Page 86 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
‘Kat.’ Emrys’s fingers hooked into my skirt, halting my retreat, and despite all my strength, the barest tug sent me stumbling back into the warmth of him. His hand resting easily at my hip.
I turned my head, hearing the depth of that concern, seeing the crease at his brow. How he knew me well enough to understand. ‘The Countess has the blades of the old kings. Three of them. On that bloody bracelet.’
Her holding Kysillian relics unsettled me. Enraged me more than I’d admit. Hating the feral noise in my head at the sight. The thought that perhaps I was the vicious creature the Council always feared.
Emrys went so still, those eyes pitch-black in an instant as I turned in his arms.
‘You didn’t know?’ I asked.
A frustrated breath slipped from his lips as he shook his head. ‘No. I thought they were just another relic. She’s had them a long while.’
If she controlled all seven blades, she controlled the elders’ will. Kysillians were ruled by the conquering of blades. The last to hold all seven was said to be Kysillia herself.
A testament of power; and Kysillian power was dangerous enough in our own hands … but in the Countess’s? Ishuddered at the thought. Emrys’s arm becoming firmer around my waist as if sensing my unease.
Then another thought occurred to me. ‘That ring on her finger—’
‘A dark artifact. Some say she’s held it for decades,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘It’s how she seals their vows. With dark magic. Nothing else is as powerful.’
Because no magic was as dangerous to fey as that of the dark beneath. It was why the Kysillians feared it so, because it took no purity of blood to wield it. Why they all had those same marks on their flesh.
‘How can she claim to be different from Montagor if she uses the same power?’ I demanded. Hating that they had no choice but to follow her. That the fey desperate enough had no choice.
‘Dark magic corrupts. I don’t imagine this is how she thought her rule would go. How desperate her hunger for power would make her when she began.’
No. Because we never learn.
‘Callen is a sacred name. One of the Kysillian kings.’ I couldn’t help my confusion at that Kysillian’s presence. How it chafed against everything the Kysillians were supposed to believe – how he could be in her service. Yet so was my father, and perhaps it was that truth that made me the most uncomfortable.
‘Callen has been under her control for over a decade. The Kysillians owed her a debt, so they traded a warrior they had no need of.’
How easily they’d traded their own blood. Showing how far the Countess’s reach had stretched. So even the fey elders were playing her games.
Then something occurred to me. Something I’d missed. My eyes fell to where my father’s hilt gleamed amongst the bedcovers where it had slipped from my bag.
‘You’re not surprised I recognise those sacred blades?’ That I’d know them so well despite not being raised by the elders. Would know them because I wielded one the same.
‘No, Croinn.’ His smile was small. Knowing. ‘A sacred blade is hard to miss.’
Of course, because he was Verr. He would have known it upon sight. Yet … it hadn’t changed anything. He’d never asked about it. How he’d just accepted that piece of me. Even knowing what darkness had created him.
‘It didn’t bother you?’ That I was Kysillian. That I held a blade that promised to end Verr.
His thumb dragged over my cheekbone. ‘You could have chosen to drive that blade right through my cursed heart and it wouldn’t have bothered me at all, Kat.’
My breath caught with the depth of that confession. My fingers tracing the line of his jaw. This beautiful foolish man.
‘Tell me you’re all right?’ He bent his head, lips moving gently across my cheekbone.
I couldn’t – I wasn’t. Not since I’d seen how far the lies had run.
‘Master Hale said my father’s name,’ I answered, unable to bear the pain of it, like a bruise on my heart, any longer. ‘He knew it. All that time he knew it because—’
My hands slid up to rest on his shoulders. Anything to steady myself. Emrys’s hands gently captured my face, as if I was something delicate between his palms.
‘He made him leave somehow.’ I opened my eyes to see the darkness of his own. Darkness that I knew was in reaction to my own pain.
‘Kayin,’ he answered softly and, unlike when Hale said it, there was something comforting about Emrys speaking my father’s name. As if making him real again for the barest moment.
