Page 130 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
The darkness swelled and screamed, sensing another attack. The dark form of Emrys was before me, crouched in the ruins and drenched by that rain.
Desperate, I threw my arms around him, sending us both to the ground, and then I was on top of him, making a cage of my body. I imagined a shield my flames couldn’t touch. Imagined something beyond their reach.
I felt it build, felt Emrys shout my name, the coolness of his fingers against my cheeks, but all I could do was give in, not caring if the guests had made it out.
Molten heat burned my limbs, reaching a crescendo of chaotic oblivion until I flung my arms outwards. The ruthlessness of it whooshing from me in a flare of devastating heat.
I devoured the room in chaotic fire. A scream of exhaustion left me, a roar of command, spreading outwards from aroundus and rendering everything to ash. The cursed creature had barely a moment to shriek as I devoured it too, turning those cursed coins to nothing but molten liquid that wrapped around the darkness and kept it contained.
I kept the chaos away from Emrys. Exhaustion ate into my trembling limbs as I cast a perfect sphere around us, the flames unable to touch the things I protected the most.
My deadly focus remained on the fiend as it curled into itself with thick black smoke, trying to change, trying to become the fire itself. I’d given it my flames, but I’d take them back.
It was my divine right to command that fire.
‘Accvern!’ I screamed.Return.I pressed those flames tighter and closer around the mimyk’s withering form. Peeling them from the walls and ceiling, forcing them tighter and tighter until that darkness had nowhere left to go but back into that one remaining coin gleaming on the ground.
The force of it causing me to scream. Ash coating my tongue and smoke filled my lungs.
Too late, something dark mocked in my mind.
Desperate and almost pleading. So hopeless that confusion clouded everything else as I sagged. The ferocity of my magic abandoned me as I collapsed.
Embers drifted down slowly, the intensity of what I’d just done potent in the air between Emrys and I. Death was too close with the power of the spell.
The sweetness of a burned curse and the persistence of beasam bark was all I could smell. My eyes opened to see Emrys beneath me, the impropriety of our position, how my breasts strained against my ruined bodice with the panting of my breath as I watched that one lone remaining coin roll across the ruined floor.
Desperate and seeking, as it avoided every smouldering piece of the ruins. Coming to land between the feet of a very pale and very guilty-looking Lord Percy where he waited in the sagging, ruined doorway to the ballroom … barely visible through the smoke.
The forbidden things always return to their master in the end.
It had returned to him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
There are princes who sleep beneath the earth made of nightmares and endless dark. Children of the Old Gods. Creatures of death and all the things that should never have been. Be wary of their calling to return curses to the world above, to drag everything beneath. For the night to be king once more under the endless crescent moon.
– An ode to the Old Gods – Unknown
Too late.That horrid voice mocked in the back of my mind as I looked down at my fingers, aching from the chaos I’d set free.
The most monstrous part of me. The hideous taste of that acrid smoke mixed with the sweetness of magic on my lips. Things not even the warmth of being sat in Blackthorn Manor could chase away.
‘Alma’s fast asleep,’ William’s soft voice brought me back to the present as he crouched before me. ‘Remind me to put in another order for some chocolates from the village.’
All I could do was nod, my smile too weak as I rolled the porcelain cup of cold tea between my palms. Unable to move, to dare think of how badly I’d ruined everything.
The aftermath blurred into nothing but a smear of colour and sound in my memory. The cries of the guests, in too much shock. The protests of Lord Percy as Emrys and Theandealt with him. The calming touch of Alma as her and William made sure we slipped away in the chaos of the aftermath. How Alma had collapsed with exhaustion, how putting her to bed had become my new priority. Unable to face the weight of everything else.
Sensing the deepening of my despair, William placed his hand to rest over mine, where it clung childishly to the stupid cup, forcing me to look up into his kind, brown eyes. To see the smear of soot on his cheek, the torn collar of his shirt and the knotted tangles of his curls.
‘It’ll be better in the morning.’ His smile didn’t falter, nor that endless kindness in his eyes. ‘Emrys will fix it. It’s not the first time he’s dealt with a wild fiend.’
Emrys. That one word seemed more painful than all the others. How could he? How could he fix what I’d exposed? The ruthless wildness of my magic. Nothing could fix me. All I could see were those dark eyes beneath me filled with warning and rage, no matter how gentle his touch had been in the aftermath.
I was a forbidden thing and I knew what happened to forbidden things. What happened to Kysillians who held a deadly flame.
‘Thank you, William.’ I took his hand, trying not to make it sound like goodbye. I glanced to the clock, seeing how horribly late it had gotten. ‘You should get some sleep.’
