Page 97 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
‘Most are dead. However, lords tend to produce more of themselves – especially bastards.’ Emrys’s brow was furrowed as he considered the same thing.
There was something about the pensive stance of him that picked at a loose thread in my mind.
‘Do you?’ The question slipped free before I could stop the thought. ‘Could you? H-have any, I mean?’
Idiot.I scolded myself. Why the bloody hell did that matter?
‘I took severan weed when I was seventeen,’ he answered, unfaltering. I pulled back slightly, unable to suppress my shock. Severan was dangerous. Yes, it was beyond effective as a contraceptive – however, heirs were prohibited from taking it. It rendered the consumer infertile and was difficult to reverse. Verging on impossible from the books I’d read.
‘The withdrawal from severan weed is complex,’ I grimaced.
‘I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.’ There was something dismissive in the words and I knew he hadn’t believed he’d survive any of it, so why would it have mattered? How he’d never given much thought to his life because he never believed it was his.
I thought he’d say more but instead he reached into his pocket, pulling out two vials that seemed like healing syrup and then a short hilt for a throwing blade. The steel gleamingwith a white hue. A shadow blade. Mortal-made to fight the dark. Magic folded into the metal. A summoning that made them more powerful.
‘Just in case.’ He handed me the vials before slipping the small dagger’s handle into the sheath at my hip. Despite my father’s blade already resting there. Perhaps he understood my aversion to using it so publicly.
‘Also,’ his fingers moving the buckles and straps with ease as if he knew every inch of these leathers by heart, ‘I do hate to agree with Thean, but you do have a magnificent arse.’
I barked a laugh, watching his eyes darken at the sound as I tipped my head, unable to stop my smile. ‘I didn’t have you down as a lecher, my lord.’
He moved closer until I was trapped against the desk, his hands coming to rest on the curve of my waist. His warmth seeped easily through the leather.
His smile made my breath unsteady. ‘I’m veryparticularin my lecherous tendencies. Mostly for a singular troublesome Croinn.’
I let my fingers fidget with the buckle on his own jacket.
‘You should tell me to stay behind,’ I offered quietly, still burdened with all my other mistakes. All the secrets I should have shared sooner.
‘I won’t tell you what to do, Kat.’ He brought our interlaced fingers to his lips. Pressing a kiss to my knuckles. ‘Besides, I’m not overly fond of having you out of my sight.’
I was still smiling when he kissed me. Soft and consuming. His fingers slipped beneath the edge of my jacket, finding a strip of warm skin just above my trousers. A low needing sound escaped me as my hands slid into his dark hair. Fingers curling into it at the nape of his neck to keep him closer. Listening to that wild desire coursing through me.
‘Fucking ancestors deliver me,’ came the terse tone of Gideon. The human equivalent of throwing icy water over a flame. Breaking us apart.
‘Can we not?’ he demanded with a disapproving frown from where he loomed in the doorway. His own leathers making him an imposing figure, his blue eyes almost luminous.
Alma stood at his elbow, hiding her own smile behind her hand. Her petite form looking compact and deadly in her dark leathers she’d borrowed from William.
‘Let’s get this terrible idea over with so I can have a moment’s peace.’ Gideon shot Emrys a final warning glance before he moved into the shelves towards the Portium door.
Thankfully my embarrassment of being caught once again with Emrys was short-lived as the Portium door threw us into the middle of an overgrown wood.
There was a little girl who lived in a magical house. With wild roses curling up its side and a stone path that wove like a snake into an enchanted wood.
The story my mother created sang into my memory. How easily I’d forgotten it as I stood on the remains of that winding path.
‘I think you’re losing your touch, brother,’ Gideon muttered, wiping a thick clump of dirt from the side of his boot on a half decayed oak trunk that lay in our path. ‘There’d better not be any mud pixies out here. Nasty little bastards.’
‘I’m certain you’ll be in fine company then,’ Alma added, dryly. Earning herself a glare.
‘This is the right place on the map,’ Emrys replied, looking up at the moon as if the pale disc of it could offer any answers. The ruined doorway we’d emerged from appeared to have once been an outbuilding. Maybe a gamekeeper’s cottage.
There was nothing but the path before us, and ivy that tangled around my boots. A thick fog curling around the withered trunks.
The Greymarks had sold their ancestral home. The family was rife with debt and their heirs seemed to have a tendency to be drunkards or get themselves killed. The small house hidden in this wood had no value. It’d been left to rot in an old lord’s will. A place they used to hide their mistresses in their grander years.
A place they’d dumped my mother to forget about the sin of having a daughter and not a son.
