Page 26 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
‘Call me back to you,’ I whispered now, knowing why she’d spoken the promise in Kysillian. The words of devotion I didn’t understand then. Of a love so strong that no matterwhere he went, she would follow him. All he had to do was call her name.
Then I remembered braiding the stems again. Alone. Cold, trembling fingers as I pushed the flowers into her hair, between her fingers, where I’d laced them over her swollen stomach, still whispering for her to come back even as I prepared her for burial.
The sharp smell of smoke filled my lungs, the screams of a younger version of myself echoing in my mind and the heat of a fire I should never have started. Pain radiated through my chest as I stumbled back from the memory, letting the wind snatch the flower from my palm as I hurried back to the house, reminding myself there was nothing in the past for me. Just ghosts and grief.
Arriving in the entrance hall, I expected a wailing Alma ready to pounce on me for my foolish roaming, but there was nothing but the persistent ticking of the grandfather clock as I caught sight of myself in the hallway mirror. My hair half unbound, leaves stuck to my skirts and a streak of mud down my cheek.
Wonderful.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and made a halfhearted attempt to fix my hair, but it was clumsy and unladylike. The table I rested my things on rattled suddenly, sending one of my overused bent pins clattering to the ground before it bounced under the sideboard. Annoyed, I dropped to my knees to retrieve it. Finding myself having to reach deep beneath the sideboard.
‘Bloody bastard,’ I cursed, reaching desperately for the pin.
‘Anyone I’m familiar with?’ a voice asked, startling me into smacking my head on the underside of the sideboard before I stumbled to my feet.
Emrys stood in the middle of the hallway, a book tucked neatly under his arm. His face impassive, dark hair pushed back from his brow, dressed sharply in a dark suit and matching cravat, making the pale scarred flesh of his face more prominent. His riding boots polished to a startling high shine.
‘How do you do that?’ I grimaced, rubbing the sore spot at the back of my head. ‘Just appear out of nowhere like that?’
‘I think you’ve brought half the forest back with you.’ His attention dropped to the hem of my skirt, ignoring the question.
‘My maid remains in her feline form,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I’m afraid I’ll be unpresentable until she returns.’
‘William did mention your maid had an affliction,’ he mused as he came a step closer. ‘I need your eyes.’
He took the book from under his arm, flicking the pages and turning it for me to see. I forced my attention on the page, and not the strange feeling his proximity brought, or the imposing nature of him as he towered over me – a feat not many gentlemen had managed thus far.
I took the book as he leaned closer to tap a specific page. A small crescent-moon scar sat above the knuckle of his index finger that somehow seemed purposeful compared to the others that marred him. The crescent moon was a bad omen. A story from too long ago. Of a prince cursed by death.
Fey still remembered, deeming a child born under the crescent moon to need a special blessing. To make certain nothing came from beneath the earth to steal their soul.
I shook the thought away, focusing on the task at hand, and tried to ignore the sweet earthy scent of beasam bark coming off his clothes. Trying not to think about what he was doingbrewing such an unpredictable substance or what ancient dark incantations he’d been meddling with.
He was pointing to an incantation to deal with a Lazur entity. A creature that dwelled in towns and used a reanimated corpse to do its bidding.
The book was old, and his notes were scrawled all around the page, pressed into the smallest margins.
‘This is a complex incantation.’ I ran my fingertip over the mess of his script. He’d written it in Mican. I tried not to be startled that he knew a fey language. The Council didn’t see any benefit in learning an earth language, even if it did strengthen spells.
‘You’ve written similar spells in your notes.’ He shrugged, a familiarity in his gaze that felt inappropriate as I quickly returned my eyes to the safety of the book.
‘You’ve barely given the ink time to dry,’ I commented. The complex mixture of words and languages would have melted the brain of a lesser mage. It appeared Lord Blackthorn’s spellcasting mirrored his mannerisms: difficult to determine. No matter how long I looked at his words, there was always a new angle to discover, a new way the spell could be imagined, a new power to be mastered.
‘Master Hale said you had an affinity for such incantations,’ he pressed gently.
‘As usual, he has too much faith in my abilities,’ I observed.
The solution came to me on my second reading. ‘You need to move this.’ I pointed to one of his squiggles I interpreted as a power mark, too deep in the spell for it to work correctly. ‘The verse isn’t strong enough, and a few of the words in the second row disrupt the balance.’
I tapped the page just as he had, pleased with myself as I looked up to check he was paying attention, but he wasn’t looking at the book. He was watching me.
‘Not many choose the path of the occult, even fewer make it. I advised Master Hale about the dangers of this partnership, but he reassured me of your … capabilities.’
‘I’ve survived this long.’
‘Spoken like a woman who wanders the Wilder Lands unescorted.’ The ghost of a smile barely touched the corners of his uneven mouth. ‘Some would suspect you of being a Croinn.’
Croinn.I was familiar with the ancient term for a witch. It wasn’t the worst thing I’d been called.
