Page 133 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
‘Kat, I need you to—’
‘My father ran because he wanted my mother more than he wanted a warrior’s death.’ My words were sharp with that truth, brutal and painful as they tore at my heart. ‘He went to the north to keep her safe from this world.’
Emrys watched me so carefully, taking in every piece I offered him. Every piece of me as if all my secrets were tiny trinkets beyond value to be collected.
‘He’s dead.’ I was unable to hold back the break in my voice. The truth I’d never been brave enough to admit to myself. Never voiced aloud. Always hoping he was just lost. Lost and trying to find me.
Now I understood. It was me that had been lost all this time.
‘He’s dead, Emrys. Along with everything he wanted to protect.’ My mother. That life. Me. It was all gone.
The horrid images of that cottage aflame came back to me, but I shook them away. I wasn’t what my father had wanted me to be. Instead, I was nothing but a pawn in a game he never wished me to play.
‘I am not my father,’ I admitted. The sting of magic against my palms as proof. Wild and deadly with lack of control. ‘No matter how much I wish to be.’
Brave, kind and strong. I couldn’t be him. Couldn’t live with this pain like he did.
‘There is nowhere in this world for me.’ I couldn’t go back. Couldn’t hide. ‘Nowhere but right here.’
‘Kat.’ He seemed unable to say anything but my name with the depth of brutal emotion cutting across his dark expression.
‘You’re angry with me?’ I watched the tense line of his jaw, his reluctance to look at me. ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.Please. I didn’t mean to put William at risk. To—’
He moved instantly across the room to me with brutal intent. The firelight playing harshly off the scars on his face. Caging me against the door. ‘You don’t put yourself at risk forme.’ A rough warning lay in his voice as he came even closer, his energy washing over me with a comforting strength. Giving away his desires. ‘That could have killed you.’
Anger was pressed into each word, a wildness to him I hadn’t anticipated. Not for dragging him or William into all of this. Or for bringing Montagor here.
‘It didn’t.’ My voice broke on the words, the slight lie they contained. It could have killed me. Just as it almost had before.
‘What if it did?’ There was a wild wrath in him. Eyes dark with it. Darker than I’d ever seen them before. ‘What was I supposed to do, Kat?’
The shadows in the room lengthened, responding to him in a way I didn’t understand, threatening to suffocate the flames in the hearth. His rage was from fear, not anger. Those midnight eyes took me in, refusing to let me go.
‘What was I supposed to do?’ he beseeched me helplessly. Powerless before me.
I knew that fear. How easily everything could be taken. My eyes dropped to his throat, to the strange scarring there, evidence of the brutality of what he’d survived, but also of what he’d lost.
Now a few smears of ash from everything I’d done covered the marks. I reached for his collar gently, running my fingertips over it to wipe it away, to feel the relentlessness of his pulse beneath my fingertips.
The faint sweet, earthy scent of beasam bark was there between us, but also smoke, and the bitterness of wild magic. My chaos all over him.
Mine, that voice inside of me claimed. The teasing drag of his magic over my skin, curling around my limbs to seek comfort. Wishing to hold me when its master wouldn’t.
‘I can’t bear it, Kat.’ His words were hoarse, weighted with discomfort. Eyes such a solemn pale grey. ‘Please. Let me let you go.’
No. The ferocity of my magic curled in my gut, filling me with a strength I needed. To fight for what I wanted. To stay. How ravenously I wanted to stay, desperate in the aftermath of all that destruction. As the fear of what could have happened, of never having him, spurred on that hunger. That need for this forsaken thing between us. No matter the cost.
I rested my palm against his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart beneath his ruined shirt, still damp from that rain. He didn’t reach for me, didn’t hold me to him. No, I wasn’t quite sure he was breathing as I let my hand drag to the line of buttons.
Slowly I undid each one, eyes lifting to catch his just as his shirt fell open. I found his eyes to be pitch-black with predatory focus as my hands slid across the warm contoursof him. The softness of his skin stretched over the ruthless hard muscle. The smooth slashes of scars colder under my fingertips as I traced them.
‘You said you needed me.’ The words stuck around the lump in my throat as my fingers traced the wicked lines up his abdomen, over his ribs and across the muscular surface of his chest, until I rested my palm over his heart once more. Over a mess of silver scars there too, curved as if trying to form another strange crescent moon. ‘What if I need you too, Emrys?’
‘Nobody needs this, Kat.’ He shook his head, voice rough and filled with such loss. Such loneliness that I felt it call to a lost part of my soul. Searching for something in his. I’d always been lost, but he’d found me, just as he promised.
The thought made my breath unsteady as my hand moved upwards, brushing the strong column of his throat until I touched his cheek, watching as he leant ever so slightly into that touch.
‘I do.’ I let my fingers linger at the sharpness of his jaw, feeling the roughness of the scar that came to the edge of his mouth. Tracing softly the shape of his bottom lip.
