Chapter 29 Syrus
Syrus
The four of them retreated to Xan’s room, leaving the chaos of his mother’s throne room behind them.
Syrus had to rely on Eiri and Ellis to help him through the maze of corridors leading back to his cousin’s room, leaning heavily on them with each step.
Standing on his own before his mother, even for just those few minutes, had sapped what meager amount of strength he’d been able to recover.
The poison had ravaged his body, and it would take time to recover.
Time seemed to be something they had, though, for the first time since they signed the marriage contracts. Syrus stole glances at his little brother as they walked, but even once they were safely in Xan’s room, Ellis didn’t meet his eyes.
“Let me get the wards up,” Xan said before anyone could speak.
His room, with its wards and protections, felt like the safest place to be right now.
Syrus had nearly died in his room, after all, and that would be the first place anyone would look to find him.
He wouldn’t feel safe in that room again until Kien was caught, and perhaps not even then.
Eiri helped him onto a small couch in Xan’s front room, getting him settled and then immediately crawling in beside him.
“Are you okay?” he murmured to Eiri. He’d felt his husband stumble as they retreated and knew he had to be just as exhausted as Syrus. Probably more, if he truly was in magical burnout.
“I could sleep for about a week,” Eiri admitted. He laid his head on Syrus’ shoulder, for once not hesitating to touch him, and when Syrus carefully wrapped his arm around Eiri’s shoulders, Eiri just curled in closer.
“Me too. After we sort all this out, though. I have questions.”
“So do I.” Xan finished whatever magic he was working and rejoined them, perching on a chair to the left of the couch Eiri and Syrus sat on. Ellis had chosen the one to the right of them, furthest from the door, all of them facing an unlit fireplace.
“Before we do anything, I wanted to thank you for believing me,” Eiri said to Xan and Ellis.
“I’d like to believe we were becoming friends before all of this happened, but Syrus is your family.
I would have understood if you had listened to what everyone was saying.
Kien certainly did his best to make me look guilty. ”
Eiri kept his voice impressively even, but Syrus knew that betrayal had cut him down to the bone.
“We are your friends,” Xan said firmly. “Besides, like we said before: if you were going to kill Syrus, it’d be daggers at dawn, not poison. Anyone who spent any time with the two of you would have known that you were innocent, anyway.”
“How do you figure?” Syrus raised an eyebrow at his cousin, who just shot him a tired smirk.
“All that fighting just made it obvious there was something more behind it than just some old grudges. I think you two have been attracted to each other for far longer than either of you wanted to admit.”
“He’s not entirely wrong,” Eiri admitted, and Syrus silently agreed. Maybe it’d been true since the day he’d met Eiri all those years ago, even if he’d been too blinded by his mother’s indoctrination to know it.
“I don’t think Kien acted alone,” Ellis said, the first words he’d spoken since leaving the throne room. His baby brother was still pale, dark eyes distant and haunted, but he appeared to be attempting to hold himself together for them.
“There aren’t any other Canjiri in the city, as far as I know.” Eiri glanced at him for confirmation and Syrus nodded. No Canjiri would be foolish enough to live among Vaetreans. Unlike Nevarre and even Gavarria, the Canjiri weren’t welcome in this country.
“There aren’t,” Ellis confirmed. “I think he was working with someone from Vaetreas.”
At first glance, the idea of a Canjiri ambassador working with anyone in Vaetreas was absurd, but the more Syrus thought about it, the more sense it made.
“He wouldn’t have been able to disappear so completely without help,” he said slowly, putting the pieces together even as he spoke.
“With the city on alert like it is, there’s no way he wouldn’t stand out and be seen.
Even if word hasn’t reached everyone that he’s the one who tried to kill me, he’d be arrested on sight just for his association with Eiri. ”
“Why would anyone here work with him, though? I don’t even know if his plan had always been to kill me, or if he decided he had to when he realized he couldn’t make me do what he wanted.” Eiri sighed heavily. “That doesn’t seem like enough cause to justify a plot like this.”
Ellis winced in sympathy. “It does if you take the full marriage contract into account. Without you here, Vaetreas would lose access to the mines on Canjir, along with the rights to anything found within those mines. A lot of people stand to make a lot of money because of this marriage.”
“Wouldn’t killing me have ruined all of that, then?”
“We’re past the annulment point,” Syrus said as realization struck and everything finally started making more sense. When they’d first forced him into this, he’d looked up how long he had to annul the marriage, not that he’d ever believed his mother would allow it.
“If you were to die now, all the provisions of the contract would still be valid,” Ellis confirmed. “Syrus, and therefore the queen, would still own the mining rights even if Eiri were to die now.”
“And Kien must have realized he’d never be able to control you,” Xan said. “I still don’t see why he would work with anyone from Vaetreas, though. What was in it for him?”
“I wish I had that answer for you, but I’m not sure. Nothing else makes any sense, though.”
Syrus reached over and gently squeezed his brother’s arm. “It’s okay not to have all the answers. You’ve done more than enough to help us. I owe you a debt of gratitude I don’t think I can ever repay.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Ellis said, shaking his head. “You would have done the same for me.”
“I have a question, too,” Eiri said. “What happened to Marsen?”
“Marsen? My mother’s spymaster?” Syrus frowned, looking over at Eiri. “How is he involved in this?”
“He helped us get to you. We knew you were in the observatory, but we couldn’t get past the guards. Marsen grabbed me and showed us a different way.”
“He didn’t have to grab you both so literally,” Xan grumbled. “I could have killed him when he did that.”
Ellis ducked his head, and Syrus felt like he was missing something important there, but his brother spoke before Syrus could question him.
“We got caught when we were leaving Kien’s room,” Ellis said.
“What? You didn’t tell me that before!”
Ellis raised an eyebrow at Xan. “There wasn’t time. But as we were getting ready to leave, three soldiers were there. They wore Brandow’s personal crest, not the family one like the other palace guards.”
“Your brother is starting to annoy me,” Eiri muttered under his breath, and Syrus couldn’t help but agree.
“Me too,” Ellis nodded. “I think they were coming to search Kien’s room, too, because they seemed surprised to find someone else there.
Marsen… he shoved me behind the door so they wouldn’t see me and tried to fight them.
I don’t know what they did, but he couldn’t seem to use his magic.
They overpowered him and arrested him.” Ellis looked down at his hands, his voice getting quieter with every word he spoke.
“He kept fighting, though. I think it was to keep them occupied, so they couldn’t spare anyone to come into the room. I think he was protecting me.”
“Marsen is a clever man. He’ll find a way to escape. If not, we’ll help him,” Xan promised.
“The queen will be furious, but she’s too smart to have him executed,” Syrus added when Ellis looked unconvinced. “He knows secrets even she doesn’t, and his network extends all over the world. Without him, she loses access to almost all her spies.”
“Personally, I wouldn’t mind that,” Eiri said, and finally Ellis relaxed a little. “I don’t know him very well, but I know a fellow survivor when I see one.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I know everything is chaotic right now and we have a lot more questions than we do answers, but we’re better off than we were yesterday, and that’s not nothing.”
“Speaking of answers…” Xan focused his attention on Ellis, who immediately sank back into his chair, shoulders hunching.
Syrus could admit to himself that he hadn’t been the best brother to Ellis.
Their sixteen year age gap meant Syrus had been a full adult living his own life by the time Ellis was old enough to talk, and his years as a soldier kept him away from home more often than not.
He’d tried to make up for it in recent years, and while he and Ellis were the closest of all their siblings, there were still many things they didn’t know about each other.
In the years they’d grown closer, though, he’d never seen Ellis look as scared and defeated as he did right now.
“You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” he murmured. As desperately as he wanted answers, he refused to force them from the younger man.
Ellis looked up at him, the surprise in his eyes quickly fading to gratitude.
“Thank you. I’ll tell you as much as I can.”
Xan didn’t look pleased with that compromise, but he reluctantly accepted it. “I guess the biggest question would be to ask how you got Queen Delia to back down like that. What agreement were you talking about?”
Ellis chewed on his lower lip, hesitating for several long seconds before he finally spoke.
“I can’t give you the details of that. She and I had an argument a few years ago, and we came to an understanding that protected both of us, in a way.
It’s more of a mutually assured destruction, honestly, but it works so long as we both keep to it. ”