Chapter 15
Emrys
I knew I was asleep, and yet I couldn’t escape it. The curse fed on my memories, and it enjoyed reliving my worst moments too much to free me from them.
The steel of my sword hummed in my right hand as searing flames danced around my left. I couldn’t remember my squire’s name—a cruel lapse—but I remembered the way he held my shield steady, his grin too wide for the carnage around us. He’d been maybe seventeen years old. Brave enough to make a name for himself within a few years, brave enough to survive.
One moment he was beside me, mud caked to his boots. The next, he was gone. The enemy’s blade had sliced so cleanly that his grin remained fixed in place, even as his throat gaped open.
I felt the spray of his blood, still warm on my cheek. Heard the wet gurgle in his chest.
I cut his killer in two.
The curse arrived faster than my grief, swallowing my scream.
The monster rose within my skin. A blaze of my fire carved a path across the battlefield, leaving behind a trail of ash and destruction. Screams turned to groans. Metal melted into skin.
The battlefield became a pyre.
The stench came next. Burning wool filled my nostrils, followed by the porky, nauseating odor of human flesh cooking.
I wanted to be sick. Wanted to cry. But the curse allowed no room for weakness, which meant there was no room for my humanity.
Something brushed against me. It wasn’t wind from an open window nor was it the brush of my own deadly fire.
Magic.
It was impossibly gentle, like a cool cloth applied by a mother’s hands, like chill, spring-fed water on the hottest summer day—the complete opposite of the force hollowing me out from the inside. There was no hunger in it, no echo of the endless destruction that defined my own power.
I hadn’t felt anything so clean since… Caervorn.
The fire in my dream paused, and the scream in my chest lost all the air it had been waiting to unleash. The memory cut off before I could reenact the bloody culmination of one of my greatest failures of restraint—the moment I stopped being a man and became death, walking.
If the dream had played out, it would’ve shown me kneeling on the ground. My lungs would make a deafening, inhuman roar. Then the magic would explode out of me, obliterating my allies and enemies in a single searing flash of light and heat.
The name they gave me after that, Stormdân, echoed repeatedly in my ears as the cool magic continued to douse the flames of my curse.
Gasping suddenly fully awake, I thrashed against the stifling weight of my sweat-soaked sheets. I sat bolt upright, throwing them off, waiting to see if the monster would come ripping out of me. I needed to prepare if I had to abandon this soft place to hide in the wilderness so I wouldn’t hurt anyone.
But no. The usual agonizing whispers of my curse were absent. I experienced only blessed silence. It was as if the monster had been poisoned into a lethargic slumber, its usual ferocity muted.
Was it her?
I’d trained with my father growing up then with the best mages the Assembly had to offer after my curse, but this was altogether unique. Itwas a cool, softly steady force that felt like river water washing away the blood covering my soul.
I wanted to bask in it, but I also had to know—I had to see her. So I jumped out of bed barefoot, not caring that my trousers were rumpled and my shirt clinging to my damp skin. I crossed the room in three strides, fortified my mental walls, and opened the door.
Isca stood just outside, her back to me, swathed in a heavy fur robe. The cascade of her hair spilled down her spine, soft and gleaming like sunlight even in the dim corridor. She hadn’t moved, but I knew she felt me the instant I stepped into the hall. Awareness—not fear, I hoped—caused her shoulders to tense.
The air shifted between us. I should’ve slammed the door, locked it, buried myself in my own self-loathing, and warded my room until the urge to reach for her passed.
Instead, I stepped into the hall like a fool. “What do you think you’re doing?” My voice came out too harsh, as if I were furious. But I wasn’t. I wasterrified.
She turned slightly, just enough for me to see the edge of her profile. Her jaw tightened, and her brows pulled low. She was angry.
Good. It would be easier to keep her away.
“Trying to help,” she hissed, her voice its own reprimand despite the whisper. “To do exactly what I’m here for! I’m working.”
