39. Chapter 39
Chapter thirty-nine
Cyrus gripped his temples and leaned his head in his hand with his elbows on the edge of his desk. The dogs whined at his feet. He dropped his hand to One’s head, but that did little to ease the weight within him.
If he’d have helped Orion find Vitalia sooner, would she still be alive? Would she have gone to Mercia? Perhaps Orion would have brought her back to Rael.
Or maybe he would have taken her to travel the world.
Free.
Happy.
Maybe he’d still be alive.
“It will take her some time to get back, and time to think about things,” Essandra said, breaking him from his thoughts. She sat in the wingback chair across from him.
“What?” Norah. “Oh, right.” He nodded. It had been three days since he’d met her in the valley and given her his blood, but she hadn’t yet used it.
And he’d hardly thought of it.
Coming back to Rael brought the overwhelming weight of loss. Not just Orion and Ryman, but old loss.
Kieve.
Manus.
Even Alexander.
The sadness, the anger, the shame that came with failure—he tried to push it down, but it plagued him. It threatened to consume him.
Cyrus reached his hand out for Essandra.
She stepped around the desk and over the dogs, and he pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face into her warmth.
She was still grieving too, not just the loss of Orion but also the loss of two members of her coven.
She hid it well. But he didn’t have the strength to hide anything from her.
He held her tightly until the wave of emotion passed, then he tried to focus his mind back on Norah.
“Do you think she’s told the Shadow King?” he asked.
“About you or about the blood?”
“Both.”
She drew soft fingers through his hair. “She would have had to have told him something, so undoubtedly he knows you exist. As for the blood—it depends on whether she intends to use it.”
Cyrus agreed. “If she does call me with it, it’ll mean she’s keeping it from him.”
“Unless he convinces her to use it against you.”
He shook his head. “No. He loves her. He doesn’t know what my blood does. He won’t let her use it.”
“What if he uses it again?”
“It will only be to his disadvantage. I’ll be able to look inside his mind again, as I did before.”
He froze when the pull hit him, and his eyes darted to Essandra.
Slowly, she stood. “What is it?” she asked.
His pulse quickened. “It’s her.”
“She’s calling you? Now?”
He nodded.
Essandra swallowed.
He pulled her hands to his lips. “Don’t worry,” he said softly, and he kissed them. “Will you stay with me?”
She nodded.
Cyrus closed his eyes and let his head drop.
He entered Norah’s mind quietly, not letting her know he was there yet.
He watched as she replayed the memories in her mind of when she’d thought he was Alexander.
The images were tattered and unclear as she fired through them—she was angry.
More than angry. He didn’t fault her for that.
There was a lot to overcome between them now.
He’d betrayed her trust. He needed to fix it. If he could.
Cyrus called a vision around them that he found the most peaceful—the cliffs overlooking the Aged Sea. Then he sat on a rock near the edge, looking out over the water, and waited for her.
When she finally came, he didn’t move.
“ This is my favorite place ,” he said, not turning as she approached.
“ You speak? ” she said coldly. She didn’t even try to hide her anger. “ Have you been able to speak this entire time? ”
It was a question he’d fully expected.
“ Why? ” she demanded. “ Why didn’t you? ”
“ I didn’t know his sound. Only his image.
” He plucked a long blade of grass from in front of him.
Unease pooled in his stomach. Now that he had to explain himself, the deception felt so much worse than it had before.
“ I didn’t know his voice ,” he said. “ Or his words. I couldn’t speak as he did. ”
She snorted. “ So, to keep up your charade, you said nothing? ”
He shot a look over his shoulder at her. “ I didn’t intend to deceive you. ”
“ Yes, you did ,” she snapped back. “ Otherwise, you would have told me exactly who you were. ”
He stood and turned to her. “ You asked me if I was Alexander, and I told you no. ”
“ You knew my context! I thought death had changed you! ”
“ I never lied to you. ”
“ That’s all you’ve done! Deception is a lie, whether you spoke the words directly or not. And you ”—she sucked in a breath—“ you made yourself him. You showed yourself as Alexander. ”
The worst lie of all.
She didn’t speak that last part, but he heard it nonetheless. And it shamed him, because it had hurt her. He’d taken advantage of her grief. Guilt weighted his chest.
He called forward a different view, and a sun-filled forest rose around them. Perhaps a change in scene would help soften the edges between them.
“ I’m sorry ,” he said. He genuinely was. Not that he expected acceptance of his apology. He could see she wasn’t prepared to give it.
“ You’re sorry you tried to kill me? ” she said flatly.
He shifted his weight back. She knew…
“ That’s right, I know. I know it was you who sent the assassins. It was you who spoke through them. ”
He had more to recover from than he’d thought. “ I’ve done many terrible things I should probably be sorry for. Many I’m not, but… that has become one. ”
“ Why did you do it? ” she asked.
To break the Shadow King from his alliance with Mercia—that was the strategic answer. But this was a conversation of truth, and the truth was… “ Because you were the wife of the Shadow King. And Alexander’s queen—I knew it would destroy him. ”
“ You did it to hurt Alexander? ”
“ I did it to hurt them both ,” he snapped in a sudden blaze of anger. He’d done it to take something from them, the way they had taken from him.
She shook her head, still not understanding. “ Why? ”
Her little heart of peace would never understand a heart of vengeance. He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. He hadn’t realized he’d darkened the forest around them, and he called back the sun.
“ You said you would explain everything ,” she told him.
He had said that.
“ Explain ,” she demanded.
He didn’t even know where to begin to get her to understand. He eyed her. “ Where do you want me to start? ”
Norah sat on one end of a fallen tree and crossed her arms. “ From the beginning ,” she said. “ What are you? ”
She’d already guessed it, but he supposed she wanted acknowledgment. He took a seat on the other end of the tree. What was he… He rubbed a hand over his face.
All right, then. From the beginning…
“ The Evil is what my mother called it. I didn’t know how I was able to do it, get inside her mind, but I could. Not Alexander’s, but I could hers. ”
Norah waited, not saying a word.
“ I would have dreams ,” he told her. “ Some were… terrible things. The worst was when I was scared. I just wanted to be near her, but she cast me out. I tried to show her. ”
He hadn’t meant to share that, but… it had come out anyway.
And then the memory came like it was yesterday: the falling snow, trees stripped of their leaves like bones of the earth.
“ I was so young ,” he said, “ but I remember. I remember how she took me away. And left me in the forest. ” The bite of winter seeped through his clothes, as it had all those years ago.
“ I ran after her as she rode away. I ran until my legs wouldn’t work and I couldn’t feel my face for the cold.
” It had stung. Even now, it stung. “ I fell, and I lay there, looking up at the tops of the trees, calling out for her. For my father. Calling out for Alexander. And that’s how I was found. ”
He’d never told that story. Not like that. All the years he’d pushed the memory out, covered it, tried to forget it. Now to speak it… He turned his head as his eyes stung.
She sat as stiff as stone, but he caught the subtle shift in her posture—the way her arms wrapped tighter around herself, the way her jaw tensed, as if she were biting back everything she wanted to scream.
Her voice, when it finally came, wasn’t the sharp blade it had been earlier. “ Who found you? ” she asked.
She said it like it was the end, but this story was just the beginning…
“ By fate or by luck, the man who came upon me had a wife. They had for a long time tried to conceive a child but couldn’t. And they raised me as their own. ”
Norah exhaled a breath of relief, and she gave a small smile.
How naive she was to this world.
“ No. That’s not what happened ,” he said. He wasn’t even sure why he’d said that. “ It’s what I imagined had happened many times over in my life. How… different… things would have been. But that’s not what happened. ”
Her smile fell, and he stood.
He’d show her.
The forest twisted under their feet, and he pulled the darkness over them.
“ I was found by a demon in the night ,” he said, “ and he took me to his hell. ”
Cages clanged down around them—the same cages he’d been held in.
Norah stifled a scream. Men surrounded them inside, half naked in the cold of winter, some dead, more dying.
They hadn’t eaten in days and were plagued by sickness and exposure.
A man sat hunched in a corner, his uncovered toes as black as death.
Cyrus had stared at those toes for six days before he’d made it to the docks where ships would carry him across the sea to a land forsaken by the gods.
“ This isn’t real ,” Norah whispered.
She had no idea.
“ Oh, it’s real ,” he told her. “ It’s very real. ”
He showed her the men dragged from the cages. The ones that had perished were piled high to be transported to a mass grave. The ones still alive were shuffled to holding pens along the docks.
And he showed her his captors.
Ink marked their skin, and dark wraps covered their faces.
She gasped.
Now she’d see.