Chapter Thirteen
“There you are!”
Cyrus jerked awake. The movement jarred and his hand went to his abdomen with a groan. Maximillian, standing above him, immediately
dropped to a concerned crouch.
Damn it.
He’d planned to be ready for Maximillian’s return. Stony-faced, prepared for confrontation. But he’d been so tired. The house
on the hill was deserted, as Balthazar had said it would be. Nobody would bother to look for an errant wrongdoer among Maximillian’s
roses. Cyrus had let the horse loose in an orchard of fig trees behind the house and scoped out the rest: the front of the
building looking out over the lawn, the enormous wooden gate at the back flanked on each side by thick, dense hedges. On any
other day, Cyrus would have carved his own entrance through those hedges with ease. But his magic remained stubbornly dormant
just as it had in the gaol, resistant now to any attempt to call it.
Sitting down in the orchard had been pleasant; a moment of peace.
Most of the spring fruit had gone unharvested, falling shrivelled and overripe to the ground, but a fresh crop was purpling overhead.
A family of sprites, their wings a shade darker than the pale lilac of his own nuisances, had clustered around a ripe fig hanging from a nearby branch.
They startled when they saw Cyrus, flitting back to their tree, but they soon ventured out again.
He watched through half-open eyes as minuscule fingers prodded the fig to test it.
One sprite unsheathed the tiny elbow barb they used for digging out tree sap and slit the fruit open.
The pleased buzzing as they fed was a familiar backdrop.
He had only intended to rest—just close his eyes for a minute or two. But he’d fallen asleep in the orchard up on the hill
whilst Heliarth panicked below.
Now Maximillian was here, knelt before him, blue eyes full of worry as he looked Cyrus over. As though he wasn’t the one directly responsible for Cyrus’s predicament in the first place.
Outrage stirred. Rather than any of the well-considered and suitably confrontational openings he had mulled over in the shade
of the tree, what came out was a petulant:
“You fucking stabbed me.”
Maximillian blinked. Whatever he had been expecting, that was not it. “I know. I—”
“Dick,” said Cyrus.
Maximillian opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked wrong-footed. Good. “Yeah. I’ll take that one.”
“Fucking dick,” Cyrus muttered, for extra emphasis.
The look of remorse that had been spreading across Maximillian’s features halted. The dimple (stupid dimple, Cyrus reminded himself; it was a stupid dimple) twitched in the face of Cyrus’s unexpected reaction.
Maximillian reached for him. Annoyed, Cyrus pulled back. He bit back a curse as the motion jarred his injury again. The almost-smile
dropped immediately from Maximillian’s face, replaced by concern. His hand wavered in the space between them, uncharacteristically
hesitant.
“I’ll help you inside, at least.”
Cyrus shrugged, then swiftly regretted it. He couldn’t hide his wince, and he let his head thump back against the tree as
he breathed through the wave of pain. Maximillian’s frown became more pronounced, his hand extending again and settling on
Cyrus’s elbow with a gentleness that made him grind his teeth.
“Let me help,” Maximillian said softly.
Seconds dragged by. Then Cyrus lifted his head and climbed slowly to his feet. Maximillian’s hand moved, fingers ghosting
over the small of his back. Cyrus did not push him away, though he was intensely aware of the warmth of the champion’s touch.
Maximillian guided him through the large wooden gate to a gravel path passing through sculpted gardens. A pond gurgled in
one corner beneath an ancient oak. Flower beds and borders split the garden into segments, but they had been neglected of
late, weeds and wildflowers taking over with their usual determination. Usually, Cyrus would recognise them through instinct
alone. But his magic sulked in his bones, unreachable.
They passed through an entrance hall, chilly from disuse despite the warm sun outside.
Pale marble glinted underfoot, and an ornate mahogany staircase spiralled to the higher floors.
He caught glimpses of stylishly dressed rooms swathed in luxurious green silks and dotted with antiques that looked like they cost more than the entire town of Ranragh put together, delicate vases and wooden chests with gleaming golden handles and enormous paintings of sunny sea views with bright blue skies.
On the first floor Maximillian opened a door to a large, light-filled room with a balcony taking up almost an entire wall
and floaty muslin drapes stirring in the breeze. He helped Cyrus inside with a care that bordered on irritating. Cyrus told
himself he should snap, bare his teeth in aggression until Maximillian backed off. He didn’t need anyone’s help; he never
had.
“Sit down. Just here.”
The bed Cyrus sat upon, gingerly, was the biggest he’d ever seen, piled high with plush green goose-feather cushions. A writing
desk of polished black wood sat in one corner, the wall behind taken up by an elaborate display of daggers too delicate for
any proper use. Maximillian disappeared into an enormous walk-in wardrobe, but he was back before Cyrus had time to do anything
more than squint at the sea just visible through the translucent drapes.
“Your turn to wear my clothes,” Maximillian said, in a tone of slightly forced cheer.
He set the clothes on the bed and sat beside them: a cream shirt, long sleeved, and linen trousers in a muted stone.
So he did wear something other than formfitting leather, when he wasn’t showing off to the crowds.
Cyrus let the fine fabric of the shirt fall through his fingers, noting the label.
Jaim was a designer from Durov best known for hand-stitching everything himself and for throwing lavish parties for Athaca’s high society with weird themes like “the bosom of our lady Spring” and “high sprite fashion,” where everyone snorted pixie dust and ended up in the gossip section of Athaca News.
At any other time, Cyrus would have been keen to get his hands all over a champion’s designer belongings. Now, he was more
interested in the truth.
“Right,” he said. “Clothes. Yeah. Important. So, why did you stab me?”
Maximillian winced. “I didn’t—”
Cyrus plucked pointedly at a bandage, ignoring the twinge of pain. “Oh, you did. You very much did.”
He watched Maximillian’s mouth open and close, struggling to pick an excuse. Or a lie, Cyrus reminded himself. Was it strange
that he felt more annoyed than angry at the thought? Embarrassing, that the champion had been the one plotting against him
from the start rather than the other way round.
He waited. Maximillian fidgeted. Cyrus considered the very real possibility that it was actually more painful than getting
stabbed, watching him try to work out a watertight excuse. For a champion who’d come up with the fake nemeses idea in the
first place, he was having a hard time thinking up a lie.
Enough was enough. “I can’t watch this anymore,” Cyrus announced. “You look too pathetic. It’s making me feel itchy. Balthazar
told me the truth.”
Maximillian’s head whipped up. “I—you what?”
“I know,” Cyrus repeated impatiently. “Balthazar told me in the gaol. You were planning to kill me from the start.”
A moment of silence. Then Maximillian turned to face Cyrus properly. He was staring, expression edging towards incredulous.
“Why are you here?” he demanded.
Cyrus wasn’t expecting that. He scowled. “Well, I was invited, you see—”
Maximillian shook his head impatiently. “No, no, I mean—if Balthazar told you that I was going to—” He stumbled there. Unsurprising.
“About the plan,” he amended. Cyrus cast him a dark look. The plan, yes, the one that involved Cyrus dead at his feet whilst
the people of Heliarth sang his praises. That one. “Why are you here, knowing that?”
Why indeed. A fair question, and one that Cyrus could offer no real answer to. He didn’t have the words for gut feelings,
or the stomach for the kind of vulnerability required to lay them out.
“You owe me an explanation,” he said. It didn’t really answer the question, and Maximillian’s frown said he knew it.
“You trusted me enough to come here, even though Bal told you that.” He sounded almost suspicious about it.
Ugh. There was no real way to deny it, sitting here in Maximillian’s bedroom. “Yes,” said Cyrus unwillingly.
Maximillian’s eyes searched his. Whatever he found there pushed him to a decision, because his shoulders suddenly slumped.
“Fine,” he said. “Yes. I—I was going to kill you. I thought we could stage a few fights, build up this idea of us as nemeses. The perfect adversaries pitted against each other. It would get lots of attention and I’d gain your trust.” Maximillian broke the eye contact, looking down.
“And it worked, except . . . I started to trust you as well. I started to like you. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but—well, fighting you became a habit.
I realised I didn’t want to let that habit go.
And suddenly my brilliant plan didn’t seem so brilliant anymore.”
I started to like you. Cyrus swallowed, suddenly intensely aware of the weight of those words. They made his stomach feel like it was trying to
shrivel up whilst also attempting to somersault out of his throat. He had never felt like that before. He was unprepared for
the strangeness of it. He tried to push the sensation away, gathering well-practised nonchalance about him like his best cloak.
Maximillian exhaled. There was a faint shudder to it. “I was supposed to set up an event in Heliarth so my own people could
see us fight. Your guard would be down, you wouldn’t be fighting to kill. I would finish you off in front of a crowd of spectators
who’d all cheer and applaud. And they’d make sure they voted for me at the election.”