Chapter 32
Emrys
Owain’s offer, Nisien’s kiss, the spy, the offers of marriage negotiations from my most loyal noble families had all culminated in me acting like a beast. I was losing the battle. I was losing control.
I’d known it would happen.
Avoiding Isca after my disgusting behavior in the library only deepened the rot growing inside me.
The torturous scent of lavender tickled my nose with every turn.
Every time I encountered it, I held my breath or took different paths, but I couldn’t go anywhere without reminders of her following me.
The look on her face, the feel of her pulse jumping beneath my lips, the sound of her voice when she told me to move—all of it haunted every waking second. I replayed it over and over, trying to rewrite it in my mind. Trying to imagine a version where I hadn’t cornered her like some feral thing.
Where I hadn’t pressed myself against her like she was mine to take. I’d failed utterly and completely to stop the curse from poisoning my thoughts and usurping my control.
I still couldn't believe what I'd accused her of so flagrantly. Despicable. Though it wasn't like the truth mattered. Even if she’d admitted that as her aim, I would still want her.
I should’ve turned and run when the monster propelled me toward, not away from, her. Until that point, the dark magic twisting within me had recoiled from her relaxing presence or driven me to lash out as it always did.
But something about seeing her in the space that had become my sanctuary in the middle of the night had loosened the lock on the beast’s cage. When she’d massaged my shoulders with an invitation in her eyes… Gods, the cage had ripped completely open.
This, too, was probably my fault. It took little imagination to picture my monster, starved of its usual diet of destruction, beginning to feast on my desire instead.
For hours after she’d touched me, I lay awake, restless and burning.
I’d had to satisfy the lust its appetite had made worse three times before I was able to sleep.
Each time, all I could think about was how soft she was and the little pleased sound she’d made when my teeth met her skin. Her sweet, utterly damning taste lingered on my lips.
But then my stomach would churn with the reminder that I could never have her, and the curse would dine on my torment instead. Her sweet taste would turn to the ashes of all the men I’d killed, that pleased sound to their pleas.
Yet even as disgust curdled in me, I couldn’t stop the need. Even while consumed by my own self-loathing, I yearned to touch, to smell her again. Containing the outburst of magic that threatened to shake the walls of the castle with each climax nearly leveled me instead.
The next morning bled into the next, and the next after that.
Four days passed in a blur. Sleep brought no peace; waking brought only rage.
In the daylight, fury at my loss of control made the taste of bile in my mouth a constant companion.
I became unbearable company, even to myself.
Each passing day blurred until I could barely tell one from another—only that I was unraveling.
The sanctuary of the library late at night had become a mockery of my failings, so I decided to exile myself from it completely. Yet I couldn’t avoid the daily gathering in the feasting hall. So I showed up, an empty husk of a man.
Isca sat between us at meals, always closer to Nisien, which was safer for everyone. I spoke little. But when I did, my words were clipped and controlled. The men were forgiving of my tempers, but I had to appear organized more often than not if I wanted to retain their loyalty.
That meant spending the hours not locked away in my rooms or putting on a show of still being human in training. I poured my shame into training, striking until my hands were raw and blistered, until every drop of sweat felt like penance.
Each blow I landed on the dummy sent a jolt of pain up my arms. My knuckles split, my blood soaked the wooden post that held it upright. Each hit was a plea for silence, a feeble effort to drown out the monster I’d let loose in that firelit room. I deserved worse.
I deserved agony.
Nisien was still the only man I felt comfortable sparring with, and even that comfort soured.
Again and again, the image of her face leaning into his hand resurfaced, burning behind my eyelids like a curse of its own.
The searing memory pushed me to be reckless, to use excessive force during our daily sparring sessions.
“You’re off your game,” Nisien said, wiping sweat from his brow. He grinned, but his eyes were shrewd when he said, “Isca asked after you.”
My stomach lurched at the sound of her name. “Tell her nothing,” I growled, and lunged before he could reply.
My control vanished with the rising sun on the fourth day. The strain of my intense training had stopped being enough to keep the curse contained. After the second time I nearly broke Nisien’s arm, even he looked at me with hurt and confusion, saying it was best if I trained alone.
He was right. I deserved to be alone.
Because I couldn’t face her, I wrote her a letter.
Catrin was happy to deliver it and ensure that Isca would be too busy that morning to see the sanctuary away from me that I’d set up for her.
She’d spent her time in Caervorn surrounded by comforting herbs and flowers—I wanted her to have a bit of that here in the castle too, somewhere untouched by me.
Upon learning she’d received it, the knot of worry in my chest loosened for the first time in days.
Isca had tucked a sprig of lavender in her hair during lunch that afternoon.
I couldn’t stop myself from stealing secretive glances at the token of absolution.
Several times while eating, she smiled at me, twisting the knife in my gut each time.
She forgave too easily. Didn’t she understand that I wasn’t a man worth pardoning?
Every hour, the beast’s thrashing and clawing at my restraint grew worse.
It couldn’t feed on forgiveness. By the fifth day of self-imposed isolation, the monster’s pacing grew frantic.
Its whispers filled my head until even my own thoughts were drowned beneath them.
Its pressure built into a crushing force, squeezing my thoughts until they blurred into meaninglessness.
The magic crept into my limbs next, readying itself beneath my skin, making my body feel too small to contain it.
I needed a shattering of my humanity, far from anything precious. I needed the wind to scream louder than the voice in my head. Needed to find oblivion amongst my ruins.
And at last, I gave in. I saddled Arth and rode out of the keep in a storm of fury, leaving the castle without telling anyone. The guards wisely didn’t question me—they saw a man who was both more and less than their prince leave the castle. They saw Stormdan returned.
I saw only her face as she left me crouched over in far less pain than I’d deserved.
I rode hard, without a destination and with only one purpose.
Arth pounded the ground beneath me, his gait unyielding, steady in contrast to the chaos swirling inside me.
I wanted to disappear into the horizon, to outrun the part of me that had backed her against a wall and whispered unasked-for filth into her ear.
The part that had enjoyed how close she’d been before I’d pushed her too far.
I hated that part. No… I hated myself.
Fate, both cruel and kind, delivered an invading party of raiders two days’ ride north on our shared border with Larethia.
I followed the rising smoke to find a farmer’s home razed.
The attackers had left a scene of unspeakable horror.
They’d brutally slaughtered the entire family—mother, father, and two innocent children—and posed them for display.
The mother and the daughter had Isca’s golden hair, braided just so. My beast surged to the surface, eager and wild, seeing the justified release vengeance for them might grant it. I could almost hear it whispering, asking for screams, for blood, for the thrill of violence.
I tracked the men down half a day’s ride away and fed the curse everything it desired.
I dropped from Arth’s saddle and let the magic take me. For attacking my brother, for the risks they posed to our alliance with Larethia, for release from the constant torture of my bloodlust. This was where I could escape the memories, slip the restraints I constantly had to shackle myself with.
Bones shattered in my grip. Magic-enhanced strength tore through their armor like paper. I broke their bodies, and each died unaware that their life was the price of chaining the monster within me.
When it was over, I stood in the middle of the carnage.
Blood on my hands, in my mouth, soaking through the seams of my armor.
I waited for the expected horror, the icy grip of guilt, the searing shame to hit as blood dripped from my fingertips.
My breath came hard and fast, my skin still thrumming with dark magic. But the horror never materialized.
The human part of me wondered how far I had fallen. While the monster purred, satisfied.
For now.