40. Chapter 40
Chapter forty
Chaos.
That was all Cyrus felt now. He’d been too free with his blood, sharing it with his men who simply left it on their skin or who did a piss-poor job of wiping it off. And now his mind was always filled with chaos.
Cyrus focused on shutting everything out, save for one voice in particular—Norah’s. But he wasn’t sure she’d use the blood again. Something had happened, and he had to find out what.
He’d sent two birds—one he’d lost over the Aged Sea, but the other was still on its way. He held control of them longer now, most likely due to his growing power. He still didn’t know what this growing power meant, which was frustrating, but he just added it to his growing list of frustrations.
Another letter had arrived from Gregor. He added it to the stack that he hadn’t yet opened. It would only enrage him. It was probably a request for more legions, as if Cyrus hadn’t already given him a hundred thousand men.
Then there was the matter of war, which Gregor so openly declared.
There would be no avoiding it now, and in truth, Cyrus didn’t want to avoid it.
War was good—but it was imperative for him to be able to focus on the Shadowlands and make Gregor deal with Aleon, although Aleon could still cause Cyrus problems. They had an advantage in their new alliance with Osan, which boasted the world’s mightiest naval fleet and also gave Aleon spying eyes up and down the coast. No doubt they were reporting Cyrus’s every move.
It made the connection with Norah all the more important.
And now, as he sat at his desk, Cyrus wondered if a second letter in front of him that bore a yellow seal would be his sanity’s breaking point.
It was a letter from Serra. He groaned as he opened it and read the words from his viceroy, Vin Atari.
It was regarding disputes in land distribution.
These were the same challenges Rael had dealt with when its slaves had become citizens, and Vin should be able to make the proper judgments.
What was the point of having a viceroy if Cyrus had to deal with these issues himself?
He wouldn’t.
They could fucking fight it out.
He tossed the letter onto the desk and pinched the bridge of his nose. An ache was forming behind his eyes. He needed sleep, but there was no time for that.
Cyrus reached out his mind to check on the bird.
His pulse quickened. He could see the Mercian capital isle. Finally.
He pushed the bird through the mainland city and over the channel, up and around the turrets to the north side, where he found the queen’s balcony, and he willed the animal to the railing.
It was exhausted and weak, but he held it.
He waited until he saw movement in her chamber. And he waited longer.
He wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do; he couldn’t communicate through the bird, and it carried no blood and no message.
Still, he waited, looking to see if everything was all right, trying to surmise what had happened—
Suddenly, the bird startled as Norah practically ripped the doors open on the balcony.
She stared at him, her lips pursed into a thin line, anger flaming off her.
Did she know it was him?
She said something to the bird. To him. But he didn’t catch it. His heart beat faster. She definitely knew it was him.
And he didn’t need to hear her to read the next words on her lips.
“I need more blood,” she said.
More blood. She was asking him for more blood.
Cyrus released his hold on the bird, and it flew off into the sky—only for a moment, before dropping to the ground in exhaustion. But he didn’t care about the bird. He’d gotten what he needed, and he’d get Norah what she needed too.
Within three days, Cyrus had delivered another vial to her, and Norah called him through the blood bond as soon as she received it. She drew him to a dark tunnel in her mind, where she sat in a stairwell. He assumed this was where she was currently, somewhere under the castle.
“ An interesting place to call me to ,” he said when he arrived.
She gave an apologetic smile. “ We won’t be interrupted here. ” She didn’t seem to grasp the concept that one could mentally be somewhere completely different from where they were physically, and it amused him. But he didn’t care where she called him, just that she did call him.
He lit up the tunnel around them, and her eyes were on his face.
“ I take it that’s what happened before?
” he asked her. “ Why you left so suddenly? ” He covertly searched her memories, and he found exactly what had happened.
She’d been found and pulled from their conversation by the Shadow King, with the commander, who’d pried open her hand and wiped Cyrus’s blood away.
Fucking commander. He always seemed to be getting in the way. Cyrus should have killed that man when he’d had the chance.
“ I’m sorry about that ,” she told him, pulling his attention back. “ But there’s still so much more to talk about. I wanted to see you again. I hope you don’t mind. ”
“ I don’t mind. ” He didn’t mind at all. The previous worry he’d had about the break in their last conversation fell away. She didn’t hold the same anger she’d had when they last spoke. And more, she wanted to talk to him. This was good.
But now… he stumbled for where to start again. “ Will you walk with me? ”
She nodded.
Good. That was good.
He pulled light around them, weaving a vision of a forest path with vining flowers overhead. She liked flowers, from what he’d gathered, and they were easy to give to her.
“ Shall we? ” he asked, motioning toward the path. The invitation felt too formal on his lips, but he did want to show her some air of refinement beyond the harsh reality of their circumstance.
She picked up beside him. She walked close, as if at ease. He hoped she was at ease.
“ I’ve been thinking, a lot, just about everything ,” she said.
In a good way, he hoped. “ I have too ,” he replied.
She walked calmly, but the way she clasped her hands and dug a thumb into her palm betrayed her anxiousness. “ I still have questions. ”
“ Ask them. ” He’d answer whatever he could.
“ Why didn’t you try to kill me again? Why only come after me once? ”
“ I came twice, actually. ” As soon as the words came out, he cursed himself. Why did he have to say that?
She stopped. “ What? ”
He might as well tell her. “ I came once before, when you traveled to marry the king of Aleon. But by the time I arrived, someone had beaten me to you. ”
He dropped the vision of vining flowers and brought forward his own memory of when he’d first gone to the Mercian outer reaches. He showed her the remains of her army—how he’d found them—dead, with their throats slit.
Her breath caught and she grimaced. Cyrus didn’t shield her from the sight. This was what the Shadow King did. This was who he was. Her men had been executed on their knees, and the Shadow King had left them where they’d fallen.
“ It’s when I found this ,” he said, conjuring the image of her crown in his hand.
She gaped back at him. “ You had my crown all that time? ”
He nodded. “ Then came news of your marriage to the Shadow King ,” he continued. “ That… was a surprise. ”
He dropped his hand and let the image of the crown disappear.
“ It was never really about you, though, Norah. I wanted Alexander. I thought he’d accompany you to Aleon, and he didn’t.
But, when his blood touched your skin in the Shadowlands, I knew he was there with you. He was so close; I couldn’t not come. ”
“ So, it was never about me, but you came to kill me? ”
“ I came to kill the both of you. ” He couldn’t hold back now. Despite his mind screaming at him to soften his words, he couldn’t.
She shook her head. “ But why me? ”
To break Mercia’s alliance with the Shadowlands—that was the political answer.
But he was already on a warpath of truth and couldn’t stop himself now.
“Because Alexander was sworn to protect you, and I wanted to show him he had no power to do so. And you weren’t innocent—you so willingly allied yourself with a monster, the Shadow King.
” His words were tinged in venom. “ To turn a blind eye to everything he’s done, that makes you complicit! ”
She grew quiet, and her throat moved with a strained swallow.
“ And the Shadow King loved you ,” he added.
Silence sat heavy between them. “ Why didn’t you try again? ” she asked finally.
His anger simmered and cooled. He’d told himself it hadn’t been practical to try again, but, really, he’d learned more about her—most entertainingly from Gregor. “ Because… you weren’t as I’d expected ,” he confessed. “ And… I didn’t want to, after that. ”
Her eyes were piercing. They studied him. “ How did you get into Kharav? ” she asked.
“ You ask me my secrets? ” A warning flagged in the back of his mind. Perhaps he was being too honest with her. There was danger in sharing too much, and right now, he feared he might tell her whatever she wanted to know.
“ Do they really still need to be secrets? ” she asked.
She already knew about some of his power; she’d seen a little of the birds. He supposed revealing a little more wouldn’t hurt.
Cyrus pushed away the image of where she’d been captured on the way to Aleon, and he brought back the daylight. He projected a flock of birds overhead.
“ They show me ,” he said.
She followed his gaze up.
“ They show me the landscape ,” he explained, “ how to get through, if danger is near. They are my eyes. ”
“ You control them with your blood? ”
He smiled.
A line trenched between her brows. “ So, you just go around dripping blood on creatures, having them do your will? ”
He chuckled. “ Something like that. ”
Exactly like that, actually.
She frowned. “ Does it hurt? You have to… cut yourself? ”
It was a simple question, but a thoughtful one. “ It did ,” he said, “ but I’m used to it now. ” In fact, now he never even thought about it.
“ I’m sorry ,” she said, her voice soft. “ That still sounds terrible. ”
“ You don’t need to feel sorry for me. ” He didn’t need her pity. Pity was for people who opposed him. Cyrus pulled his dagger from his belt and drew the blade across his palm, opening the skin and spilling his blood to the floor.
She gasped.
Then he showed her how the wound closed, healing as if it had never existed.
She gaped at him. “ You can heal yourself? ”
He wished he could do that. “No. I have a healer. A true healer. ” He wasn’t sure why he was being so open. Perhaps he should have told her he could heal himself, but he didn’t want to lie to her. Not anymore.
“ Your witch? ” she asked.
“ No. Another, not a witch. ”
Her face was full of intrigue, her eyes full of questions. He liked her eager curiosity.
“ How do you control someone’s mind? ” she asked him.
Cyrus hesitated as the warnings flashed again inside his head. He shouldn’t talk about his weaknesses, his limits, but he liked this trust building between them. “ I can’t ,” he admitted. “ Humans are too intelligent, too strong. ”
“ But the men you sent to kill me— ”
The assassins.
“ They willingly yielded their minds to me. ”
“ And died for you ,” she added.
A pang of guilt ate at him. Orion had lost quite a few good men that day, but they’d been there of their own free will. “ They’re all willing to die for me, for our cause. ”
“ And what cause is that? ”
That was the question he didn’t dare answer.
She had a lot of patience for him right now, a lot of kindness, but he didn’t think he’d keep that kindness if he so blatantly shared his intention of killing her husband, someone she clearly loved.
He didn’t understand how someone like her, someone filled with compassion and light, could love a man like that. Surely, she couldn’t for long.
She sighed. “ I should return, before I’m missed ,” she said.
Cyrus didn’t want to make trouble for her. He wanted it to be easy for her to talk to him, easy to share her own secrets. He brought back the vision of a forest path with its woven greenery overhead and walked her back to the stairs where he’d first arrived.
“ I’d like to talk again ,” she said.
Good. “ I’d like that too. ”
She gave him a soft smile. “ Goodbye, Lucien. ”
He let her call him that. She’d been speaking to a person she thought was like herself—someone that maybe he used to be or could have been—a person filled with compassion and light and the desire to bring good to the world.
He didn’t correct her, but he was sad for how wrong she was.