Chapter Fifteen #3
But Max had been honest. He had told Cyrus about his family, his youth, the pressures he faced. He was waiting, now, for Cyrus
to share something of himself in return.
Cyrus closed his eyes. It felt like an admission. Silence yawned between them, pointed and ever expanding. Neither moved.
Then Max took a breath. “Well, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “When we fought in Heliarth, when I—when I stabbed you.
Your eyes shone purple, just for a moment. But there was no earthquake.”
Cyrus kept his eyes closed. He remembered that well enough, the abrupt flare of magic in response to his pain. It had seemed
to go nowhere. “I wasn’t calling an earthquake.”
“But your powers came out when I stabbed you, all the same.” A statement. Max waited. Cyrus didn’t move, didn’t react. Perhaps he could make the conversation go away if he ignored it hard enough.
“After Balthazar took you away, I had to assess the damage with some members of the council. And while we were walking around,
I saw something strange. The hops in the field behind had grown wild, like something powerful had given them this great spurt.
The people at the brewery had no idea what had happened—they couldn’t explain it. I didn’t put it together at first, but over
the past couple of weeks, I started wondering . . .”
The weight of Max’s gaze felt like a stone on his chest. He squeezed his eyes more tightly closed. His magic seemed to shrink
inside him, fearful of recognition.
“Look at me, Cyrus,” said Max softly. “Please.”
Cyrus couldn’t. Max knew.
“Cyrus.” Exasperation now. Max wasn’t used to being made to wait. The bed dipped and then his hands were on Cyrus’s, encasing
them. “There was no earthquake because . . . that isn’t where your power lies. Am I right?”
He’d known it was coming. It still sent a jolt through him, his stomach clenching up tight with dread. He couldn’t know. Nobody
was supposed to know.
Max changed tack, giving his hands a little squeeze. “So, what is it?” He was trying to sound encouraging, but Cyrus could
just imagine the look on his face when the truth of his power was confirmed. “Your magic is connected to plants, somehow?”
There was no point in avoiding it anymore. Cyrus opened his eyes unwillingly. He found Max watching him with a mixture of exasperation and concern.
And amusement, clear in his eyes.
Cyrus wrenched his hands away. “Go on, then,” he said, making his voice sharp. Better that than vulnerable. “Laugh.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “At what, your melodrama?”
“At the fact that my powers aren’t—”
“Aren’t what?”
“Fearsome enough,” Cyrus snapped. “Aren’t suitable for a wrongdoer.” Bitterness flooded his tone. “I’m a child of Spring, as they used to say. I can make plants grow, I can make them move. Oh, they’ll do anything for me, flowers and weeds and
pretty things, and the sprites fucking love me for it, in case you haven’t noticed, they’re only too happy to flutter around my shoulders undermining me. Making me look
weak. Just like you told that journalist.” Words spilled out of him, a sickening rush. “I can’t shake the earth like everyone
thinks I can, which is the only reason they ever respected me in the first place—”
“Cyrus, let’s face it, in the time that I’ve known you, you’ve never needed to truly possess those powers. You’ve had people
fleeing the mere thought of your magic.”
Max’s words brought him up short. He didn’t sound judgemental, or scornful, or disappointed. If anything, he sounded impressed.
“But it’s a lie. I’m not Earthshaker.” Cyrus’s voice was smaller than he wanted it to be but there was nothing he could do.
The words were out there.
“I’m not here for Earthshaker,” said Max, as though that should be obvious.
But that couldn’t be right. Max valued power, the respect of others.
In his youth, at least, he had striven to earn it.
He would not want somebody who had to twist reality to make people fear him.
But Max’s hand found his again, gripped tight, his voice lowering with intensity.
“It was never about Earthshaker. I’m here for you. ”
Cyrus stared at him. His heart was still beating fast, but it no longer felt quite so heavy. The sense of dread began to ebb
away. He felt strange, exposed, like Max had reached into his chest and pulled out the core of him, held it up to the light
for inspection.
But he also felt lighter. Perhaps lighter than he had ever felt. Max knew. And Max was still here.
“You mean it,” Cyrus said slowly. Suspicion laced his tone.
Max rolled his eyes. He actually rolled his eyes, as though this was no big deal. Cyrus wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss him
or kill him. “Of course I mean it.”
The answer could only be kiss him. Cyrus leaned forward so quickly that Max jumped. He was already smiling by the time Cyrus’s
lips met his. Their hands were still wrapped together in the space between them. If his grip constituted clinging, Max didn’t
comment.
“I mean it,” he said again, like he knew Cyrus needed to hear it. “I don’t care. In fact . . .” Max’s thumb traced a soothing
pattern against Cyrus’s knuckle, sending a shiver scuttling up the length of his arm. “Maybe it’s a bit sexy. Something just
between us. Our little secret.” He paused. “And, you know, I did always wonder why you had such a well-maintained herb garden,
it seemed so—”
Cyrus sat back and swatted at him. “Don’t bring my oregano into this.”
Max grinned. Smug bastard. “It’s cute.”
“I’ll strangle you in your sleep with my ivy,” Cyrus told him, jerking his head up.
Max regarded the vines entwined across the ceiling. “Yeah, they’re a bit of a giveaway really, aren’t they?”
Oh, now he was critiquing Cyrus’s home decor. “Nobody else sees that.”
A sideways look. “Nobody?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“I’ve never invited anyone back here,” he muttered, grudging.
Max looked pleased with himself. “Happy to be the first.”
“Not really how it happened, you mostly just invited yourself over—”
Max was the one to lean forward this time, hushing the grumble with a kiss. He licked his way into Cyrus’s mouth, sucked gently
on his lip.
“You’re too perceptive,” mumbled Cyrus, as soon as he had the breath to speak. “It’s disgusting.”
Max huffed out a soft laugh, but his small smile was genuine when he pulled back. He lifted a hand to push Cyrus’s hair back
off his forehead. Somehow that gesture felt nearly as intimate as the touch of his mouth.
“Thanks for telling me,” Max said.
“Again, not how it happened, you sort of forced it out of me—”
Max kissed him again, a quick little thing. “Well. Thanks anyway.”
Cyrus fidgeted. He wasn’t about to tell Max about the light feeling in his chest; he was more relieved than he could ever
have expected to have that truth prised free and met with acceptance. He’d spoken more truth and emotion this evening than
he had in his lifetime, but he didn’t have the words for that.
“Yeah. Well,” he said, with feigned indifference he knew Max could see through. “Probably for the best that you know. No more
secrets between us now.”
Max was quiet. He moved to sit beside Cyrus, elbow to elbow, and tilted his head back against the headboard. Cyrus looked
at him out of the corner of his eye, mapping the familiar profile. Max’s expression gave nothing away, but Cyrus knew him
well enough to pick out the tension about his brow.
“What’s wrong?”
The furrow at Max’s brow deepened, just a little. “Thought you said I was the perceptive one.”
“Maybe it’s a talent we share,” Cyrus retorted. He jostled Max with his elbow. “Go on.”
Max didn’t smile. He sighed instead, his shoulders wilting. “I was just thinking that I . . . I have my own secrets. And I
don’t really have a right to keep them from you, given what you’ve just shared with me.”
Cyrus raised his eyebrows. Max had lived his life on a public stage, and he’d been on that stage for so long. What secrets
could he possibly bear that nobody had dug up yet?
Max seemed to read his silence as expectation. He swallowed, sitting upright again. He pulled his legs closer too, almost hugging them to his chest. It made him seem smaller, younger. Cyrus knew without needing to ask that whatever Max was about to say, he hadn’t told anyone before.
“I grew up near Arclee,” Max said quietly. “Not in the village itself, in another hamlet nearby—smaller than Arclee, not as
much going on.” Cyrus held his tongue, pushing back the immediate thought that popped to the forefront of his mind: that Arclee
was a dull little backwater in itself.
“My family used to go to the market there. We didn’t have much. A group of kids always used to steal things from my parents’
stall, and it frustrated me. A lot. But I couldn’t do anything about it. My dad told me not to, that if we ignored them, they’d
go away.”
But Max wasn’t good with frustration, and children like that didn’t just go away—well, until they joined the Wrongdoers’ Guild.
Cyrus said nothing.
“It all came to a head one day when I was about fourteen. They pushed the stall over, just for fun. My parents lost so much
stock, and I was so angry . . .” Max trailed off. He stared straight ahead, avoiding Cyrus’s gaze. Cyrus tried to imagine
what he might have done in Max’s position. He’d have plotted revenge, no doubt. He’d have wanted to hurt them.
In the dim light of Cyrus’s lair, Max closed his eyes.
His voice came out a hoarse whisper. “I followed them home. I saw where they lived, and I—I set it alight.” A tight swallow.
“With them inside. All of them, the entire family. I could hear them screaming. And my—my first thought was that they deserved it.”
Cyrus released a surprised breath without meaning to. It sounded too loud in the quiet between them. Max seemed to cringe
away from it, as though the exhale carried condemnation.
It was wrong. Far worse than anything Cyrus had done at that age. At fourteen, he could be found stalking lines of ants in