my answer, his hands ran up my bare thighs, over my hips, dragging my nightgown up and over my head, forcing me to let him go. Unburdened with it, I felt the coolness of the room, chased away by the heat of his gaze as he took me in.

He knelt between my spread legs, exposing every inch of me. The chill of his magic brushed down my body like a physical touch, bowing me off the bed with the need for more of it. More of him.

Answering my silent demand, his palm ran from the curve of my neck, possessively dragging down between my breasts, the rough callouses of his fingers calling me towards the sensation as he continued over my stomach, then down lower until a needful sob escaped my lips, his thumb dragging over the aching centre of me. Slow vicious circles, watching every tremor of my pleasure as I bit my lip to stop any more cries leaving me.

He didn’t stop, leaning over me, one hand braced in the bed to brush the barest kiss against the top of my breast, right over my heart before his lips moved further down. My hands were in his hair as his mouth ran down my stomach with teasing bites. A torturous dark worship of me as I was spread before him. Then he went lower.

‘ Ala Eria ,’ he whispered in Kysillian against my hipbone. My beautiful love.

I felt those words deep within my soul, real and undeniable as his tongue traced the shape of every curve as he went lower to kiss my thighs.

‘Emrys,’ I cautioned, unsure of what he was doing, my heartbeat too fast, my skin too flushed. Ignoring me, he nipped the sensitive skin on the inside of my trembling thigh, tongue dragging across the bite as my heart stuttered in my chest. Having no words, no breath.

Then he kissed the centre of me. My back bowed, hands knotting in his hair. Flutters of something in my stomach, stronger than before, unsure what to do and not wanting it to end. Needing more. His hands cupped my backside, fingers digging in as he dragged me closer to his mouth. Devouring me as my other hand grasped hopelessly at the sheets – at the pillow beneath my head, at anything, wondering if you could die from this sensation.

Wildness made me raise my hips, wanting him to give me more as a rumble of a growl left his chest, making the feeling only more forceful. His hand slipped down my calf with knowing authority, pushing my bent leg up so more of me was bared to him. His tongue firmer in its play. Then his fingers joined his mouth. Deep ruthless strokes that stole what was left of my breath.

‘Fuck,’ I panted from the intensity. I could almost feel him smiling against my skin before he heightened that sensation with another ruthless curl of his fingers deep within me. Feasting wildly on my desire. Deeper and stronger than before.

I was unable to do anything but rise to his command, feeling the mischievous bite of his magic brushing over my bare breasts, wanting more. Curling gently around my wrists to pin me with its torturous play. Touching every inch of me and driving me further into that madness, until a different warmth spread through me.

Rapturous pleasure washed over me. My breath stuttered through my lips as I lay there, unable to do anything but gasp his name. I trembled weakly in the aftermath as it rolled through me, tension leaving my limbs as delicious warmth brushed every inch of my skin. Suddenly too sensitive and limp. Emrys’s lips traced the inside of my thigh as his fingers withdrew, his other hand sliding up my calf in reassurance, wet with the wildness of the pleasure he’d drawn from me.

He worked his way carefully back up my body, with lips and teeth. He buried one hand in the bed at my shoulder as he rose over me, eyes considering every inch. From my exposed centre he’d given all his attention, following the flush across my stomach, the glow in my veins from my magic. His eyes were pitch-black, able to reflect the glowing lavender and blue hue from my skin. My magic content and close to the surface.

His knuckles barely grazed the still-exposed centre of me and my breath caught on a moan. The dark wickedness in his smile made me ache all over again. His eyes filled with a satisfied gleam as he watched his fingers drag a teasing trail from my hip, across my stomach and up between my breasts. My back arched in response, needing his attention as he ducked his head to kiss my breasts again, working up to my throat, his hand cupping the side of my face.

Then his fingers ran through the tangle of my hair across his pillows. ‘Beautiful.’

I smiled slowly, curling my hands around his forearms to feel the sturdiness of him, raising up onto my elbows so my tongue could trace his bottom lip, tasting what he had. My hand slipped lazily down the contours of his chest, reaching his waistband, fingers slipping over the edge of his trousers to undo the final button.

He kissed me, allowing me to taste all of that passion as a groan rumbled through his chest. His hand dragged around my bare waist to bring me closer. The rough palm moving over the uneven, thick scarring of the mutilated flesh across my lower back. Secrets I’d forgotten in my desire.

He froze above me, feeling it for the first time and the warmth of my need drained from me, replaced by nothing but paralysing terror.

Pink streaks of scarred skin stood out boldly down my back in brutal long strikes, evidence of everything I never wished to think of. Demons in different form, made of memory and pain.

That lazy passion bled from Emrys’s gaze to a harder fury and what little fire was left in the hearth was extinguished. My whole body went tight, air seeming impossible to drag into my lungs, the room darkening at the edges with my fear.

Run , that voice hissed in my mind. Dizzy for breath, I snatched my hands back from him, curling them to my chest. Covering myself. Shaking my head as I choked for breath, needing to flee. To run. I lurched forwards but found myself curled into his arms, completely covered by his warmth. Pinned gently with a strength it was impossible for him to possess. A reassurance in the firmness of it, his weight pressing against me, my breaths stuttered against his neck.

‘It’s all right,’ he whispered softly in my ear, hand cradling my head, forcing those panicked breaths against his throat. ‘It’s all right, Kat.’

I could feel his heart beating against my trembling palms, strong and reassuring. The strangeness of his magic was there too, gently curling around my limbs, cocooning me in the force of him.

Beg , that ghost of a voice hissed sharply in my ear. I flinched, closing my eyes as I tried to breathe through the panic and shame, hands moving to his shoulders. Nails digging in.

Emrys’s hold changed as if he could hear the torment in my mind. He tightened his hold as I concentrated on the strange authority of his magic, the coolness of it as it reassured my own. I pulled in a deep breath filled with nothing but beasam bark and forbidden things. Him.

I was here. Not there.

I felt the weight of the memory dissipate opening my eyes as he tipped his head to see me. Tears leaked from my eyes silently and my lips trembling.

‘Who did that to you?’ There was a feral nature to the quietness of him.

I shook my head. A truth stuck in my throat.

‘It’s all right.’ His voice was soft as he captured my face, pushing my hair back as he leaned forwards, our foreheads touching.

His hands moved gently down my throat to feel the pounding of my pulse, a reassuring sound leaving his lips. I leant into it, feeling the comforting drag of his knuckles across my jaw until my lip stopped trembling. Then his hand found mine, fingers slipping easily between my own, bringing them to his lips to kiss them until they stopped trembling too.

My other hand rested against the small of his back, a tension lingering there, perhaps scared I’d pull away from him. That I’d run.

‘Tauria,’ he whispered so softly as his lips traced my cheekbone, catching my tears with his lips. ‘I’m here.’

I’ll find you. That promise he’d given me. He’d found me. I breathed in the sharpness of his scent, forbidden magic and the tart sweetness of mine pressed against his very skin.

Mine , that voice whispered. The soft flutter from the wishing stone was reassuring against my breastbone. Real. This was real. Then my chest didn’t feel so tight, the world didn’t feel like it was ending and more of me came back with every moment that passed. As he waited each breath with me.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ My voice was so small in the silence. Ashamed of the tremors that rushed through me.

‘It matters to me.’ There was a steel to his tone that brushed warmly against my ear.

I shook my head, but that thumb dragged softly against my jaw despite still having hold of my hand.

‘Everything about you matters to me, Kat.’ His words were gentle with confession. As devoted as a prayer. It mattered. I mattered.

Daunton. The word I couldn’t say. Clogged in my throat. No matter how much I wanted to let it out. Even now I could transport myself back there with such a simple word.

No, because Emrys was here. The warmth of his weight surrounded me and it anchored me enough to feel brave. So, I pressed my palm against his chest, feeling the strong beat of his heart against my skin, tethered myself and then I began with the fear that clawed the most ravenously at my chest.

‘Some nights I can still hear her screaming,’ I whispered, feeling him go tense beneath my touch.

Alma. Some nights I could convince myself I could still hear her, no matter how quickly I woke to find her sound asleep. ‘I didn’t care what he did to me. I would have taken anything to make him stop hurting her.’

Emrys had gone very still, but the sharp drag of his magic over my skin was a reassurance that kept me going. The momentum of the painful truth like a stone rolling down a hill, unable to stop.

‘I refused their blessings, fell silent for their prayers and spat out their holy bread.’ Refused to be tamed. To be unmade. To repent for my wildness. No matter the pain or the endless cruelty from their hands. ‘He’d use anything, even iron, but I wouldn’t break.’

The room grew darker around us in an instant, a creaking of the wood in warning, not knowing if it was the house or him, but the truth kept seeping from my lips.

‘I thought he’d kill me for the amusement of it.’ Despite being stronger with my Kysillian body, with the warriors’ blood in my veins that knew how to survive. Quicker to heal. ‘I begged Alma to be a bird. To fly far away from that place. To leave me behind.’

To forget about me like everyone else. I felt the sting of my tears then, tasted them on my trembling lips. ‘She wouldn’t go.’

No, because she loved me. A love that had saved me in the end.

‘On the coldest nights I imagined the blissful peace of not waking up.’ That weakness was the hardest to admit. That I’d wished for my death so easily. So desperate in that darkness. ‘I hate him … but I hate myself more for that. That I gave up.’

That was what kept me from sleep and chased me in those nightmares to waking. And in the end, I lost. Lost parts of myself I’d never get back. He took them, kept them even now, even though he was nothing but ash.

Emrys was so quiet, his grip unbreakable but still gentle, and maybe it was because of the strength in those arms I could finally say it. The final chapter in that horrid tale.

‘I killed him.’ So softly the truth escaped me, but the last, darkest piece of that truth remained buried in my heart. That I’d wished it to kill me too.

‘Good.’ The word was quick and cold from his lips. Like a killing blow. The menace pressed into it didn’t frighten me. No, I curled towards it, closer to him.

Murderer , that voice hissed, so loud in my mind I wondered if he could hear it too as he held me tighter. Until all I could smell was the richness of beasam bark, of old magic and him. Warm and solid. Real.

‘I heard you, Kat.’ Something hollow and painful in his voice told me he’d never forget it. What happened in the ruins of Fairfax. How he’d found me. In the heart of that terror.

‘I’ve hated this world for a long time, but I hate it most for hurting you.’ He gathered me closer, my face hidden against his shoulder, my hands running up his back. I felt the uneven texture of scars that started at his shoulders, his marks softer with age.

Absently I traced them as his hand ran through my hair, a calmness between us as I followed the path of marks until I pressed myself back against the pillows to see his throat. The worst of it. The first I’d seen that night when he’d appeared before me like some dark wraith.

He watched me cautiously as I felt the texture beneath my fingertips, raised and red despite the time that had passed.

‘I have a habit of being where I shouldn’t.’ He spoke quietly, hearing the question in my touch – pain hidden in it but no hesitation in telling me his truth. ‘I went back into the darkness of battle for Gideon, thinking if I didn’t make it, at least we’d all be together.’

The finality of the statement made my heart hurt, that it was possible none of this could have happened. That he would have been lost to me without ever meeting him. Never knowing the beauty of what it was to be found by him.

‘He made it,’ I whispered, already knowing a part of that story. Wherever he was, Gideon Swift had made it.

‘He never forgave me for it,’ he replied, continuing to play with the hair that fell against my collarbone.

‘I’m sorry.’ I was. Sorry for his pain and that he couldn’t get better from such grief. That we were all sick with it and would be until the end.

‘It’s in the past.’ He kissed my forehead, a small reassurance that didn’t reach that darkness in his eyes.

I lifted myself off the pillow until I could press a kiss against the rough texture of his throat, the most brutal part of this beautiful, impossible man. He captured my face before I could settle, tipping my head and kissing me softly.

There was a lazy seduction to the intimacy of lying here with him until my breathing settled, hands drifting over sensitive flesh as we lay there until I could barely keep my eyes open, half draped across the expanse of him as his fingers traced the shape of me … committing it to memory.

I didn’t know how long we lay there, or how he moved without me noticing, but I felt the brush of fabric. A silent command as something slipped over me. Soft and filled with the scent of that forsaken bark and smoke. Of my magic and his. Settling me further. I felt his hand tracing shapes along my hip, lulling me to sleep. My head resting on his chest listening to the calm beat of his heart.

‘They once used beasam bark to fend off possession of the dark,’ I whispered against his skin, unsure if it was a dream. ‘My father told me a story once, about Serus and the princes beneath the earth. About wraiths and spirits who serve them.’

He went still for the barest moment, his fingers pausing, digging into my hip before his movements continued. More cautiously than before, but he didn’t respond.

‘You could be a wraith. You move about like one,’ I half mumbled, curling closer into his warmth as I felt the weight of covers coming over us.

‘I’m not a wraith.’ There was a softness to his voice where I expected humour, a hesitation that confused me as I felt myself become weightless with sleep’s arrival.

You’d still want him , that voice mocked, no fear accompanying that truth. I’d want him anyway. In whatever form he came to me.