6. Chapter 6
Chapter six
The dining room was quiet. Not everyone was there. Brant and Bash were in Pryam, and Jaem in Mercia, but still, it was too quiet. Cyrus could hear the dogs breathing under the table.
He put down his fork and let his eyes travel the hall. When he’d first moved into the palace, before Visa had pulled them together, he’d felt alone. Now, under the weight of everyone’s disappointment, he felt alone again.
Cyrus took a sip of mead from his chalice. “It had to be done,” he said, finally breaking the silence. He wanted this to be over; he needed them to be able to move past the incident with the nobles.
“I think that’s a matter of opinion,” Kord said.
What wasn’t a matter of opinion was that he couldn’t go back and change things now. Not that he would if he could. “What’s done is done,” he said. “And it’s over.”
“And what if it’s not?” Kord cut back. “What if that wasn’t all of them? What if there are more nobles?”
Cyrus shrugged with a feigned frown. “Ask them if they want to meet to talk.”
Kord dropped his fork onto his plate and pushed back in his chair.
Apparently, Cyrus’s humor wasn’t appreciated.
Kord’s eyes were cutting. “What if we’d lost another man? What if Everan had taken a blade?”
Cyrus snorted. “A Raelean noble wouldn’t have been able to take Everan down.”
“Accidents happen, mistakes happen. What about our men who weren’t gold-tier fighters? What about Ram and Sergen?” His voice grew louder with each word. “What about Hephain?”
“Kord,” Everan warned.
“No!” Kord snapped at him. “They had upward of a hundred men. We came with thirty.” He shot his icy gaze back to Cyrus. “If your plan all along was a fight, we should have brought more men! It’s a gods-damned fucking miracle we all walked away from that!”
“That’s enough,” Everan said firmly, putting a hand on the table.
“You know it’s true,” Kord told him.
“Calm down,” Everan said. “Eat.”
“I’ve lost my appetite.” He shoved himself up from the table but stood a moment as he turned his angry eyes back on Cyrus. “When you deal in blood, you pay in blood.” Then he turned and strode from the dining hall.
Hephain sighed, setting his fork down, and moved to rise and go after him.
“I’ll go,” Cyrus said, stopping him. He stood, emptied his chalice of the rest of the mead, then followed after Kord.
He wasn’t offended at Kord’s anger, maybe because he knew he deserved it. Maybe because he’d come to accept that there would be people who wouldn’t understand him and what he needed to do. He’d just never thought Kord would be one of those people.
His friend wasn’t in the practice field, leaving one other place for him to most likely be—where Cyrus did find him—on the outdoor armory pad, polishing his vambraces, the only armor Kord wore. Polishing armor was pointless, but it was a good activity to do while mad.
Cyrus sat on the low work stool beside him. “I know you’re angry with me,” he said. Sometimes stating the obvious was the best way to start a conversation.
Kord scooped more polishing paste onto his rag and started working it into the metal. “I’m angry with myself,” he replied. “I’ve known you for ten years, Cyrus. I don’t know why I expected that meeting with the nobles to go any differently.”
“Why do you care so much about the nobles?”
“It’s not just the nobles. It’s fucking everything. You’re relentless.”
Cyrus watched him work the paste across the metal, applying pressure, building the heat of friction—heat made with anger. That was why polishing was an excellent task to do when mad.
“I know you hope for a different life,” Cyrus said quietly.
Kord paused and looked up at him. “You don’t?”
He never thought about a different life, let alone hoped for one. “I can’t,” he said. “This is who I am. It will be who I am until I kill my brother. Until I kill the Shadow King.”
“And what if you never do?”
He didn’t say the answer they both knew to be true—that he’d die trying.
Kord dropped his rag in the caddy and set down the armor piece. “I was never scared before.”
Cyrus didn’t know what to say to that.
“In the arena,” Kord continued, “I accepted my fate and my life. I wasn’t afraid to die, because I thought a bloodsport fighter was all I’d ever be.
I had nothing to lose. But now, now that the arena’s gone, now that there’s a life to live, for the first time— I’m scared.
To have come this far…” He sighed. “It’s not that I’m afraid to die, but I’m afraid to die without having lived.
” His face was full of sorrow. “I want this to stop. There’s so much more that I dream for, but right now, I just want this to stop. ”
Cyrus understood, but… “I can’t,” he whispered.
Kord nodded. “I know.”
And then what else could Cyrus say? Where did this leave them? He tried to swallow the hard lump forming in his throat. What else could he do?
There was only one thing—
“If you want to go, you have my blessing,” Cyrus told him.
Kord’s mouth opened. He stood.
Cyrus stood too.
His friend didn’t answer, only stared at him in disbelief.
Cyrus reached out and hooked an affectionate hand around the nape of Kord’s neck. “My blessing and my love,” he added. “I want you to be happy, brother. And if you need to leave to do that, then you can.”
Kord’s eyes teared.
Cyrus gripped his shoulder tightly.
His friend looked to the ground, then back up at Cyrus. “There are people I love here.”
Cyrus nodded.
“But I can’t stay,” he added.
His words cut. Cyrus stared at him. He’d meant it when he’d offered; he just hadn’t expected Kord to accept. He nodded again as his heart broke.