More specifically, what happened when she finally confronted her monster.
Chapter Twenty-Three
CONSTANCE DEBATED HOWshe wanted to share the rest of her and Aodh’s tale with everyone and decided the best way to tell them was to show them. So after she urged them to sit around the fire to keep warm in the chilly morning wind, she took Aodh’s hand in hers, placed her other hand against King’s Heart, and brought them telepathically on the journey she and her love had taken.
One that led from their last life into this one.
One that had been hidden until she embraced forgiveness when up against Siobhán’s warriors. Up against men who hadn’t deserved to be used by Rahgnall and Siobhán like they were. When she did that, a floodgate opened and earned her not just their fealty but everything she had forgotten.
All the heartbreaking, brutal truths.
She began by bringing Aodh and their siblings back to the moment she finally faced her monster. Let them follow what happened next. How the mighty beast with cat-like eyes had stalked her, then roared fire at her. How that fire became some sort of barrier against her father’s warriors and the monster who stole her away. Took her to his lair deep in the mountain and held her prisoner until she loved him as much as he loved her.
“Only he wasn’t a monster,” she said softly. “And I had never stopped loving him.”
“I had turned into something else,” he realized as she took them into a network of caves that ran deeper than the caves at her father’s castle. Just on the other side of them, to be specific. “I stayed as close to you as I could without being seen and transformed into...a dragon.”
“A beautiful butterfly,” she whispered, still remembering what she’d felt the first time his great beast lowered his head and looked at her. Told her, without words she was safe with him. Would always be safe. “Your undying love for me shed away Siobhán's darkness like a snake’s skin and transformed you into something that showed me you were okay. Something made of the fire that once disfigured you.” She choked back emotion. “Disfigurement I never saw as a flaw any more than your new visage.”
“So Aodh transformed because of the love he shared with you,” Shannon marveled, “because of your Unnamed One magic?”
“That’s right.” She still remembered what it had felt like to touch his cool scales for the first time. To look into her monster’s eyes and see her true love rather than a beast. “But it wouldn’t have been possible if he wasn’t who he was to begin with. If his heart wasn’t so good.”
“No doubt.” Madison cocked her head. “So what happened next? Did Siobhán find out he had stolen you away?”
“She did.” Constance kept biting back emotion. “All of our coven did.” She looked at Aodh’s dragon as he rose up in everyone’s mind in a monstrous cave that existed on the backside of what would become King’s Fall. How sad he was that they could never touch like they had before. Never share a kiss again. “After all, Aodh had become the first of his kind.”
“Not a shifter like he is now, though,” Liam realized. “His humanity had been ripped from him entirely.”
“Not entirely,” Riona corrected. “His heart still possessed humanity.”
“It did,” Constance confirmed. “And nothing was made clearer than when Siobhán and the Unnamed Ones came for me. When they used their power to draw him from his lair.”
“I see it,” Madison murmured as they stood on the pond’s shore at King’s Fall in a vision. “He’s so angry...so very angry...”
“Because no matter what Siobhán told them, she only meant my lass harm,” Aodh ground out, remembering what his dragon had felt. “She was going to hurt her. I was certain of it.”
