13. Chapter 13 #2
This wasn’t good news. In fact, it was the absolute worst. “ So, she’s in the Shadowlands? ”
“ It would appear so. ” He waited for a moment, then asked, “ Do you want me to go to the Shadowlands, see what else I can find? ”
“ No ,” Cyrus said. “ It’s not safe for you there. ”
“ I can keep a low profile. ”
“ I said no ,” he said sharply. A little too sharply. Cyrus cursed and shook his head. “ I’m sorry. You’ve done well, and I’m grateful. This just isn’t the news I’d hoped for. ”
“ That’s all right ,” Jaem told him. “ Do you want me to head back? ”
He sighed as he raked a hand over his face. “ Yeah. Come on back. ”
Cyrus lumbered down the hall, but he couldn’t go back to his chamber. Not yet. He turned and made his way through the east wing and beat on the ironwood door at the end. It swung open.
Orion stared back at him. When he saw Cyrus, he rocked back on his heel. “No other assassins have come. My men have been—”
“That’s not why I’m here.” Cyrus pushed by him and stepped into the room. He let out a long breath. “I think Vitalia is in the Shadowlands.”
Orion’s face twisted, and his nostrils flared. He shook his head. “No. No, she can’t be.”
“Was she a dancer?” he asked.
Orion paled.
“Jaem said Gregor was gifted a green-eyed dancer from Elam. But he lost her in a bet with the Shadow King.”
Orion turned from him, unsteady. He gripped the back of the chair by a small side table and leaned his weight against it. “She’s in the Shadowlands?” His voice was barely more than a whisper. “We were just there. I didn’t even know.”
“Even if you had, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything.” He likely wouldn’t have made it out at all.
Orion straightened. “I have to go back.”
“It’s too great a risk.” Especially when Orion was driven by desperation.
He shook his head. “I don’t care.”
Cyrus caught him. “She might already be free. Gregor told me the Mercian queen has been freeing slaves there. Vitalia could be one of them, perhaps she escaped and is on her way here to Rael.”
“And if she’s not? If the Shadow King still has her?”
“We’ll be moving against him soon.”
“When?”
“ Soon. The Shadowlands will fall. We’ll find her.”
The sun peeked above the horizon before Cyrus could drift to sleep.
He gave up and rose and washed his face in the water basin.
He’d promised Miriel he’d take her around today.
And it wasn’t just showing her around. Like Essandra had said, Miriel wanted to spend time with him, and he was happy to do so.
He’d escort her to breakfast, then show her the capital after.
Cyrus rapped on her door.
A shuffle sounded inside, and he waited. He was actually looking forward to taking her around. Rael was very different from Pryam in its style and culture. She’d enjoy seeing new things.
She was taking longer than he expected, and he knocked again. Another shuffle came.
“Miriel?” he called.
Another shuffle. Cold rippled through him.
Something didn’t feel right.
Cyrus tried the door, but it was locked. “Miriel?”
Then came a small crash—something falling to the floor.
Worry lit through him, and he threw himself against the door, bursting into the room.
Miriel yelped as she stood at the end of the bed, clutching a sheet around her. “Cyrus!” she gasped.
He scanned the empty room, combing every corner with his hand on the hilt of his sword. “What’s going on in here? Are you all right?”
“Nothing! And yes. I’m just… getting dressed.” Her breaths were short and clipped as she nodded. “Perfectly all right. Never better. Great, actually.”
He eyed her. Something was off.
She clutched the sheet nervously. “I-I would like to get some clothes on, if that’s okay. Should I find you in the dining hall for breakfast?”
He looked back over the room. His eyes stopped on the lamp that had fallen off the small side table beside the bed—the side table relatively far from her right now.
A sinking suspicion weighted his stomach.
He grabbed her arm.
“Cyrus!” she cried, and the illusion fell.
Bash stood by the side table, stripped naked but holding his leather breeches as though he were about to put them on.
Fire lit Cyrus from the inside.
Bash forgot about the leathers and just clenched them in his hands as he backed against the wall. “Cyrus,” he said nervously. He held up a hand. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Then what is it?” Cyrus snarled.
Bash glanced at Miriel, then nervously back to Cyrus. “Okay, maybe it’s a little of what it looks like. But I haven’t touched her, I swear—”
Cyrus bared his teeth and lunged at him.
Bash jumped onto the bed, fled across it, and off the other end to the door.
“Cyrus! Stop!” Miriel cried as she grabbed him.
But Cyrus was too caught in the rage of the moment. He ripped free and tore down the hall after Bash.
“Bash!” he thundered as he chased him down the side hall and into the mainway.
The fighter darted down another side hall but found it a dead end with only two closed doors that led to the dining room.
Cyrus pulled his sword as he stormed toward him. “I’m going to cut off your fucking balls.”
Bash winced. “I’d really like to keep them.”
Cyrus barreled forward, and Bash jumped—faster than Cyrus had ever seen him move—and bolted into the dining room.
Visa and Essandra were there, and they both gasped with a jerk.
Bash, still clutching his leathers, was out of escape options, and he put the table between them.
Cyrus pointed his sword at him. “How could you do this? She’s a child !”
“She’s only a year younger than I am!”
Cyrus paused. He was lying. “You’re not… sixteen…” Or whatever the fuck age was a year older than Miriel.
Bash’s brow creased. “How old do you think she is?”
“I’m eighteen, thank you very much,” Miriel shouted as she burst in through the doors behind Cyrus in a misbuttoned robe with her hair disheveled.
“You are not!” he snapped back at her.
“I am! And he’s nineteen!”
Cyrus gaped at Bash, a man taller and larger than himself. “He is not!”
“I am, actually,” Bash said.
Cyrus stared at him. He didn’t believe that. Bash was a man, and a big one at that. But his eyes caught on the boyishness of his face, and he thought about the innocence he so often saw in him—the innocence of youth.
But Bash wasn’t innocent anymore. Cyrus glared at him. Boy or not… He pointed his sword at him again. “I put you in charge of her safety.”
“And I’ve seen to it,” Bash said quickly. “With my life. I would never let anything happen to her.”
“You took advantage!” Cyrus thundered.
“I love her!”
“It’s not his fault!” Miriel shouted. “I seduced him!”
“You are not seductive,” Cyrus snapped at her.
She gasped in offense.
Essandra stepped forward. “Cyrus,” she said cautiously as she reached out and touched his arm.
But Cyrus couldn’t take his eyes off Bash. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Or we can just take a break,” she said, “and talk about this when we’ve all calmed down.”
“I am calm.”
Essandra pushed him back from the table, putting herself between them. “Bash, go get some clothes on,” she said over her shoulder.
Bash sidled around the table cautiously, not taking his eyes from Cyrus as Essandra clutched him. Cyrus knew she would use power if she had to.
She might have to.
Bash quickly disappeared.
Essandra looked at Miriel. “You too. Go get dressed.”
“And don’t even think about speaking to him,” Cyrus told her.
“You can’t tell me what to do!” she snapped back. “I’m not your subject!”
“Bash is, and I will string him up in the fucking courtyard!” he thundered.
Her eyes widened, and she swallowed. Then she pursed her lips and whirled around with a huff, storming from the room.
“You need to cool down,” Essandra told him. “Go… Go for a walk outside.”
“It’s fucking hot out there.”
“It’s cooler than you. Go. Now. ”
Essandra followed him to the side doors, ensuring that he left, and he struck out toward the sparring field. Heat fumed off him.
He’d left Bash in Pryam to protect Miriel, not take advantage of her. He’d trusted him.
And Bash wasn’t nineteen. That would mean he’d have been eighteen when Cyrus had toppled Rael. Seventeen in the arena. Sixteen when Cyrus had taken him under his wing. No. That couldn’t be right. But if it was…
If he’d known Bash was younger, he would have tried to protect him from the horrors a little longer.
Regardless, Cyrus expected more when it came to Miriel. The anger returned. He pulled a spear from the weapons hold and heaved it down the field, launching it long. It struck the ground on the far side.
“Not bad,” Kord called, coming up behind him.
Cyrus pulled another spear and sent it following the same trajectory. It landed within a hand’s length of the first.
“I hear it’s been an interesting morning,” Kord said.
Cyrus paused. “Did you know Bash is only nineteen?” He turned for another spear, but Kord held one for him. He took it.
“I didn’t. He does look older.”
Cyrus hurled the spear Kord had just handed him, and it buried itself between the first two. Then he stopped. “That means he was just a boy in the arena. I gave him heavy roles. I put the responsibilities of a man on him, and he was just a boy.”
“He’s not a boy anymore. And Miriel’s not a little girl.”
“She’s enough of a girl. And she’s a queen. He’s… a soldier.”
“So?” Kord shrugged his shoulders. “What does that matter? Is that not what we fought for? To make our own life, to forge our own path? To be the masters of our own destiny?”
He wasn’t wrong.
“And we’re making history,” Kord continued. “We should all be thinking about how our legacy will live on, you included. I know you dismiss it, but you should find a wife, have sons who will carry your name and be heirs to your throne. You’re building something great here—we all are.”
Cyrus didn’t care about a legacy. And he didn’t care about heirs to the throne.
Kord smiled. “Can I show you something?”
Cyrus quirked a brow.
His friend pulled a folded parchment from his pocket. “This is just a draft, but you can see the idea.”
Cyrus unfolded it, and he froze as he saw the drawing of a sigil crest.
“Orion helped me come up with it,” Kord told him.
“I’ve just been thinking—our legacy is what still lives after we’re gone.
Before, I was a slave, a bloodsport fighter, a nobody.
I knew that when I died in the arena, it would be as if I’d never even lived.
But now, my name will be written in history.
My father’s name. I’ll have sons and it will be their name.
It will be a name said with respect. That’s what I’m building now.
Bash can build his name too. He can be worthy of a queen. ”
Cyrus stared at him, the realization sinking in.
Kord. It was Kord .
Kord’s brows drew together. “What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said quickly.
“Let him live his life, Cyrus.” He took his parchment, folding it, and returned it to his pocket. Then he handed Cyrus another spear before turning and walking back to the castle.