Chapter 31

The fire spat and crackled in the hearth, burning through its dwindling supply of wood. Some part of my shocked mind recognized that it needed to be fed, but just then, none of it mattered. My lips parted but couldn't draw in air. The heaviness taking root inside my chest was a chimera of emotions—incredulity, anger, suspicion, and, finally, horror.

Emrys had lied countless times before. Smooth lies, charming lies, even protective ones. But the look of fragile hope on his face was truth. In it, I saw the child he'd once been, who must have come to his father never knowing if he might be accepted or rejected.

"I … what?" I got out.

Emrys reached down to grip his sweater and undershirt, pulling both off over his head. The firelight caressed the hard lines of his body, his strong shoulders and arms, his chest—but it also revealed the ragged scars that crisscrossed his skin. Even his more recent wounds, with their dark stitching, seemed less sinister.

The first time I'd seen the scars, in the light of Avalon's sacred pools, I'd thought he looked like he'd been shattered and hastily pieced back together, leaving evidence of the fractures that not even magic was powerful enough to erase. The sight of them now, the echo of his words in my mind, made me press a hand to my mouth.

"The night started like countless others," he told me, crossing his legs in front of him. He braced his hands against his knees and hunched forward slightly. "He'd—my father had hit my mother before I could get between them. When I finally got the bastard away from her, she fled up to her room and I left to try to cool off."

He snuck a look at me through the dark curtain of his bangs, as if measuring my reaction. Seeing I was still with him, he continued.

"When I got back home, I had a note to go see him in his study," he said. "It was the same routine as always. I'd apologize because he wouldn't, and we'd never speak of it again. Except …"

"Except what?" I asked roughly.

The dream, I thought, my heart hammering in my ears. It hadn't been a premonition.

I was already too late.

"The Order of the Silver Bough," he said. "When I opened the door to his study and stepped inside, they were waiting for me."

My breathing grew harsh in my ears.

"I didn't really understand it in the moment, because there wasn't time to," Emrys said, shuddering. "But when we got to Avalon, and we found that statue below the tower, when we heard what the druids had done, I started to piece it all together. There was holly everywhere, candles, chanting—it was a ritual, obviously."

"God's teeth," I whispered.

I couldn't get the images out of my head.

He nodded. "They were trying to summon the Holly King, and to do that, they needed a sacrifice. Someone to stand in for the Oak King, his enemy. It was over quickly. I didn't stand a chance. There were too many of them."

My hands covered my face now, trying to block out the words, trying to keep them from drawing out the memories of the dream. His lifeless body. The blood. I couldn't breathe.

"The next thing I knew, I woke up in Rook House," Emrys said, the words going thin. "Spilling out of a cauldron of some kind, naked as the day I was born, but … whole. Alive. I almost screamed at the feeling of the heart beating inside my chest. My mother was there, but she was so … changed. And Madrigal. She laughed when she saw me. She was delighted by it all."

My hands fell back into my lap. "What cauldron?"

"I don't know," he said quietly. "But it was death magic, clearly."

The wind let out a guttural moan as it battered the front door. I forced my gaze over to it as Emrys tugged his shirt and sweater back on.

"What did Madrigal do to your mother to age her that way?" I asked.

He rubbed at his arms, his expression strangely empty. "It was part of the spell to resurrect me. She had to give her own vitality, a piece of her soul. Mom had heard rumors about Madrigal and brought my …" He trailed off, but the word he hadn't spoken, body, fluttered like a moth's wings through my mind. "She brought me to Rook House. What was left of me."

The nausea was back again, rising swift and burning in my stomach. I wanted to clamp my hands to my ears like a child, to tell him to stop—but how could I?

"You're still you," I whispered.

"Am I?" he wondered. "I didn't even tell you the whole truth before, because I didn't want you to know the worst of it—that part that would make you scared of me, or see me the way I see myself."

"You don't scare me," I said.

He ran his hand back through his hair, gripping it in his fist. The look he gave me was pleading, as if begging me to make that true. "They didn't just kill me, Tamsin. As part of the ritual, they cut the heart out of my chest and burned it."

A terrible silence overtook us.

"That's—" I croaked out. "No, that can't be right—"

"It can, and it is," Emrys said. He looked down at his upturned palms. "I could tell something was wrong when I woke up. That I was wrong. But Madrigal waited until I brought the ring to her, when I thought I was finally free and could go back to Avalon. She waited until that exact moment, when I felt like my world had opened back up again, to tell me she had made me a new heart. With death magic."

"And you believed her?"

"I didn't have to," he said, rubbing at his chest. "My mother confirmed it."

Oh, my mind whispered.

"Madrigal laughed as she told me some part of my heart would always beat for her," Emrys continued, anger creeping into his tone. "And that if I ever crossed her, or displeased her, she could unmake it just as easily."

"But you brought her the ring," I said. "You repaid that debt."

"I know," he said. "She released me, but there's still a leash. I feel it every second of every day. I feel it when I run, when I try to sleep, when I look at you … Do you understand?"

His expression was almost desperate, as if he needed me to accept it. To believe it.

"I am never going to be completely free," he said. "I will always be under her control, in some way or another. I can live with the knowledge that she could yank the leash at any moment, or cut the thread of my life short, but I can't ask you or anyone else to. And if she asked me to hurt you …"

He trailed off, as if not wanting to give the idea life. "I thought it would be easier if you hated me. I tried to get you to despise me, the way I despise myself."

"Emrys, all of us could die at any time—" I began, but he didn't let me finish.

"I just keep thinking," he said, "death magic makes monsters, not men. We saw it. We saw what death magic does to the dead. A shadow lives inside me. A monster's heart. I'm so quick to anger, to succumb to those dark feelings … I don't see how it could be anything else."

I could barely summon the words through my shock. "Or it's just grief. Powerful grief. Because of what your father did, what your mother gave up, and what you lost. Because of what happened to us in Avalon. "

Emrys's eyes remained on his hands, as if he could shape something out of the darkness, something that might make me understand. "I wish like hell that were true."

"Could a monster feel love?" I asked. When he looked up, I added, quickly, "You love your mother, don't you? Or regret? You regret what happened in Avalon. You wanted to help everyone there. We've seen monsters, Emrys. We barely survived them."

"Still …," he whispered.

"You said there was nothing wrong about me, even after you saw the silver bone," I said stubbornly. "Do you still believe that?"

"Of course," Emrys said.

"I believe the same about you," I said. "Nothing about you is wrong, not to me."

He let out a shuddering breath.

"Irritating, sneaky, and a bit of a dork about plants, yes," I added. "But dark? No. You wish you had that much edge."

Emrys shook his head, but there was a small smile on his lips. "I prefer playfully mischievous to sneaky. "

"Sneaky," I repeated, crossing my arms over my chest. My own heart was still hammering away against my ribs, as if the moment were spinning too quickly around me. If he had touched me then, if his fingers or lips had followed the path his eyes had taken down my face—

I drew in a sharp breath, shaking my head.

The fire sputtered out to its final few flames. I started to crawl toward the remaining wood in the pile, but Emrys beat me to it. By the way he took his time, carefully arranging the wood, I wondered if he'd needed a moment alone with his own thoughts.

It all felt too fragile; as if saying anything would shatter whatever this truce was between us, if it could even be called that. Nothing felt right, but I couldn't do it—I couldn't be the one to go to him when he was the one who had left.

But he's still here, I thought, dragging my pack over to me. The sleeping bag was decades old, but it would be better than suffering the indignity of trying to squeeze onto a toddler-sized bed. The rug at least provided some padding and protection from the hard-packed dirt floor.

Emrys unrolled his plush sleeping bag beside mine. I was about to point out a spot closer to the door, but I quickly realized that the mound was so narrow, we'd both have to lie lengthwise to fit.

"This feels—" he began.

"Don't say it," I said.

I settled down onto my side, keeping my face to the wall where I'd seen the etchings of the little family before. As Emrys lay down beside me, facing the other way, it was hard to tell what was providing more heat to my back, him or the fire.

"So … your dad's a ghoul of the Wild Hunt," I said, when the silence had finally become unbearable. "Appropriate."

"Yeah," Emrys said, turning over to lie flat on his back. I turned over too, as if pulled by some unseen tether. He caught my eye, and a sad, sardonic smile touched his lips. "Now he's as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside."

"Well, my not-dad is not- dead dead as well," I said. "So don't start thinking you're special, Dye."

"About that …," Emrys began, his brow furrowing. I had to lace my fingers together over my chest to keep from reaching out to smooth the skin there. To run my fingers down the curve of his cheek. "How exactly is Nash alive?"

"I guess it's more like … reborn? Remade?" I said. "So far showing no signs of being interested in consuming blood or brains, but he remains an utter rapscallion."

Emrys seemed to process this in stride. "Death magic, then?"

"The coin."

His brows shot up as he found the right memory. I nodded.

"I hesitate to ask this, knowing how much you adore these touchyfeely conversations," Emrys began, "but are you all right?"

The stinging barb was right there, and so easy to reach for. It was a reflex now—the dagger of sarcasm or irritation flung back to avoid having to think about how I felt, or what I thought, on a deeper level.

"I'm … processing," I said finally.

For a long while, there was no sound but the duet of the pleasant, homey crackling of the fire and the moaning of the wind. I closed my eyes, trying to push the image of the others still wandering in the blizzard from my mind.

"I can practically feel you thinking," Emrys murmured. "Are you worried about the others?"

It should have unnerved me that he'd read my thoughts so perfectly, but instead, I found it almost … comforting.

"Yes," I whispered. "I don't understand how we got separated when we crossed into Lyonesse." That thought drew up another, and my eyes snapped back open. "How did you get here, anyway?"

"Same way you did, I assume," Emrys said. "The Hag of the Mist."

"Nope," I said. "Same method, but different hag."

At that, Emrys propped himself up on his elbow. "The Hag of the Bogs?"

"Moors," I corrected. "And yes. She was very helpful. Didn't even want our weird little offering bottle."

He shook his head, the waves of his fair falling into his eyes. My hands tightened around one another.

Stop it, I told myself. The friendly distance of the conversation was good. The distance between our bodies was good.

"You finally make a friend," he said in wonder, "and it happens to be an ancient monster. One with the tendency to eat any traveler she comes across."

"I have other friends too," I protested. "Neve and the others like me a solid sixty percent of the time."

"You know how they ended up trapping the Hag of the Moors in that mirror?" Emrys said, settling back down. "All they had to do was let her catch a glimpse of her reflection. She was so distracted by her own face she didn't even put up a fight."

"Well, that was rude of them," I said.

"You're defending the traveler-eater," Emrys reminded me.

"Everyone gets hungry now and then."

He actually laughed—a real laugh that rumbled deep in his chest. I wanted to gather the sound to me, to hold it close to my heart.

I wanted to remember it.

For once, I wasn't the one having a nightmare.

A low note of distress crept through the shadowed boundary of sleep, almost indistinguishable from the wind. If I hadn't been so primed to danger over the last few weeks, I would have drifted right back into the drugging pull of exhaustion.

"Please … don't …"

I sat up, the dark burrow spinning as my mind fought to grasp where I was. Who was next to me.

Emrys's voice was agonized. "Don't—"

His body thrashed violently, his legs colliding with mine as his torso contorted, threatening to rip open his stitches. My mind sharpened, fully awake now.

"Emrys!" I grappled with his arms, fighting to keep my grip on them as he wrested them away. His face was pinched with terror, his skin covered in a sheen of sweat despite the chill that had overtaken us.

Waking someone from a dream was like saving them from drowning. I pulled him back to me, managing to get my arms under and around him, trying to haul him up from the ground, to use the movement to wake him. "Emrys!"

His eyes fluttered open, the muscles of his chest and shoulder jerking against me as he slammed back into awareness. His gaze found mine in the dark, disoriented with fear. A feeling of almost unbearable tenderness filled me, more awful than ever now that I could name it. Now that I wanted to give in to it.

Every part of me was shaking. My throat burned as I released him. We both stayed there, suspended in darkness.

"Tamsin?" he said, his voice rough with sleep. "Is this real?"

I took his face between my hands.

"It's real," I told him, but the moment felt like a dream. A liminal place, where anything could happen. Where there were no consequences, no past, no future. Just …

The thought dissolved as his hand slid around my waist; the assuredness of it, the open look of wanting on his face, made me feel powerful. For once, I was in control of this—whatever this was.

I rose onto my knees, letting him draw me closer as I smoothed my fingers over his face, feeling the roughness of stubble growing in, feeling the muscles of his jaw relax. I would have been embarrassed, maybe, by how closely I was watching him, but he was watching me, too, his breath hitching as I straddled his legs.

I drew my face close to his, feeling his skin warm with my touch, smelling the earthy pine scent of him. I drew back ever so slightly, my breath mingling with his, giving him the opportunity to pull away and unravel this.

He rested his forehead against mine, his hand moving to cup the nape of my neck, his hand stroking the sweat-damp hair there.

"I don't want a dream," he whispered. I felt almost drunk with the sound of it, the husk of those words. "It's always been real to me."

Don't hurt me, I thought desperately.

Emrys had lied before, had lied and lied and hidden behind his veil of secrets, but his body told the truth and mine responded in kind. A feeling of liquid heat wound through my belly. I felt so dizzy with the sensation of him, I hadn't realized I'd said it aloud until he answered, his breath whispering against my ear, "Never."

His hand tightened around my hip, holding me there. "You know what I am … "

But I heard what he was really saying. You can hurt me, too.

I met his gaze, daring him.

"I know what we are," I told him, sliding a hand back to tangle in his dark, wavy hair. The word burned in me like a brand. Even.

Then his lips were on mine and I knew I was right—that the feeling in me, hot and desperate, that painful longing, echoed in him. I kissed him back, hungry for the sensation of his heart— his heart—racing. Alive. I rocked against him, careful not to brush against his chest, devouring the low, rough sound it drew from him, the way he moved against me in turn.

One moment blurred into the next, his tongue parting my lips as if we'd done this a thousand times, for a thousand years. He turned, easing me down onto the blanket, covering me with his body. The charge between us changed, that molten feeling in my belly spreading as it became a competition, that push and pull between us, that refusal to be the first to pull away.

He was everywhere, consuming all of my senses, erasing the fear from my mind, the painful ache of my battered body. My skin jumped as his hand slipped up beneath the hem of my sweater and skimmed over my skin, careful to avoid the tender spot on my ribs. I ran my hands up the muscles of his back, pulling his shirt free.

He leaned back to let me do it, capturing my face between his hands, holding me there in that stillness, even as I tried to lift my head and meet his lips halfway. He stroked my hair back from my cheek and I saw his fear play out clearly over his face.

"No," I whispered. "Stop thinking. You know what I am. I know what you are. It's just us here."

It was startling but also so completely natural to want him, the comfort of connection. Something in me, that voice that was so quick to cut, told me I was being a fool, that baring everything to him was an invitation to the pain that would inevitably come. But wasn't that the risk everyone took in opening their heart to another person? Closing myself off hadn't protected me. It had only kept me alone .

He drew in a sharp breath, his body trembling as I stroked his back, finding the waistband of his jeans. The button.

"Are you sure?" he whispered.

I'd been wrong to think he had nothing to lose in this, that he held all the power. His skin was as soft as mine, his heart just as vulnerable. If everything went to pieces around us, this at least would remain.

"Yes." For the first time in weeks, I felt calm, even if my movements were clumsy, needy. I was protected in the ways that mattered most right now and had been for years, since my first time. But this wasn't a quick fumble born out of curiosity. This was a promise.

Yes, I see you.

Yes, I want you.

The heat of him overtook me, burned away the world, burned away everything but the feel of him.

The silky night enveloped us, hushing the snowstorm to a whisper, leaving that sole thought singing through my blood as I kissed him again.

Alive, alive, alive …