Chapter 26 Scarlett
CHAPTER 26
SCARLETT
S carlett took a deep breath before she stepped into the private training pits on the sprawling grounds of the Black Halls. They were located on cliffs that overlooked the sea to the south, and the sea air calmed her nerves some.
They were meeting with Talwyn, Azrael, and Ashtine this afternoon. She had awoken to Sorin demanding to know all the places Mikale had touched her while she’d been held captive, and he’d taken his time replacing those touches with his own and then some. When they had ?nally dressed, she had checked in on Cassius, who was still asleep with no change, and ate a small breakfast with the children in the great hall.
Eliza’s ire had ?nally started relenting towards the end of the day last night. There was still distrust there, but she had at least stopped snapping at Scarlett every time she spoke to her. Scarlett considered that a win.
Now, though … Now she needed to face the male working off a temper with the general in the sparring ring.
Cyrus had said all but a handful of words the entire afternoon and evening. He wouldn’t even look at Scarlett, and when Sorin had insisted they end things for the day, Cyrus had stood and left without a backward glance.
Eliza spotted her ?rst and quickly ended the match they were engaged in. Cyrus took one look at Scarlett, then crossed to the far side of the pit, drinking from a waterskin. Eliza made her way to Scarlett, her eyes taking in her training gear, the sword strapped to her back.
“You are here for him?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“I am,” Scarlett answered. “You and I are … okay?”
Eliza pushed her tongue to her cheek. “Not entirely, but we’re certainly better off than you currently are with him.”
“I will ?x it. With you. With him,” Scarlett said, her eyes darting to the Fire Court Second.
“You damn well better,” Eliza retorted, sheathing her sword before grabbing her things and stalking from the pit.
Scarlett slowly made her way over to Cyrus, who was now sitting on the bench, staring straight ahead. She lowered down beside him, her elbows coming to rest on her knees.
“Hi, Darling,” she said softly.
“Do not ‘hi, Darling’ me,” he hissed at her.
She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Let’s take this to the sparring ring then.”
His lip curled up as he ?nally met her gaze. “That would not be a good idea right now.”
“Well, you are clearly refusing to speak with me, so it appears that is our only other option at the moment,” Scarlett said.
“Or you could just fuck off,” Cyrus spat.
She rolled her eyes. “These godsdamn Fae temper tantrums.” She pushed to her feet. “Get your ass in the ring.”
“No,” Cyrus snarled.
“No?” she questioned, her head tilting slightly to the side.
“I know it is not a word you are accustomed to hearing,” he bit out. Scarlett gritted her teeth at the jab. “If you can verbally spar with me, you can certainly spar with me with a sword. Get in the fucking ring, Cyrus.”
“No, Scarlett,” he snarled back.
“Okay, have it your way,” she said with a wicked smirk, slowly beginning to back away from him, holding her hands up in a placating gesture.
His golden eyes narrowed on her, and when she was several feet back … she blasted him with ice cold water from both hands.
She was already racing for the ring when his bellow of rage reached her ears. A shield of thin shadows swirled around her, and she saw him stalking towards her, his hair and clothing already dry from the ?ames licking up and down his body. She sent some of her shadows slithering towards him as she taunted, “Show me your darkness, and I’ll show you mine.”
Cyrus’s lip curled up in a snarl, and he drew a sword from ?ames, the same wreathing down the blade. Scarlett pulled the Spirit Sword from her back, her white ?ames encompassing it.
“Are you going to hide behind your shadows, Darling ?”
“I do not hide from anything, asshole,” she bit back, her shadows dissipating.
Their blades met, and they were both thrown backwards from the blast that radiated from their power colliding. Neither of them were putting much effort into tampering down their magic.
Scarlett was back on her feet in an instant and saw Cyrus had done the same. They were slowly circling each other, and golden eyes locked on silver ones. “I am sorry, Cyrus,” Scarlett said, making sure she spoke loud enough for him to hear.
His response was lunging at her. She brought her blade up to meet his, and she leapt back from him, anticipating he would do the same, but he did not. He advanced, and Scarlett had to duck to avoid his next swing. She popped back up, spinning to the side, and caught his next strike at the last second, their magic ?aring and exploding from them again and sending her ?ying.
She managed to keep her grip on her sword and roll back to her feet, ?nding Cyrus standing a few feet away and waiting for her, already in an offensive position. Movement caught her eye, and she saw Sorin leaning against the stone archway of the entrance to the private pits, his ankles crossed. His arms were folded over his broad chest, but he made no move to intervene. He just jerked his chin in Cyrus’s direction, telling her to get back in there.
Scarlett gritted her teeth, prowling forward. Their blades met again.
And again. And again.
Flames and sparks and embers ?ew from every strike.
“Cyrus,” she said between breaths as he advanced, ?re ?aring in his golden irises. “I cannot go into a meeting with Talwyn with you not speaking to me. I am sorry. I am so fucking sorry. I will do whatever you require of me to prove it to you, but I need you, Cyrus. I need you as surely as I need Sorin. I need you as much as I need Cassius. You are my family—”
She wasn’t prepared for the power that he ampli?ed down his sword when it met her blade this time. She went ?ying through the air yet again, but this time she landed on her back, the air forced from her lungs. She coughed, trying to catch her breath, biting down on the groan of pain that ?ared up her spine. Her sword was a few feet away, but as she reached for it, a booted foot settled on her wrist. She looked up into Cyrus’s face, his own sword discarded. He didn’t put his full weight on her arm, but he made it clear he would not allow her to get her weapon.
She heard Sorin call to him in warning, and Cyrus ?ipped him off over his shoulder as he came closer and dropped into a crouch beside her head, his hands hanging loosely between his knees.
“I grew up on the streets. Not in Solembra, but in a port city on the west coast called Aelyndee. I actually hate being at the Black Halls, so close to the sea,” he said, his tone cold and grave. The little air Scarlett had been able to get down caught in her throat. She knew Cyrus had been an orphan, had grown up poor, but he had never spoken of it. Not to her, at least.
“My mother left me and my father as soon as I was weaned from her breast,” he continued. “My father was killed when he was trying to steal a loaf of bread from the market for me. I was two and hadn’t eaten in three days. My ?rst memories are of an aching belly, rife with hunger, and hiding in the back of my father’s cart while I heard him beg for mercy, saying he was just trying to feed his boy.”
Scarlett couldn’t move. She hardly dared to breathe. Cyrus was staring off into the distance, out at the sea.
“Vagrants would take me in from time to time when I was younger, but as I got older, by the age of six, no one wanted to be burdened with me. I worked at the docks when I could. I stole when I couldn’t. I was beaten up by other boys as often as I was doing the beating.
“One day, when I was eleven, I was on the run. I had stolen, of all fucking things, a loaf of bread and had almost gotten caught, just like my father had. Another boy whistled at me from a second-story window, and in seconds I had managed to climb a drainpipe and slip inside. I heard the market guards rush by a few seconds later. I shared that loaf of bread with that boy. His name was Merrik, and from that day on, we were inseparable. You can steal a lot more shit when you have someone causing a distraction, and we took turns being the decoy. You can steal even more when you learn to play on people’s weaknesses. You can take what you want when you learn that desperate people will do desperate things when shoved into a corner. We were a team. We found a place by the docks, and we made it our home. He was the ?rst friend I ever had. The ?rst person I ever loved. Eventually, he was my ?rst everything. He was the only family I needed.
“Until he decided he could handle a job on his own. It was seven years later. We were still young, even by mortal standards, but we’d both grown into our power, learned to wield our flames together. As best as we could without formal instruction, anyway. We had learned of a wealthy merchant from the capital who was going to be touring the town and had spent the last few days plotting out the best ways to rob him. But Merrik had gotten a tip that he was going to be arriving early, that very afternoon to be exact. He ended up trailing the carriage of the Fae merchant to the docks, and when the merchant was touring a ship, he made the last-second decision to rob him right then, rather than wait for me.
“I was out doing another job. It was a standard job. One we did every month, collecting on a few of our … investments. He knew where to ?nd me. He could have come and gotten me. We could have robbed that merchant blind together with very little effort, but he decided he didn’t have time to run it by me ?rst. He didn’t have time to come ?nd me, to make sure all the details were covered. He got caught. They shackled weights to his ankles and threw him from the end of the docks. After they beat him within an inch of his life, of course. Because we were nothing, after all. Just urchins that had run wild on the streets and now were thieves and criminals.”
Scarlett swallowed back the tears burning the back of her eyes, the pain in her spine completely forgotten.
“I learned of his fate from another boy later that night. I packed up our little home, leaving all of his things behind, and left Aelyndee that same night. I trusted no one. For years. Decades. Until an Ash Rider intercepted me pick-pocketing coin in a tavern in a no-name town at the base of the Fiera Mountains. I later learned he’d been watching me for several months. The Fire Court Royal had been receiving complaints from all over the Court of coin and other valuables mysteriously going missing. The Fire Prince had handed the task over to his Ash Rider. Rayner, being the nosy bastard that he is, had his various spies search into my past, when he ?gured out that I was the one single-handedly stealing from all these people as I wandered around the Court, never knowing a home. There wasn’t much to ?nd out about me, but what was there, he found it. I was introduced to Sorin, later Thia, and, you know the rest. But do you know what runs through my mind to this day, Scarlett?” he asked, ?nally bringing his eyes back to hers.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
“If Merrik had just come and found me, if he had waited, if he had run his plan by me, I would have seen the holes. We would have altered the plans and pocketed a fuck ton of coin. If he had just fucking said something , everything could have been different.
“I don’t live in the past. I don’t wallow in regrets or linger on what could have been. But the family that I have lost in my life, barring my mother, if you can even call her that, their losses could have all been avoided if someone had just fucking said something. If my father had set his pride aside, and explained how he needed food for his starving son to others on the streets, someone would have fed his child. If Merrik had waited, found me, and told me about his change of plans, we would have done the job together and survived. If Thia hadn’t been as stubborn as you are, if she would have used her godsdamn head and said something to Sorin instead of thinking she could handle a clan of Night Children largely on her own and agreeing to his insane plan, my soul would still be whole.
“I do not give the term ‘family’ to people lightly. Not after Merrik. In fact, only a handful of others have managed to obtain such a status in my life, but I gave it to you. The moment you looked up at me and said ‘hi’ when I called you Darling. And all I could think while you were gone, is that if you would have said something , everything could have been different.”
“I am sorry, Cyrus,” Scarlett whispered from where she lay in the dirt. Her heart was breaking.
So much loss. So much hurt.
He’d been alone, a broken little boy. He’d found love, then lost it. Then he’d been alone again, still just as broken. He’d wandered, looking for a home, until home had found him. Where he found so much love. Where he’d only survived the loss of his truest love because of the love of the rest of them.
“Do you know why I am the Fire Court Second, Scarlett?” he asked. When she shook her head again, he looked away, back out at the sea once more. “It is not because I am the most-skilled warrior or because I have some vast knowledge of politics. I have learned both of those skills, yes, but I am the Fire Court Second because I know what desperation does to a person. I know a des perate man will do whatever he must to feed his family. I know that a desperate general will make rash decisions when he is on the brink of losing a war. I know a desperate king will choose his throne over his people the vast majority of the time. I know wealthy businessmen will make illegal deals to keep their riches. I know people in poverty will do the same. I know how to think like the desperate and exploit those weaknesses, because that’s what I did. For decades. I can anticipate how people will react, and Sorin gave me a place to use those skills to help people rather than exploit them. Our Court works together— utilizing my shrewdness, Eliza’s battle strategies, Rayner’s gathered intelligence, and Sorin’s power and title.”
His eyes came back to hers, the ?ames in them having banked long ago while he had been speaking. “We are a family. We choose each other. We claim each other. We challenge each other, push each other, listen to each other. But it only works because we trust each other. And when we do not do those things? That is when we break. That is when unnecessary tragedy is allowed to bloom.”
“I trust you, Cyrus,” Scarlett whispered. “I do. I trust all of you.”
“Do you, Darling?” he asked, and Scarlett held in the sob of relief when he called her that. “Do you trust Sorin and Briar when they offer you advice on ruling? Do you trust Rayner to gather necessary information for you? Do you trust Eliza to devise battle plans? Do you trust me enough to strategize with me and include me in your insanely brilliant plans? We are not trying to tell you what to do, Scarlett. We simply want to be beside you while you do it. Because we are a family.”
Scarlett pushed herself up out of the dirt and ?ung her arms around Cyrus’s neck, his arms coming around her just as tightly.
“We were all alone at some point, Scarlett,” he said into her hair. “All of us have experienced being only able to depend on oneself. We have all had to learn to trust others, to let ourselves depend on others. But you are a queen. You need to get there faster than we did.”
She nodded into his neck. “I understand,” she whispered.
He held her tightly for another few moments and then he said, “Do we need to ?nd Beatrix to heal you after I threw you across the pit?”
She lurched back, ?nding a smirk on his lips. “I’m already heal ing, jackass. Perks of being Avonleyan, when my power is fully replenished.”
Cyrus pushed to his feet, helping Scarlett to her own. He retrieved her sword for her before going to gather his things. Sorin was already striding toward her. “You need to start training to ?ght with your magic, now that you can control it.”
“You think?” Scarlett drawled. “Cyrus just single-handedly kicked my ass.”
“Are you feeling okay? Are you feeling weak?” he asked, reaching to take the sword she’d sheathed and unbuckled from her back.
She sighed heavily. “Stop being so fussy.”
“Never, Love,” he said with a wink, pressing a quick kiss to her brow.
Cyrus joined them, and they walked back to the Halls, trekking up the stairs to the queen’s wing.
“I need to go give blood to Cassius,” Cyrus said when they were nearing the upper levels.
“Thank you for doing this for him, Cyrus,” Scarlett said.
Cyrus leaned down and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Welcome back, Darling.”
Scarlett and Sorin went to their chambers, and Scarlett bathed quickly before dressing in charcoal grey pants and a black tunic. They took a small lunch in their room, and before she knew it, it was time to go meet with Talwyn, Azrael, and Ashtine.