Chapter 37 Meryn
MERYN
We ride hard. My concern for Noemi is a great distraction from the ache between my legs.
The half hour’s journey Stark and I took from the city lasts maybe five minutes on the way back—and costs the city of Brightbane several low-hanging structures and a pen of pigs that was set loose as we barreled straight through everything in our path.
By the time we’re past the gates and waved inside by the guards, Anassa is panting and her muscles are shaking from the prolonged full-on sprint. I jump from her back, checking in with her as I race up the pale stone steps of the palace.
“Just get to the girl,” she says.
Stark runs past me and slams the doors open. I march through, out of breath and hand on my dagger’s hilt, eyes scanning the hall before me. My father whirls around, startled by our sudden entrance.
Fredrich’s eyes widen when he sees me, and he rushes toward us.
“Where’s—?”
“Saela is safe in her rooms.” My surprise that he knew the question before I asked it stuns me into silence, and I let him take my arm and guide me down the hall at a clipped pace. “I’ll return to her once I’ve taken you to them.”
Noemi’s agony still tears through the bond, but it’s now been joined by Venna’s alarm and anger. Shouts echo through the high halls as we draw closer. Dread sinks into my bones.
“Where are we going?”
“The king’s personal chambers,” my father replies.
I curse inwardly and reach for Stark for some semblance of calm. His mind meets mine, and he soothes me as best as he’s able while feeling halfway murderous himself. Even then, Noemi’s emotions are devastatingly violent, gouging deep into the bone inside my skull.
There’s a shriek ahead, and I lurch into a sprint again. Then comes what sounds like furniture crashing and armor scraping against stone.
I turn the corner and stop dead in my tracks.
To think, I left with Stark precisely to avoid causing a diplomatic crisis.
It’s chaos. Royal guards are restraining Noemi, who fights against them. She has a deep scrape over her brow that’s pouring blood down the side of her pale face.
Venna is rifting, disappearing and reappearing in different places around the room. Each time she steps out of the darkness, the guards startle and whirl, their faces taut with concentration as they try to track her movements.
At the center of it all is Lucien. He stands in a casual, lazy lean against the ornately carved entrance to his chambers. He looks as if he’s posing for a portrait, not like he’s watching diplomatic relations break down before his eyes.
And he’s bleeding. Everywhere.
The entire front of his silk robe—egregiously drawn open at his chest—is dyed scarlet with it. There’s a deep wound at his shoulder, already healing but clearly serious.
His expression as he watches Noemi struggle is strange. The top half of his face looks amused, like a cat toying with a mouse. The bottom half is twisted with what looks like cold anger.
I immediately push a deafening order through the bond. “Stand down.”
Noemi and Venna freeze in place, bodies locking up but faces still communicating obvious anger. There will be time to talk through all this—afterward.
I step forward. Lucien’s guards part before me. The king watches as Stark and I approach. He clearly takes in the ruined state of my dress and the way Stark’s shirt hangs open from where I tore it off him.
“Sorry if we interrupted something,” he drawls.
“Tell me what happened,” I demand, ignoring him.
Multiple voices begin speaking at once. Lucien raises his hand, and they’re strangled silent.
“It would seem that this one”—he gestures to Noemi—“somehow tracked my movements and gained access to my private chambers, then proceeded to lie in wait with a dagger coated in poison.”
He pauses to just barely curl his upper lip at her before his gaze cuts back to me.
“When I entered my bedroom, she ambushed me and managed to wound me deeply before my guards responded to the commotion. I assume then you informed that one”—he gestures at Venna—“that one of your own was in grave peril, because she came running to point more weapons at me. And thus, the very standoff you see before you.”
My gaze flicks to Venna, who nods.
Noemi, still restrained but no longer struggling, spits out words as if they’re poisonous. “You deserve to die.”
I am shocked by how wild she appears. Since the moment we were first introduced, Noemi has only ever given off a sense of calm, purposeful elegance. Whoever that woman was, she’s gone, replaced by whatever has been living quietly underneath the surface this whole time.
“I refuse to stand by and watch him parade women around like cattle!” she shouts, wrenching in the guards’ grip. “Feeding off them as if they’re nothing but meat!”
Her gaze darts to me and then to Stark. He moves purposefully toward her, hands up as if he were facing a feral direwolf.
Noemi sucks in a quick breath, and she doesn’t use it to yell again. But the rushed exhale of her words carries so much emotion that she may as well be screaming.
“How can you seriously consider an alliance with evil, perverted beasts who treat humans like this?”
A cool chuckle slips between Lucien’s lips. He drags a fingertip through his own blood where it’s drying on his skin, a soft smile emerging.
“You thought you could kill me? A thousand-year-old Siphon king who has survived five centuries of assassination attempts by much more formidable opponents, including my own brother?” He scoffs and examines the blood on his fingers, rubbing it with his thumb.
“It’s insanity. You are truly lucky I found your attack more entertaining than threatening or you would already be dead. ”
A pulse of rage explodes from Noemi, and Stark’s fury is white-hot in my mind. I lock it out of my consciousness, sending up my mental barriers for the first time tonight. I need all my focus on Lucien. Right now, there’s genuine anger behind his amusement.
He either can’t hide it entirely or doesn’t feel the need to.
“What is she playing at?” I ask Stark along the bond. “You know her best. Explain to me, seriously—why is she jeopardizing the entire reason we’re here?”
“You need to ask her yourself,” he responds, eyes meeting mine from where he stands, still close to Noemi but not instigating anything with the guards who restrain her.
His mind, brushing mine, is full of regret and guilt.
“Just… trust that she has her reasons for acting this way,” he continues. “It doesn’t excuse it. I blame myself for this; I should’ve considered the position we were putting her in by bringing her here.”
What does that mean?!
When Lucien’s eyes are on me again, he straightens and stands at his full height for the first time since I arrived.
His tone sharpens, losing its rolling, sigh-like quality entirely.
“This is no way for guests to treat their host, especially when that host is considering a historic alliance that could end centuries of war.”
Considering. It’s a veiled threat. A warning that he’s still powerful enough to snatch peace away and unleash his army on us without a Phylax in sight to protect our front lines.
Well, there’s one Phylax in sight, I guess. Assuming she survives the next ten minutes.
Venna, Stark, and I exchange glances, each looking to the other to see if anyone has some semblance of a plan.
Before I have time to open communication for the three of us mentally, Lucien flicks his hand, and his guards start to move. Two start to march Noemi away, and the rest disband to take up stations along the hall.
“Lucien,” I snap.
He raises an annoyed brow at me.
“Let me speak to her in private,” I say. After a long moment, I tack on, “Please.”
I’m not in the habit of begging for basic courtesies, but I would like to avoid Noemi losing her life on this trip.
“Fine,” he says with a sigh. He points to a small room off the entrance area to his chambers. “You can take my office. The guards will wait outside.”
Noemi rips free from the hold on her arms, her green eyes still blazing as she stomps into the office, like she isn’t the one in the wrong. I follow her, glancing back at Stark. His concern is written all over his face. He doesn’t want her hurt, either, but he knows she really fucked up.
Noemi immediately goes to a slouchy leather armchair and throws herself into it, then buries her face in her hands. Her shimmering red hair falls around her in protective waves. She starts to weep.
I close the door quietly behind us and move closer to her… but not too close, in case she decides she hasn’t stabbed enough monarchs tonight.
“What’s going on?” I ask gently.
She looks up, her face blotchy and streaked with tears. “I’m sorry, Meryn—I’m so sorry. I saw him with that woman tonight, and maybe she agreed to be there, I don’t know, but something about it felt so nonconsensual. I snapped.”
I nod to encourage her to keep going, but I also know what she means.
The humans in this country don’t appear to have much of a choice.
Those in charge make the laws, and those laws are amenable to Siphons, with little regard to how a human might feel.
If a Siphon can drink your blood as payment of debts owed or as a prize after winning an unfair fighting match… how free are these people, really?
Sure, it looks like the humans enjoy the sensation of… being fed upon, as much as the thought makes me sick. But I know all too well that pleasure and coercion can go hand in hand.
Bright blue eyes flash in my mind at the thought, and I shiver.
Noemi’s cheeks flush with a bit of color—which, of course, only makes her prettier—and she clasps her hands tightly in her lap. “You need to know something. During my time in the Bonding Trials, I was King Cyril’s chosen companion.” The word comes out bitter, filled with disgust.
No. My stomach drops to my feet.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, being his companion could be sort of a competition between some of the women. There was a level of status involved in being chosen. However, I was not given a choice.”
She looks away from me now, her eyes getting glassy again. Noemi worries her bottom lip between her teeth for a long moment before continuing.
“My father, Lord Eisenfall, arranged my selection with the king—years before my Trials, in fact. Cyril saw me once in person when I was twelve and told my father it would be beneficial to his fiefdom if I was… encouraged… to vie for his attention during the Trials when I was of age.” She glances back at me, and the steel has returned.
“There were zero conversations about feelings or consent. I entered the Trials, newly eighteen and accepting of my fate. If I did not perform to Cyril’s expectations, my father would be displeased. ”
My stomach is a twisting, writhing mess, and I want to cry now, too—for the girl she was, who had to endure that.
For the woman she is now, who lives with it still.
“My father controls an entire fiefdom, Meryn. A large one. You know as well as I do that all the power we have from being Bonded means nothing when a noble lord snaps his fingers. And I—”
She cuts herself off, looks to her feet, and swallows. Then she looks back up, her face anguished. “He’s awful, I know, but he’s my father. Some fucked-up part of me just wants to make him happy.”
I reach out to her, grab her hand in mine. We just sit there in silence for a moment.
Noemi’s expression hardens as if she’s turning herself into a shield. She slowly disentangles her hand from mine and turns it into a fist. “I don’t want any other women to go through what I went through.”
“I know,” I tell her. “I feel the same way.”
My mind drifts once again to Killian, of what happened between us. It doesn’t compare with the grooming and rape Noemi experienced.
After all, I thought I was consenting at the time.
But it was coercion. Our entire relationship—a relationship built on lies and manipulation—violated my autonomy. For the first time, I’m finally admitting that to myself. My eyes burn, and I swallow the heat down.
Our abuser is the same person now. Alistair was in Cyril, and now he’s in Killian.
“We’re going to get him, Noemi,” I tell her, my voice as sharp as a dagger.
She nods, and I can tell she knows we’re not talking about Lucien.
“We’re going to make him pay. We’re going to make the right person pay for what he’s done.
But we’re not going to be able to do that without Lucien’s support. ”
Her lips press into a thin line, and then she says, “I know. What do I do? I fucked up so badly.”
“You need to apologize. Sincerely,” I tell her, and she lets out a sound of distress. “I know, he’s fucking insufferable. He’s going to draw this out as much as possible. It’s the only way, though.”
She nods. “Okay. Thank you.”
I turn to leave, to take her back out to him, and she says, “Meryn?”
There’s a small smile on her lips when I turn back around. “You and Stark. I’m glad.”
I startle. “I—what? You are? How did you—”
“Please,” she sniffs. “I’ve known him since he was a boy. He can’t hide things from me.”
I pause, hesitant. I know Stark isn’t romantically interested in Noemi, but I’m still not sure where she stands. “And you… you’re sure it’s fine? I mean, you weren’t, you never, um…”
She interprets my awkward stammering and waves a hand, laughing. “Yuck, no. It’s not like that between us. We kissed one time as teenagers and were both thoroughly repulsed off it for good. It was like licking a shoe. I like women, actually.”
Wow.
Obsessing over their relationship has taken up so much mental space, and I could’ve just asked her.
“Guess you were right,” I admit begrudgingly to Anassa.
“You have learned wisdom about some things and not others,” Anassa helpfully responds.
“And I suppose you absolutely could not have told me at any point that they weren’t interested in each other? Too much idle human gossip for you?”
Anassa lets me feel her amusement. “Oh, no, I just enjoyed watching you ruminate in circles. It was endearingly unreasonable.”
Mangy bitch.
I offer Noemi my hand, and we both drop our smiles, remembering that there’s a Siphon king outside that door who likely wants Noemi’s head for what she’s done.
As if in answer to our thoughts, there’s a banging at the door.
“Time’s up,” comes Lucien’s voice, sing-song yet somehow also deadly.
Hopefully, he’ll be open to a solution. Because I’m not going to let Noemi be killed for what she did, no matter how grievous an error it was.
If Lucien wants Noemi dead, he’s going to have to go through me first.