51. Kyros
Chapter fifty-one
Kyros
My eyes lose focus as I look out over the dark water of the tarn with my heart steadily pounding against my ribs. I watched as the sun sank behind the Halcyon mountain ridge, and even though it's long since gone, the muscle in my chest still hasn't given up its fight.
I come here often now, when I can’t seem to find the control I need.
Another fight with Mavros ensured I would end up here tonight.
Every time we have one, they only seem to get worse.
He doesn't understand why I’m so angry all the time, but I don’t understand how he could just forget and move on with his life.
Everything was stolen from us. Since the moment I was born, my life was mapped out for me.
The first born son; destined to be king in our father's stead, regardless that we are twins.
That heavy technicality was always placed on my shoulders.
The emotion blurring my vision only serves to make me that much more angry, and I furiously wipe at my eyes as I grind my teeth.
“Fuck!” I shout the curse out over the water that’s taunting me with its stillness. A calm I can’t seem to find. Reaching down, I take a rock from the mountain side and hurl it with all my fury into the glass like water, shattering its peace just as mine has been.
‘It’s been ten years, Kyros. It's time to move on!’ Mavros’ words from earlier pierce through my chest sharper than any blade ever could.
Move on? How could I just move on when I’ve been suffering in silence ever since?
Every time I close my eyes I am reminded of everything I lost—everything that was stolen from us!
It's not even about the fucking throne. That’s not what I care about.
It's about our parents; it’s the life that we were supposed to live with their guidance.
The men we were supposed to become. It's about all the lives that have been lost because our family no longer holds the power to make sure they are cared for.
It's about everything that monster has done since taking claim on the kingdom that I was meant to protect.
What kind of king—what kind of man—just hides out in the shadows after everything that made him who he was became ripped away? What kind of man allows that kind of evil to wreak havoc on the people he was born to protect and lead? Mavros doesn't understand. He can't.
It wasn't his destiny.
It's never been the weight he was meant to carry, and he wasn't there to see all that I did.
Long hours spent with my father learning the inner workings of court politics ensured that I was in that room with him the night they were murdered—even at such a young age.
Twelve. I was only twelve. I never had the courage to ask Mavros what he was doing the night our world imploded.
Was he hanging around with friends or sleeping off a long day of combat training?
I don't blame him for not understanding.
He didn't have to witness the traumatic horror of watching our mother take a blade through her chest while looking down at her son as she expelled her last breath. Mavros doesn’t have to see the tremble of fear from the man we thought was unshakeable as he begs for his son to run from death every time he closes his eyes.
Clenching my fists around the air at my sides, my chest heaves with furious breaths that make my head swim. I resent the ease in which my brother justifies the time spent mourning being enough, but I don’t blame him.
I drop my gaze down the sharp cliffside I stand on, wondering what it would be like to just let go.
Not to worry anymore, like Mavros. The ripples on the water fade as the water once again calms, and with it I try to make my mind do the same.
Trying to pull in breaths that match the ebb and flow of the waves I created.
It doesn't work. It’s too late for me now.
Mavros may be able to just take the life he has been given one day at a time, but I’ve long since decided to do everything I can to get the vengeance I feel we deserve.
With the help of Queen Phaedra I will get that chance, despite the fact that every time I am around her something feels off about the way she conducts herself and the attention she gives me.
Sometimes you have to barter with what you have, and I don't have much more to give.
I close my eyes, toeing the edge of the cliff that I’ve claimed as my reprieve from this dark world that now tries to claim me.
I take a deep breath in through my nose.
I only open my eyes when I am already falling.
In that split second of weightlessness, I am truly free.
Flying between the life that once was and the one that I am making of it.
The water crashes over me like shards of ice cold glass.
My eyes fly open as I'm jolted from unconsciousness.
A ragged gasp rips from my throat without my permission, as freezing cold water cuts across my face and drenches my body.
The thick, dank air is hard to pull into my lungs.
My entire body protests, and every muscle strains under the pressure of the ties holding me in place.
Restraints, I quickly come to realize, are not something physically holding me in place, like rope or chains, but rather it is magick.
Shadows much like my own twine around my wrists as a failsafe.
Slowly, my eyes trail up from the dark floor, where my feet too are bound together with the wisps of darkness.
Dust floats through the air as the man in front of me throws the now-empty bucket into the corner.
My gaze slowly lifts past his boots as my somnolence quickly fades.
Barely bridled rage begins to emerge as I see the leering sneer of a man standing over me.
A man who wished to have this exact moment like some sick little dream.
The bitterness of the oath I spoke burns inside my chest bringing bile to my throat.
My head tilts, and I pause. The movement feels too free…
“I knew it was only a matter of time before you got humbled.” Nolan says in a whispered growl as he leans into my face.
He tries to sound menacing, but it ends up coming out petulant.
He never would have had the courage to do any of this if he knew I wasn’t being completely incapacitated.
But seeing as I am now a retrained prisoner, he is emboldened, albeit stupidly so.
I won't be held captive forever. The fucking coward.
A false sense of superiority will do that.
When I find a way around this, he will be one of the first that I kill.
I clench my jaw, and as I do, I realize I not only can move my head but also have the ability to use my tongue if I wish.
I don't know how I know, but if I were to try, the words would form.
I feel it. Though, I bite back any retort I want to say.
Despite wanting to rip into him, I restrain myself as I think on it.
Clearly this is a test. Water drips from my nose, and my hair clings to my face from where he doused me with the bucket.
It rolls over my bare chest, and I pull a deep centering breath through my nose before lifting my eyes and letting it blow out with my fury, nostrils flared.
I silently let my gaze trail up to look over his face, void of all other emotion—only simmering rage.
I hope that he can see that only the promise of his pain remains in my thoughts.
It doesn't slip my attention that I have just moved freely—interesting.
“I can’t wait to watch the great Kyros Ruvaen, Hawk, meet his demise.
That's exactly what will happen when you rip your own heart out.” He smiles menacingly.
“When you are forced to pluck it from where it lives in the long lost Princess Astraea’s chest.” He mocks, and where my gaze was distantly taking in his features before, they sharpen into blades as her name slips from his mouth.
My fingers twitch, another movement I have back.
“Don’t think I didn't notice the way you looked at her. That look in your eyes was your demise. You gave your heart to a woman. A man like you should know better.” My muscles vibrate with how hard I hold myself back from lurching forward and wrapping my shadows around his neck in a noose now that I’m sure I can.
When I say nothing, he stands to his full height and scoffs, spitting at my feet.
“Why do they call you that anyway? Hawk?” He looks down at me, and I keep my face blank as I finally break my silence.
“Because, like the death-head hawkmoth, I am a bad omen, Nolan.” I let my voice become lower.
Menacing and gravelly, if only to provoke the fear I know it will.
“A wandering bird of death, and harbinger of doom. When my targets are marked—death will come.” I keep my eyes trained on him as he backs away from me slowly.
If his actions before didn’t mark his death, his disrespectful and asinine words surely did. He will die by hands.
“I will go let Queen Phaedra know that our prisoner is awake. Keep him controlled.” He speaks quickly into the shadows lining the walls, and my eyes narrow just the slightest.
Nolan steps from the room with one more scoff to hide his evident fear from my threat as he looks over his shoulder.
I force my shoulders to slump and my head to bow in faux exhaustion.
His steps have barely faded down the hall before the shadows coalesce into the dungeon.
By now, I already know who’s coming—I detect the creature before its features are even clear.
It’s his magick that has been holding me down physically all this time.
He is backlit by only low firelight from the corridor; the bone-laden face stares back at me without emotion but still with an undeniably curious tilt to his head.