9. Chapter 9
Chapter 9
M orning didn’t end up arriving anytime soon for Cyril. But when it did, its arrival was abrupt, driven by blistering sunlight and an all-too-familiar growl.
“Cyril , get your gods damned ass out of bed right now.”
Dion flung open her drapes and stomped around her room, cursing to himself.
She tugged a pillow over her face, whining, as he ripped back her covers.
“Oh, for fuck’s—”
The covers flew back over her with remarkable speed.
After stripping down to just her underthings last night, Cyril never put on the nightclothes Rika left out for her. Why would she? She was too damn tired and frustrated, and hadn’t expected her morning to start like this .
“What is your problem ?” she groaned.
“ My problem?” Dion’s tone dripped with frustration. “Cyril, you missed breakfast and lunch, and our briefing was supposed to start ten fucking minutes ago.”
Oh shit.
Shitshitshitshitshitshit—
Cyril tossed her pillow and nearly fell as she tried to untangle herself and get out of bed.
“I’m so sorry Dion,” she whined, stumbling over to the wardrobe and ripping open doors and drawers. Dion at least had the decency to turn his back to her as she tried to remember where in the fuck her things were.
“I just—I was so damn tired and I—”
Blouse. Pants. Socks.
“—I did not think the drapes would block out that much of the light—”
She awkwardly hopped into her pants and towards the bathroom.
“—and I—”
“Cyr, it’s fine,” Dion sighed, his voice closer than before. “Just hurry, please. They’re waiting for us downstairs.”
He leaned in the doorframe, watching her through the mirror.
She grimaced at him, flinging open a few drawers before she finally found a brush and a tie for her hair. No time for braiding, so she brushed it quickly and swept it all up into the neatest ponytail she could manage. It was a wavy and kinked mess from her braid yesterday, but it would have to do.
A quick splash of water on her face and a half-assed brush of her teeth, and they were out the door.
Dion said they were going to the royal offices, down in some partial basement of the palace, but the area he led her to felt more like a decrepit war room than a damn office . Swords and axes adorned the walls of the gloomy, vast space, alongside almost illegible maps. Besides a solitary rack housing logbooks buried under a thick layer of dust, there was no trace of anything office-like.
Well, there was a table.
Imposing and rectangular, it spanned the length of the room with wildly mismatched chairs. An ornate piece in a past life, she was sure, with a faint inlay of whirling ivory she could see along its edge. But time and use hadn’t been kind to it, its surface dulled with scratches and brutal gouges.
The room even smelled like she imagined a war council would: like smoke and old paper, and just a hint of too much cologne for her taste. That courtesy came from all the damn men packed in the room—about a dozen of them, all in uniform except for the king and her uncles.
She was relieved to see them. Less so for the abrasive prince lingering by his father’s side.
Dion’s hand met her back and urged her forward as he said, “Apologies for our tardiness. Cyril sleeps like the dead.”
It took a remarkable amount of restraint to turn slowly and stare at Dion, her eyes wide. Embarrassment burned hot in her cheeks.
The fucking arse .
“That is quite alright,” Lars said with a chuckle, low and rich, as he straightened from where he stood at the head of the table. His hands sat splayed over a map Cyril didn’t recognize at all. From beside the king, though, she saw Mikael shake his head.
As if the pretentious prick never slept in a day in his pampered fucking life.
Gesturing at the table, Lars added, “Shall we?”
Bron caught her eye from across the room, pointing to a chair between him and Tyriel. She slipped over there before Dion could tell her otherwise, and he took a seat on the other side of Bron.
A day apart from her more amenable uncles had felt like an eternity.
“Already lazing your days away in bed now, are we?” Bron murmured in that knowing, teasing way of his as he squeezed her knee. His green eyes sparkled with amusement.
She opened her mouth, but something yanked on her ponytail and drew all of her attention to her other side.
Tyriel, grinning like a fool, slid a steaming mug in front of her.
“You need it more than I do,” he whispered.
Cyril gave it a discrete sniff and wrinkled her nose. She couldn’t place the smell, but it was heavily spiced and probably bitter.
Tyr sighed. “Good Hells, woman, it’s tea . Drink.”
She took a sip—bitter, but not unpleasantly so. It was almost reminiscent of the black brew Sebille always had on hand for anyone having a rough morning at the estate.
Anything to rouse her faculties at that point was welcome.
“Thank you,” she whispered back, and Tyr nodded.
Cyril kept the mug clasped between her hands, letting the warmth of the earthenware seep into her fingers. The office was fucking freezing , and Cyril wished she’d had more than two jarring seconds to get dressed before she came down.
Hopefully, the briefing would be just that. Brief.
“Am I correct in assuming everyone has a basic understanding of what we are discussing?” Lars started, and nods bobbed through the room. “Good. Now, before we get into it, introductions.”
Motioning first to Dion, Lars introduced her uncle as both Lord of Helia and Master of its infamous Rogues’ Guild, and as a long-standing ally of Reykr and the king himself.
Ally of Reykr.
Cyril wasn’t sure the strangeness of that notion would ever wear off.
Lars introduced the rest of Lord Rhodea’s party as high-ranking members of the guild, gesturing vaguely to Bron, Cyril, Tyr, and finally Ren, who took up residence at the rear of the room. Brooding, as usual.
The king’s introduction sounded much nicer than the niece who was forced to come here , and she owed him her thanks.
Then Lars moved on to Reykr’s personnel.
Seated to the king’s left was Ezra Hallowes, General of Reykr’s royal forces. He was tall and broad, with short dirty-blonde hair and a sort of darkness in his eyes that made Cyril shift in her seat when he looked across the table at her. That man had seen some wicked fucking things in his life.
To Lars’ right was Mikael, who looked…bored. Not that they needed introductions, but Lars addressed him as Commander Kallan and Cyril fought against rolling her eyes. She had little doubt the title was given to him without merit. Some sort of consolation prize for being their spare heir.
But she sipped her tea quietly, and Lars continued down the line.
The rest of the men at the table were all captains or commanders of some division or another of the royal forces, and had all been involved with these murders. Either responding to the scenes, handling interrogations, or sourcing information from the streets.
Something they all found little success in, but a bit of time would tell if that was a skill issue or not.
“I assume,” Dion said, “you left the specifics of the murders out of your correspondence for a reason?”
“You are correct.” Lars nodded and turned to his general. “I’ll leave this to you?”
“There is a ritualistic pattern happening that we’ve never seen before, and therefore could not take any risk of that information falling into unintended hands,” General Ezra said, his voice flat. Cold. “The state of mutilation each victim’s body was found in, and the markings left behind at each scene are not coincidental.”
“And by markings , you mean…?” Dion asked.
“Runes of the old language.”
General Ezra shuffled through the only neat stack of papers on the table, handing one with a rough sketch on it to Dion. He set it down so Cyril and the others could take a look.
“These four along the top here suggest the representation of the core elements—fire, water, earth, and air. Those”—leaning across the table, General Ezra pointed to the ones drawn along the bottom of the paper—“translate roughly into dawn, tribulation, estate, and thorn, though there is some debate on the alternate interpretations of them.”
Dion rubbed his jaw.
“Knowledge of the old language is scarce, isn’t it?”
“Exceedingly. Outside of a handful of temples still devoted to the old faith, we have not used it with any regularity in centuries.”
“The temples, have they—”
“Questioned and searched thoroughly. No tangible connections.”
“I see.”
Dion sat back in his chair, fingers steepled in front of his face. His eyes scanned the paper laid out before them, and Cyril knew the inner workings of his mind were moving at a breakneck speed. She turned her attention to the piece of paper and tried to ignore the set of icy blue eyes that had been observing her from across the table for the entire briefing so far.
Arrogant prick of a prince. She would not let him get to her again.
“No connections between the victims, no jilted lovers or bad business. All carved up and defiled the same, missing the same organs…” Dion said, more to himself than anyone else. He had conveniently failed to mention missing organs to her… “Outside of the…brutal nature of the killings, there was nothing else unusual? Nothing noteworthy from your street sweeps?”
“We believe the victims were each killed elsewhere, then transported to where their bodies were found. But we’ve yet to find that other place, or places,” one captain added.
Dion nodded, lost in thought.
Another man sat up straighter. “It also seems that anyone living or working in close quarters with the victims may have been drugged on the nights they went missing.”
Dion’s head tipped.
“Each victim went missing at night?” he asked.
General Ezra nodded. “Correct, and found up to four days later.”
He picked up the stack of papers set in the middle of the table again, squaring them off before passing them to Dion.
“I recommend reading these. Reports for each of the murders, in addition to everything uncovered through our investigations.”
“The royal archives. Do you have records on the old language?” Dion asked no one in particular, thumbing through the documents.
Lars huffed a dry laugh.
“An unfathomable number of them. All our scribes have some fluency as well. They assisted Ezra with our initial translations.”
“Good.” Dion looked down the table at Cyril, and she knew what was coming next. “You’ll make yourself comfortable in the archives?”
It was difficult to smother down the disappointment that had every part of her wanting to sag in her seat, but Cyril kept her shoulders squared and forced a pleasant smile across her lips.
“Of course, I’d be happy to.”
Relegated to safe work, like always.
Dion gave her an appreciative nod, but Cyril heard little of what came afterward. Something or other about Lars wanting them to settle in before they started working, and a trip into the city that she knew wouldn’t involve her. Trips into the city for work never did.
At least her new prison had plenty of things for her to explore, she supposed.
Tyriel's hand inched its way to her shoulder, and he gave it a gentle squeeze.
A silent acknowledgement.
Cyril knew it bothered the others as much as it did her, and maybe even more, to see the work Dion deemed appropriate for her.
Bron, Tyr and Ren, and countless others, spent most of her formative years teaching her how to be a proper, full-fledged rogue. There wasn’t a weapon she didn’t know how to handle or a body she couldn’t disarm if the circumstances were dire. She could climb and run faster than half the rogues at the estate, and carry herself on silent feet when she wanted to.
Hells, Bron even took a concerning amount of enjoyment in teaching Cyril where to place her blade to slit a target’s throat—the left side was most important, he stressed, to drop them in a breath or two. A grotesque skill she never wanted to use, but one that she was immensely thankful for anyway.
Years and years of effort by the army that raised Cyril, all to prepare for the day she would handle contracts of her own.
But that day never came.
Dion always mustered up an excuse.
The stakes of the contract are too high.
The contract is dangerous.
The client requested the services of a senior guild member.
The contract is too complicated.
The list went on and fucking on .
Some variation of excuse that let him avoid giving her a contract of her own, without him ever taking a single ounce of responsibility for it. Without him ever having to admit it was his personal decision to hold her back, and nothing more.
And so he always relegated her to the safe tasks.
Research, more often than not, or visiting scenes of crimes—chaperoned, always—to gather evidence. Occasionally, when Dion felt generous, she accompanied him to parties that doubled as reconnaissance operations. Floating about the room, listening and observing, and accepting dance offers from men that made her skin crawl, all in the name of information gathering.
That was the extent of her work as a Rogue of Helia, if she could truly be called that.
Her other uncles, at least, still made efforts to see she was ready and able to take a contract if the miraculous day ever arrived. Despite her birthday being a miserable day that she loathed celebrating, they always banded together and bought her a new blade or bow, or took her into the city for new fighting leathers.
Gestures that meant the world to her, and that Dion often overlooked.
Cyril realized, a bit abruptly, that everyone sitting around her was starting to rise. She stood too, as casually as she could. Their briefing was over, and captains and commanders began filing out of the room.
Cyril couldn’t say she felt any more informed now than when Dion first told them about the contract, but maybe everything they needed was in the records Dion held in his hands. If he deigned to let her read any of it, of course.
Bron nudged her with his elbow, and mirth filled his face before he even started speaking. “Any big plans for your afternoon?” he said. “ Breakfast , perhaps, seeing as you just rolled your ass out of bed?”
“Shut up,” she grumbled. “I had a rough night.”
It was impossible to ignore Mikael’s attention snapping over to her.
Bron noticed too.
He casually turned his back to the prince, leaning against the table.
“How was dinner?” he muttered.
Cyril only scoffed.
“I heard,” his voice dropped even lower, “that someone may have thoroughly rubbed you the wrong way at your little welcome party.”
“That’s one way to put it,” she mumbled back.
Leave it to Dion to know something happened and say nothing to her about it.
Bron offered her one of those empathetic smiles that she couldn’t tolerate from anyone other than him.
“He’s nothing, no one. Take nothing the entitled arse says to heart. Spoiled fucker is probably just threatened.” Bron straightened up and brought his voice back to just above its usual volume. “The stables sound like a wonderful idea, dove. I’m sure Attie is wondering where you’ve run off to.”
Gods. That did sound like a wonderful idea. Shame it hadn’t been hers.
Bron slung his arm across her shoulders and made to lead her out of the room.
“Actually, Cyril?” The direct address from Lars had her whole body going taut. Bron stiffened beside her too. “My wife hoped to spend some time with you this afternoon, if that’s alright. I can walk you over to see her.”