Page 120 of The Mirror of Beasts

He had a tell too, whether he recognized it or not. His gaze always shifted down before he was about to retreat, or lie. I could have screamed with frustration when I saw him do it again.

“Don’t you dare lie to me again,” I told him. “I understand why you took the ring. What I don’t get is why you keep pushing me away. So why? Why did you leave?”

Emrys rubbed at his chest, wincing as he hit his wounds.

“The truth,” I told him sharply.

His hand stilled over his chest, pressing against the place where his heart was thrumming beneath his skin and bones. Drops of sweat had broken out over his face, and for a moment, I thought he was going to be sick.

But still, he said nothing.

“We may be even now,” I told him, feeling that familiar coldness settle in my chest. “But this is why it can’t be what it was.”

He barked out another humorless laugh, struggling to master his expression. There was something panicked in his eyes, like a cornered animal. “If I tell you … it definitely won’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

Emrys hesitated again. “I’m not … right. My father ensured that.”

My eyes never left his face, even as my pulse leapt. I tried to understand. “Because he abused you … ?”

“No.” Emrys drew in a deep breath, closing his eyes. “He didn’t just hurt me, Tamsin. He killed me.”

The fire spat and crackled in the hearth, burning through its dwindling supply of wood. Some part of my shocked mind recognized that it needed to be fed, but just then, none of it mattered. My lips parted but couldn’t draw in air. The heaviness taking root inside my chest was a chimera of emotions—incredulity, anger, suspicion, and, finally, horror.

Emrys had lied countless times before. Smooth lies, charming lies, even protective ones. But the look of fragile hope on his face was truth. In it, I saw the child he’d once been, who must have come to his father never knowing if he might be accepted or rejected.

“I … what?” I got out.

Emrys reached down to grip his sweater and undershirt, pulling both off over his head. The firelight caressed the hard lines of his body, his strong shoulders and arms, his chest—but it also revealed the ragged scars that crisscrossed his skin. Even his more recent wounds, with their dark stitching, seemed less sinister.

The first time I’d seen the scars, in the light of Avalon’s sacred pools, I’d thought he looked like he’d been shattered and hastily pieced back together, leaving evidence of the fractures that not even magic was powerful enough to erase. The sight of them now, the echo of his words in my mind, made me press a hand to my mouth.

“The night started like countless others,” he told me, crossing his legs in front of him. He braced his hands against his knees and hunched forward slightly. “He’d—my father had hit my mother before I could get between them. When I finally got the bastard away from her, she fled up to her room and I left to try to cool off.”

He snuck a look at me through the dark curtain of his bangs, as if measuring my reaction. Seeing I was still with him, he continued.

“When I got back home, I had a note to go see him in his study,” he said. “It was the same routine as always. I’d apologize because he wouldn’t, and we’d never speak of it again. Except …”

“Except what?” I asked roughly.

The dream, I thought, my heart hammering in my ears. It hadn’t been a premonition.

I was already too late.

“The Order of the Silver Bough,” he said. “When I opened the door to his study and stepped inside, they were waiting for me.”

My breathing grew harsh in my ears.

“I didn’t really understand it in the moment, because there wasn’t time to,” Emrys said, shuddering. “But when we got to Avalon, and we found that statue below the tower, when we heard what the druids had done, I started to piece it all together. There was holly everywhere, candles, chanting—it was a ritual, obviously.”

“God’s teeth,” I whispered.

I couldn’t get the images out of my head.

He nodded. “They were trying to summon the Holly King, and to do that, they needed a sacrifice. Someone to stand in for the Oak King, his enemy. It was over quickly. I didn’t stand a chance. There were too many of them.”

My hands covered my face now, trying to block out the words, trying to keep them from drawing out the memories of the dream. His lifeless body. The blood. I couldn’t breathe.

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