Page 136 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
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.
