Page 65 of Tales of a Monstrous Heart
‘We can look.’
We. The word brought a smile to my lips at just how much more trouble we could find, how much we’d already stumbled into already and how unbothered by it all he seemed.
‘How did you keep her hidden?’ His voice was guarded, eyes an unsure stormy grey. As if worried such a subject would bring me nothing but pain.
‘Master Hale offered to take her in if I agreed to be included in the treaty. He didn’t know the full extent of her powers then.’ I let my shoulders droop into a shrug. It sounded so much worse when I said it out loud ‘Nobody is going to look twice at a fey maid. I think the other maids were too scared of her temper to question anything.’
The truth was harder. That when men came wandering drunk from the councilmen’s parties seeking maids to fondle, they had the misfortune of running into Alma.
Turned out men who needed to save their purse by marrying a lord’s daughter didn’t want to explain to their new wife how they were no longer in possession of their bollocks; losing them to a maid who grew claws in the shadows of the stairwell.
Word must have travelled fast because no men wandered the kitchens anymore, and the maids gave Alma a wide berth, either scared that the story was true or that she was mad enough to make it up.
Emrys’s gaze moved back to my notes, and he gave a small smile as if sensing Alma’s cunning. ‘More unsavoury reading?’
He moved the papers aside, revealing the cover of the numerous copies ofThe Crow’s FootI’d piled together, looking for clues.
‘William thinks there could be a vesper demon killing lords.’ I sighed, leaning forward to look again at the articles covering the missing lords, all of whom hadn’t been heard of since the war. They could all be in hiding perhaps, or all murdered in conspicuous ways. ‘However, there is nothing to say their ring fingers are missing.’
Vesper demons loved trophies. Ring fingers being their favourite, wearing the bones like jewels around their necks. It seemed bad luck was the only reason for the lords’ murders. One had been killed in a brawl, another for gambling debts and the third by an enraged mistress. Nothing had been taken from the bodies. However, the lack of the Council’s care about it sent a shiver down my spine.
I looked, waiting for Emrys’s dry remark about William’s reading material, only to see his face blank, jaw tense and eyes darker than before. Gaze locked on those pages.
‘Emrys?’ A sudden icy chill had seeped into the warm bricks of the kitchen. The fire sat lower in the hearth as shadows seemed to stretch from the corners of the room.
‘That creature spoke.’ His voice was as cold as the air, distant as those dark eyes met my own. ‘What did it say to you?’
Kyvor Mor.The words hissed through my mind in that cruel mocking voice.
‘I didn’t learn all my Kysillian words. Not the ancient ones,’ I lied too easily.
Guilt gnawed away at my ribs but I wrapped my arms around myself, rubbing my forearms as my eyes fell back to the horror in those papers between us.
‘Poor Mr Thrombi.’ I sighed, hating that he didn’t have a chance. That none of them did. ‘He didn’t deserve to die like that.’
‘None of them do.’
I moved the papers aside to pull the file from beneath. ‘I wrote up my half of the report about it but I know it won’t do anything.’ It had felt better to write it all down. But Emrys didn’t reach to take it from me.
‘This is darker than I anticipated,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t—’ He shook his head, moving to leave, the rest of the words lost in the tension that had taken over him.
Forgetting myself, I reached across the table, taking hold of his hand and stopping his retreat.
‘Please, Emrys,’ I whispered, as he paused, looking at only where I touched him. ‘I want to help.’
Something moved through his eyes, a tension in his jaw as if he’d refuse, but then he relaxed back into his seat. Before I could apologise and pull it back, he turned my hand gently in his own.
His focus was on the small bandage around my palm from where the window’s glass had cut me. His thumb ran over the small scars on my fingers from being caught by a training blade. Small insignificant things. Marks I’d seen catch the light on his own hands. Fighter’s marks. Reminders of how my mother would tend to them, while singing folk tales of the north. Then how Alma had to do it instead after our sparing sessions.
‘You fought remarkably.’ He offered the compliment quietly, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world to say.
‘My father taught me.’ I smiled, hoping he couldn’t feel the uneven nature of my pulse, unsteady at the rough feel of his thumb against my skin. ‘You don’t have to keep complimenting me.’
His attention came back to my face, tracing every inch of it so carefully.
‘Stop impressing me then,’ he challenged, his crooked smile almost boyish. A warmth sweeping through my chest, a comforting swell just like that my magic offered.
‘I’ll try my best.’ I smirked, for once allowing his words to nestle into some quiet lost place inside of me.
