Chapter 22
Emrys
The air held the promise of sunnier days, temperatures climbing steadily as we approached the solstice. Inside me, though, the winter storms still hadn’t passed. I arrived at the practice yards before the sun, hoping to expend some of the furious energy that wouldn’t leave my body.
The thin layer of hay, damp and yielding underfoot, shifted around my boots as I drove the wooden training blade through the gut of the straw dummy again and again. Every strike was a beat in the rhythm of my self-loathing.
I hadn’t slept.
I rarely did, but last night I hadn’t even tried.
Sweat covered me, even though the yard was still shadowed from the rising sun. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Owain’s stricken face, hands clutching his throat. With wide eyes and trembling hands on his back, Isca stood between us, not backing down even while the monster was in control.
I had gone too far.
A show of force had been acceptable. Expected, even. A conjured weapon in the presence of a cursed prince? Banishing Owain from Darreth entirely would’ve been a legitimate action on my part. But I hadn’t stopped there, had I?
The monster never stops until it tastes death.
I’d gotten too close to that destruction.
It was fortunate that Owain hadn’t unleashed the dark power his bloodline could summon on me, on—gods forbid—her, even if only accidentally.
I owed him gratitude for his composure in the face of my complete lack of it.
By the gods, I should’ve thanked him on my knees for it.
I snarled and slammed the blade into the dummy’s neck. Straw burst forth in a shower. I yanked the weapon free and circled again.
What I’d done was unsettling enough. Yet how she’d handled it was…queenly.
Isca had stared straight through my curse, past the rage, past the creature I became. She hadn’t recoiled, hadn’t begged. She’d commanded me. Commanded the curse.
And we’d both listened. That thought had consumed me all morning, and the more I considered it, the more of it I craved.
There was also the magic she’d used… That feeling of regret she’d cast over me like a cloak of mourning, not understanding that it was one I carried constantly.
She’d looked so surprised when I hadn’t flinched at it.
Which was exactly why I couldn’t let her in.
What I struggled with daily, she viewed as excessive, as something she could use as a weapon.
Even so, that she could replicate the feeling so perfectly meant she was no stranger to the emotion. My heart wanted to take that as a sign that I didn’t have to be alone in bearing the burden of my curse, but experience had taught me otherwise.
Still, something in me refused to let the thought go.
I knew I wasn’t safe for her, but she’d shown me something I hadn’t seen in a very long time.
It wasn’t just her power or the way she’d held her ground against me.
When others would’ve spat my name like a curse, her voice had held a warmth that revealed a rare type of understanding.
Even as her tone had turned cold with command, her eyes had softened… like I was still worth saving.
And that was the problem. I hadn’t wanted anyone in years. My curse had transformed desire into risk and any form of intimacy into harm. But Isca…
She made me want when I’d wanted nothing other than a release from my torment for a very long time.
I didn’t know what to make of her, but it was becoming harder and harder to keep running away.
I swung again, and the dummy’s head toppled clean off.
“You’re murdering straw, Emrys,” came a voice from the edge of the yard, followed by the sound of a score of sabatoned feet. “Should I be worried? Or grateful it’s not my lungs this time?”
I turned. The barb was hidden behind Owain’s smile, but it still landed. I’d earned worse.
He stood just beyond the railing, arms crossed, brow raised in amusement. Six guards flanked him. A bit excessive, but probably something they hadn’t given him a choice about after my poor showing the night before.
Already stripped to the waist, he looked every inch the warrior he was. A thin sheen of sweat clung to his collarbone like he’d spent time warming up, a few shadows of his magic danced along his skin, waiting to lash out if I so much as flinched the wrong way.
Had I been so distracted by my own self-loathing that I hadn’t heard him training on the other side of the yard? Even in her absence, Isca made me lower my guard.
Dangerous.
“I came to apologize again,” Owain said, jumping down into the fighting ring. “I wasn’t thinking. I have no desire to insult a man in his own hall.”
I paused, watching him for any signs of dishonesty. Seeing none, I nodded once. “Apology accepted.” The next words scraped my throat raw. “I regret…my excess.”
He gave a slight smile. “I half-expected to find myself flung across the courtyard on my approach.”
“You’re not worth the effort, Shadowborn.”
“Still the same charmer.” Owain grabbed a wooden sword from the rack. “Swords and shields? Or just blades?”
He even joked with ease. He was skilled, to be sure, and he wore his crown comfortably like Nisien. It was the kind of smoothness that made people—made her—look twice.
I weighed my options. Without Nisien here, I had no one to train with.
Our brief exchange—or more accurately, nearly killing him—the previous night had given me some respite from the curse’s effects.
Plus, Owain’s magic was strong enough to withstand a few strikes the monster might decide to launch at him.
I felt clearheaded enough that I could steer my legs in the opposite direction if that were to happen, anyway.
I said, “Your choice. No magic.”
“Agreed.” Owain weighed the weapon in his palm. “Swords only. Let’s see if you’ve still got that famous footwork.”
We circled each other, feet shuffling across the mud and hay. The rhythm of battle returned to me as easily as breathing. I remembered Owain’s stance—low and coiled like a leopard, ready to pounce, tense muscles barely contained beneath his skin.
Our families had maintained an alliance that had grown over the past twenty-five years, so we had a wealth of history between us.
Once, when we were thirteen, new to our magic and brimming with youthful bravado, we’d fought as comrades-in-arms in a mock battle against our brothers.
He and I on one side, Nisien and Berian, Owain’s older brother, on the other.
We’d turned the castle orchard into a battlefield with stolen swords and wild magic.
We were just boys then, carefree and oblivious to the wider world of politics. I remembered laughter I’d thought would never sour. I missed that version of myself. But he’d died the day the curse settled into my skin.
In the present, Owain struck first. I parried easily then returned a blow that glanced off his side.
“You haven’t slowed.” He grunted.
“Neither have you.”
The fight was clean. Time bled away like water through cupped hands.
We exchanged wins, our movements reflecting a mutual respect born of our shared history.
Despite the jealousy I was trying to pretend didn’t exist, a stubborn thread of admiration prevented me from disliking him.
Even my envy felt wrong when he’d been so willing to admit fault.
I saw no fear in his eyes, even after my dreadful behavior. His unexpected trust was foreign.
Blows landed, our strikes and exertion continued, and somewhere amidst the chaos, a whisper of magic brushed against my awareness.
Isca.
She was near. I could feel her warmth, her aura, soft and open, growing closer. The beast within startled awake at her scent.
A streak of panic shot through me. She hadn’t yet glimpsed the true extent of my scars.
Without thinking, I flung my hand toward the training rack and summoned my shirt with a pulse of magic. It flew to me in a blur of linen. I yanked it over my head just as Owain swept in with a strike I’d been too busy to see coming.
Wood slammed into my ribs with a crack, forcing the air from my lungs. I fell backward onto the ground.
“Gods—Emrys!”
Isca’s voice, high with panic, rang out as her footsteps rushed across the yard. I got halfway to sitting up, but her first touch shattered the illusion of safety I’d built around my solitude. Her hands were on me, steady and warm against my back, rubbing in soothing circles.
“Catrin—get a healer!” she cried, voice ringing with command.
Catrin didn’t move. She knew the inhuman resilience my curse granted me.
For a moment, I tried to draw a breath and failed. My ribs were broken. I knew because it wasn’t the first, or even third, time I’d experienced this pain.
“Emrys, are you all right? Please, say something,” Isca begged.
“Something.” It was a pained rasp, but I’d managed.
“You’re impossible.” She scowled. “You also hesitated in answering!”
“I was debating whether to make you worry more.” I didn’t hold back my smirk since it would cover the fact that I was swallowing blood.
A smile blossomed on her face, just as I’d hoped. She didn’t move away. Isca looked like comfort incarnate—eyes soft, body wrapped in a light blue dress, hair loosely braided. Simply being near her was enough to relax me.
Each pass of her palm sank deeper into my skin than any blade ever could. The curse went silent—no whispers, no claws rattling the cage. The shock of it nearly undid me.
I leaned into her touch without meaning to, like a beast drawn to fire, knowing it might burn but needing the warmth all the same. Starved for the contact, for the comfort, greedy for her softness…
The last time anyone had touched me without aiming to cause pain was a lifetime ago.
She couldn’t know. Isca could never know what she did to me.
I heard her ask me a question, but I was lost. Utterly lost in her.
She smelled of lavender and sunlight and things I didn’t deserve. I didn’t want her to stop. Eventually, I shook my head in denial to a question I hadn’t heard.
She hovered close, her voice softer now as she filled my vision. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I met her eyes then. Gods, those earnest eyes. So full of care, it made my throat tighten. I’d forgotten what care felt like.
“I’m fine,” I rasped, though I made no move to pull away. It was a lie, but the only truth I could allow her to believe. “An accident.”
Her hand stilled but lingered. Neither of us said anything.
I wanted to be the man I was pretending to be while she touched me, not the cursed prince. Not the monster. Just…Emrys.
“Okay,” she said, but her eyes still narrowed. “I swear I heard your ribs crack, Prince Emrys.”
I wanted to tell her to drop my title so I could hear my name from her lips without adornment. But that would offer familiarity when I still wasn’t safe. That single word would have to continue to be a barrier between us, flimsy as it was.
So I shook my head again, eyes never leaving hers. If I told her that she was right about my injury, she’d only worry, and I’d have to explain just how the curse had changed my body so I was nearly impossible to kill.
Isca said, “I wanted to make sure you’d make it to luncheon. You’ve been out here all morning.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Keeping track of me now?”
Anything to keep her here, talking, touching me.
Her cheeks turned a lovely shade of pink. “Yes. Someone has to.”
She’d probably meant it simply as a passing comment. And yet the stubborn part of me that was twisted by curse and craving heard it as a claim to my time.
The monster inside me purred at the thought of it becoming truth.
Shaking my head clear of the distracting thought, I looked up at the sky to see that she was right and I still hadn’t spoken with Owain about the reasons for his journey so far west.
Her eyes trailed to Owain standing silently behind me, still shirtless, waiting. He was taut with agitation, but he held his shadows in rigid check. The black pattern on his chest lay motionless, passing for tattoos rather than the living magic waiting underneath. Probably trying not to scare her.
He offered a tiny bow to both of us as he met her gaze. Even as he did precisely the correct thing in such a situation, savage, untamed jealousy gnawed at me. I choked down the growl that bubbled up in my throat as she appraised him, turning it into a cough.
Owain cast a questioning glance my way with one eyebrow arched. I ignored it completely. The curse wanted me to mark her, to bite her neck until she carried my scent. I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth groaned.
She wasn’t mine to claim. She’d never be.
The moment she stepped away, the beast rushed back in, hissing in displeasure. As I watched her walk toward the castle, I knew the curse wasn’t the worst thing I’d endure. The worst would be wanting her for the rest of my life.
Luncheon would be a disaster. Isca would sit too close. Owain would smile too much. And I—gods help me—I would remember the way her hands felt, and forget, for one fatal moment, that I was ruin incarnate.
If the gods had any mercy left for me, I’d need it to ensure that everyone, including what remained of my sanity, survived this meal.