Chapter Fifteen #4
his parents’ garden with a shard of glass and a knowing eye towards the rising sun. Cyrus could picture it, the flushed, satisfied
face of the teenager crouched a safe distance from the flames. The way he’d watch as the flames rose, the pungent scent of
burning carrying for miles. The cries of alarm and fear from all around. Those who had wronged him, screaming for help.
In another life, it would have been Max’s first step on the path of wrongdoing. He would have been the worst of them.
But Cyrus had heard this story before, with a different slant. Maximillian, the people’s champion. The heroic boy who saved
an entire family from their burning home.
“You changed your mind,” Cyrus murmured. “You dragged them out of the fire.”
Max’s mouth twisted bitterly. “And I was praised for it. The brave youth, destined for the Federation. Born with a champion’s soul, because I saved people from the fire I lit myself.
” The bitterness became disgust, threading into his tone, before it softened into regret.
“My family never said as much, but I—I think they suspected. Probably why they’ve stayed away from me.
I lifted them out of poverty when I became a champion, and they made the most of that, but then . . .”
Max turned his head away from Cyrus, like he couldn’t bear to see the judgement on his face.
The nonexistent judgement. Cyrus hadn’t expected this, no. There was definitely an element of surprise.
But above the surprise was a sense of understanding. When the glamour of a champion’s lifestyle was stripped away, the two
of them were not so very different: both hotheaded and tempestuous, both more concerned with what the world thought than they
wanted to admit. Cyrus had chosen one path, Max another. But Max was not the lofty champion Cyrus had despised from a distance.
He never had been. He was a man with both bad and good in him, trying to pick his way through a life that felt like a stifling
pretence. Of course he had sought Cyrus out with a ploy so unlike that of a champion.
Cyrus cleared his throat. “Twenty years as a champion, and this still bothers you?”
Maximillian’s head jerked back to face him. “Of course it bothers me, I—”
“I’ve done plenty of bad things,” Cyrus interrupted. He met Max’s eyes levelly. “But you’re still here.”
“You’re a wrongdoer,” muttered Max. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. What I did is so much worse.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Yeah. I chose this path and stuck to it. You’ve been fighting to be a better person all your life. And you
think that makes you worse than me?”
It sounded ridiculous when he said it like that, and he could see that Max knew it. His mouth tightened as though trying to bolster himself, but then he lowered his head into his knees. Cyrus watched the muscles shift in his shoulders as he drew himself in tightly.
He put a clumsy hand on Max’s back, feeling the muscles jump under his palm. Cyrus had never comforted anyone. He had no real
idea what to do with his hand now that it was there. Was he supposed to administer a gentle pat, or was that just for dogs?
To his relief, the warmth of his touch seemed to work just fine on its own. Max gave a soft sigh.
“All my life I’ve wanted people to tell me how good I am,” Max whispered. It came out muffled and despondent. “But it wasn’t
because I really wanted to be good, it was because I—I was afraid of what I could be. If I didn’t try so hard.” An unsteady breath, his voice even
quieter when he spoke again. “What if I’m just pretending? I feel like I’m putting on this big performance. All the time.
For so many people.”
Much of their conversation tonight had left Cyrus feeling off-balance and unmoored, uncertain of how to tread in such unfamiliar
waters. But he knew his answer to that right away.
“You don’t have to perform with me.”
Max raised his head, his face flushed. He looked at Cyrus like he was something precious. Cyrus’s heart skipped helplessly.
“Thanks,” Max said, soft and sincere.
The moment lingered between them. Cyrus made half a move to reach out, then pulled his hand back, second-guessing.
Max watched silently, until he summoned the courage to lift his fingers again and graze Max’s cheekbone.
Gently, he touched the minuscule scar from their first-ever fight in Arclee, a handful of embers tossed in his face searing a tiny pale crescent into soft skin.
Max closed his eyes. They had come so far, and yet still Cyrus marvelled at the trust.
But it was getting late, and Cyrus’s first experience of what he suspected could—ugh—be called a heart-to-heart had left him
feeling exhausted.
“I really need to sleep before I reveal any other horrendous secrets that mess with my fearsome image,” he mumbled, drawing
back.
Max laughed. Any remaining tension from his admission, or Cyrus’s before it, drained away.
“If you’re talking about the pink pyjamas, I saw them the first time I came in here. I had a snoop round.”
Of course he had. A few weeks ago, Cyrus would have hit the ceiling at those words. Now, he just stood and threw Max a dirty
look. Max met it innocently, though Cyrus could tell they were both relieved to return to normal. Whatever their normal was.
“You’re not borrowing them to sleep in. Find something else.”
Cyrus got ready for bed, climbing into sheets still warm from their bodies. He took up too much of the blanket and listened
to the sounds of Max moving around the lair, banking the fire and having a quick wash. The bed dipped under Max’s weight.
They lay quietly for a few moments. Then Cyrus said, awkwardly, “Night.”
“Night,” said Max, much more easily.
“If you snore, I’ll knife you,” Cyrus told him.
“Right back at you,” said Max pleasantly.
Cyrus rolled over and stifled his disgustingly soppy expression into the pillow until sleep took him.