Page 112 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
I turned to him, troubled. ‘You think he’s summoning for wealth?’
‘All the fey that can be connected, died of blood draining or heart failure. All could be creature-summoning related.’ A sadness weighted his shoulders with the words. ‘One more badly cast spell on these lands and we could all be in trouble.’
‘How would you stop that?’
‘I have all the evidence I need to perform a cleansing charm.’ His sharp gaze came back to my face. ‘We’ll need to cleanse the ruins, hopefully obtain and trap a piece of that darkness that will show its connection to Lord Percy.’
We. I ignored the sudden importance of that one word to me. Letting my fingers run over the small journal with that picture of that poor girl inside.
Unease tightened my chest. From the dark fiends I’d come in contact with, I’d be surprised if we had days. Especially if Lord Percy was still making offerings to the dark, despite our presence.
I turned to the papers, trying to pull them into some form of order when a brightness of ink caught my eye. The delicate marks and beautiful illustrations I’d recognise anywhere. I pulled the aged map from the bottom of the pile.
‘I haven’t seen an original fey map for a long time.’ My voice was soft as my fingertips traced the illustrations of this world and the beasts that had been sketched around the outskirts of the map.
‘One of my father’s. He loved the North Islands. That’s where he met my mother.’ He leant around me, his finger tracing the border of the wildlands, almost touching my hand where it rested on the map. Right over the cluster of islands in the north.
‘The Isle of Beasts,’ I whispered, knowing I shouldn’t have drawn attention to it, to my connection to such a beautiful place, but I couldn’t control my emotion at seeing it again, even in a map form.
The Council maps never went that far north, or diminished the sacred islands to nothing but an irrelevant drop of ink just off the coast.
‘Tauria,’ he replied softly, as if he said it every day.
The sound of my true name on his lips made my breath stutter. It’d been so long since I’d heard it said in such a way, with reverence and beauty. The heart-island of the north. Named after the lost, ancient Kysillian queen. The sacred name from my bloodline.
‘My father gave me that name,’ I confessed before I could fully contemplate the danger of that secret. Could worry about how easily I’d given it to him.
‘I thought only members of the Kysillian Kings’ line could carry sacred names.’ There was a weight to Emrys response, a closeness to him, like he didn’t want to miss a single word from my lips.
I smiled weakly, looking back to the map. ‘Perhaps my father believed there was nobody left to care about tradition.’
‘Do you think there is?’ I felt his magic gently brushing my skin with curiosity, as if trying to sense my emotions. I felt the comforting warmth from the sheer presence of him at my back.
‘If there is anyone, they’re cleverer than me not to get caught.’ I considered the lands in the north that had once been a haven, running my finger down the aged page, ignoring its tremble.
‘I don’t think anyone on this earth is as clever as you, Croinn,’ he replied. A tenderness to the compliment.
A heat rolled through me that had nothing to do with magic. I turned, our noses almost brushing, seeing that darkness in his eyes. How it reflected the bright lavender of my own.
The mere presence of him, the anticipation that he might touch me. Seeing one of his rare smiles, the way his eyes shifted colour when he looked at me. The smell of forbidden herbs and old books whenever he was around. How carefully he handled me, like I was something that needed care.
All of it, and perhaps that was the most terrifying thing of all. There was a strange vulnerability to him in the dark, an intimacy to his closeness and too many things I wanted to know.
‘Tell me what happened in those ruins, Kat,’ he asked so quietly, yet still I felt the fear claw at me.
What haunted me even now. How I’d allowed that fear to drive me to near madness after that horrid dinner.
‘I …’ I swallowed around the word, shaking my head. ‘I can’t …’
Couldn’t risk making it real. Summoning that pain here to ruin everything else.
I thought he’d pull back in frustration, at the secrets I kept when faced with the truths he offered. But no, he came closer, gently tipping my chin with his thumb. A comforting softness lingering in the corners of his gaze. Unburdened by anything else but their sincerity.
His fingers dragged along the edge of my jaw, until he could trace the shape of my ear. ‘No matter what comes next, I won’t leave you to that darkness.’
My breath caught, lip trembling, but his thumb came back to drag across it. I understood that he didn’t mean only the darkness that had dwelled in those ruins, but perhaps the one that lingered within me too. A vicious monster of fear and grief.
‘I’ll find you, Kat,’ he whispered, but the intensity remained. The truth of it. ‘I promise you that.’
