Page 62 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
‘Every day my father asked of her. Every day they told him they were looking.’ As they locked him in training rooms, made him endure their trials and tests. ‘He was seventeen when he bested his sire and won his blade. When he left tofind his mother deep in the east.’
My breath caught with the weight of it. Emrys hand slid around my waist, bringing me closer as I braced my hand on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath my palm. ‘He was three days too late. She’d died taking a beating for another prisoner.’
She’d held on for him. All that time she’d held on. Knowing my father would make it back to her. That he’d find her – because she’d called his name.
‘Her grave was marked with Azenia, the everlasting bloom. The sign of a true warrior.’ A blessing from the ancestors to grow where she had fallen. ‘So much of the flower grew, it drifted through the air like snowfall. As if the ancestors themselves wept for the cruelty of it.’
When the ancestors cared. Or perhaps they were simply shamed into caring.
‘My father burnt down the entire mine. Freed the fey and took back the east field with nothing but his will and sword.’ The mortals called it the firestorm of the east, blamed the rebels for another sabotage of their trade.
Only there was no victory in it. No justice. Justice couldn’t exist. She was gone, and all that remained was pain.
‘My father never forgave those Kysillian elders for leaving his mother there. For lying.’ I saw the darkness seep into Emrys’s gaze, his anger at the pain in my words. Reacting to it as if it was his own. I smiled. Smiled because the memory of her was a beautiful thing my father had gifted me.
‘Her name wasTauria.’ With golden hair, a soft smile and a kind, gentle nature she’d gifted my father. ‘The elders gave her that name to mock her with everything she could never be.’
With the fire she could never wield. With the Queen’sname she could never hope to honour.
‘My father gave me that name so if those elders ever found me, they’d know that I was made by her. And like her, not one part of me belonged to them.’
My fingers traced the edge of his jaw as I looked into his stormy eyes. Weighted with too much emotion.
‘So perhaps I’m an impossible thing too.’ A deviant of fate. Perhaps we were equal in that. Emrys didn’t reply, just ran his fingers through my hair, the soothing motion of it making me rest more heavily in his arms. Pressing my cheek to his chest so I could listen to the steady beat of his heart, as it soothed my magic, it was only when I was in his arms he finally slept.
Chapter Eighteen
Kat
Beware the dark of the wood. Where demons linger in the shadows of the ancient pines. Luring maidens with sweet promises and handsome forms. For an old god’s desire is forever, and your soul will pay the price of their lust long after death, fair maiden.
Curse of the Old Gods – Unknown
Those old fables seemed to mock me as I turned another page in the book before me. Fingers dragging across the rough, age-spotted paper. Another tale of Mort. The first mortal king. The first saint. He who had brought civility to a land of cruel beastly fey. Who had taught the other saints all they knew. As they huffed in their toxic smoke and justified their cruelty. As they stripped this land of its magic and tried to meld it into their own blood. By any means necessary.
What had started all this mortal madness, hunger for power and for fey blood. What had fed them first. Such strange dark tales spread before me, illuminated by soft buttery light that seeped through the barest parting in the curtains as I sat at the desk in Emrys’s room. I was always too easily awoken, my thoughts too loud to rest so I’d returned to the familiar comfort of books.
I’d always thought the Old Gods to be no more than stories. That’s what this world had diminished them to. Only now Iwondered if there was a reason for that. The same reason the Council and the mad kings had diminished Kysillian power, and all the ancient fey before us. Rendered us nothing more than children’s tales, so the horrid things they did wouldn’t seem so horrid at all. Because for my own ancestors to lessen Verr into nothing more than myth was to reduce their power too – reduce the threat they could hold. For why would mortals hunger for it so? Kysillians would never admit they could be beaten. That they’d never conquered anything – never set anyone free.
My father had turned his back on the Kysillian elders, and I couldn’t help but fear this was why. Because their lies had led us so easily to our own demise.
I sat back in the chair, raising my hand and letting the smallest summoning free. Watching those dull lavender and blue flames twist between my fingers. Performing for my attention.
I feared I’d come into my flame too early. That I’d damaged something, causing its ferocity. Only Kysillia’s flame wasn’t the same as other summonings. It didn’t arrive at puberty when you were best prepared. No, it came when Kysillia willed it, when it was needed.
Then came the fear, of what exactly she saw for this world – to grant me such devastating power and the endless hunger that came with it. That its limit was set simply by my own conscience.
‘Croinn, please tell me none of those are cursed texts,’ came Emrys’s sleep-roughened voice from the bed. My flame extinguished with a flick of my fingers as I turned to see him up on one elbow, his other hand pushing the dark messy hair off his forehead. The movement making the definition of his bicep more apparent. Air a little harder to pull through my lips as my eyes traced where the covers had fallen to his waist.
‘Good morning.’ I smiled tentatively, rising and making my way over to him. ‘Do you feel better?’
‘You should be resting,’ he cautioned, his suspicious gaze moving back to the desk as if anticipating a fiend or a cursed illustration was about to burst free.
‘I think I’ve learnt my lesson where cursed texts are concerned.’ I tugged the sleeve of my nightgown back up where it had fallen off my shoulder. ‘I feel much better. Besides, I have a lot of catching up to do.’
He caught my hand to rub his thumb over the ink stains on my fingertips, where the scribbling of my notes had got away from me.
‘You shouldn’t be anywhere near this.’ His voice was still rough from sleep but the warning was soft. I knew he didn’t just mean those forbidden tales, fiends or seals. He meant himself.
