Page 30 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
His fingers curled automatically, capturing my own as if to stave off my curiosity.
‘It—’ His voice broke, his fingers tightening around my own as if fearful I could slip away. ‘I made it worse.’
There was a wounded quietness to his words, almost lost in the rustle of the wind.
His head bowed, a devout worshipper seeking salvation, shoulders slumped in complete surrender. ‘Touching you made it worse.
‘I’ve been trained to endure many things. Have endured them all without hesitation, but … I couldn’t endure that,Kat.’ He barely shook his head, breath seeming almost painful as it slipped through his lips. ‘Not hurting you. Not with what I am.’
Verr.The word he didn’t say.
The impossibility of it, yet I’d seen the truth. Only, it didn’t feel like the stories. Not a great dark evil snapping with deadly jaws. No. He was just Emrys, quiet and burdened.
There was a lie somewhere. Only I knew it had never been spoken by him. It had been spoken long ago. Long before us.
I looked over the scars on his cheek and jaw. The slight pink tinge to some marks as if they were new. I let my thumb brush over them. Remembering how viciously the dark had tried to devour him. Feeling him still beneath my touch, tense.
‘Do you think that matters to me?’ I asked, knowing what it was to be feared. To be made into a monster, when all you wished for was to belong.
‘It has to, Kat,’ he answered but didn’t pull away.
Had to because we were opposites in every way. Deadly and followed only by death. Yet I didn’t wish to be anywhere else.
I gently pulled the glove from his hand. Until I saw the dark magic lingering at the tips of his fingers, how thin veins of it ran across his palm. Then removed his other, letting the gloves slip to the floor.
My magic was content. Quiet with nothing but a pulse of curiosity at my fingertips as I pressed our palms together and fit my fingers into the space between his own. As he’d done for me, when I thought I’d never feel safe again.
When I’d told him the worst thing I’d ever done and he’d just held me. How he’d crawled across that cursed earth, reaching into flames that could turn him to ash. Because he promised he wouldn’t leave me.
‘Tell me all of it.’ Fear quieted those words from my lips. That his silence would prove there was nothing here. Nothing left in the chasm between us. That his choice was made. ‘Please.’
‘Just give me another moment.’ He swallowed, jaw tight, but those eyes remained on me, taking in every inch of my face, savouring it. ‘Another moment like this.’
As if one word from his lips would change everything.
Then all I was left to wonder was who put that fear in his eyes. Then a different type of sorrow began to bloom between my ribs. For everything he never wished to be. For the spy and the war hero he never wished to be.
‘The Mage King … in his madness began to indulge in—’ Something close to disgust cut across his expression. His gaze moving to the window. To the stormy morning sky. ‘Rituals to try to summon the Old Gods from beneath. To give them mortal form again. To raise Verr to his cause using fey girls who had no choice in it.’
I’d heard of ancient mating sacrifices, blood rites and dark worship done by many kings obsessed with the dark. Each becoming obscener than the king before.
His gaze remained distant as if he couldn’t bear to see my expression or how I’d process his words. ‘My mother was one of them.’
Icy horror coiled tightly in my gut.
‘Lady Blackthorn—’ I frowned but he shook his head.
‘No. I was just a cuckoo in her nest. A well-placed curse.’ His eyes came back to me, filled with nothing but anguish. ‘My birth mother was fey. One of the few kept to endure the rituals. A pet of the Mage King.’
I’d heard those stories of lords’ obsessions with fey girls. Depraved and cruel. Using them to produce mortal-passingheirs to bring magic into their bloodlines. Mostly whispered in Daunton between the older girls. Then in whatever pages of the Crow’s Foot that found their way into the Institute. To spit and sneer at lies fey told. Only I knew they weren’t lies at all.
Nightmarish tales worse than mere mortal men hungering for fey girls, to appease their predatory appetites. This was different – worse. Seeing them as nothing but a vessel. A lamb to slaughter.
‘The lords who were working against the King got her out. Moved her to a safe house.’ He drew in a pained breath. ‘I was born there. Blackthorn was there. They knew she’d die from the birth, that containing such darkness for so long would weaken her with how corrupt the summoning had been.’
A hideous ache took up residence in the centre of my chest. The bitter memory of that pit. The pain that had pressed against my flesh. How they’d sacrificed others.
‘They could have saved her the agony of it but the promise of finally gaining a weapon against the King was worth more to their uprising.’ He looked down at his hand entwined with my own, dark hair falling across his brow. ‘The creature she’d birth was worth more than her life.’
