Chapter Thirteen
To my surprise, our rooms were empty. Everyone else was likely downstairs or in their own suits resting. I wasn’t the only one who’d had a hard day.
But I guessed it had been harder than I thought, because I was not okay. “I don’t know why I did that,” I whispered to Cyrus.
“It’s all right—”
“It’s not! If it had been anyone but Sebastian—”
“But it wasn’t. Come here.”
I ended up in the bathtub again, with the big terrycloth robe Laura had draped around me discarded on the floor, wondering why the water Cyrus was running was so red.
“I had a shower when we got back,” I protested.
“Lia. You have… meat… in your hair,” he said quietly.
“Do I?”
“Yeah. Let me help with that.”
He washed it out and then washed all my hair, changing the water three times in the process, which seemed excessive. Like the amount of care he was giving me, peeling off soaked bandages and examining every wound and contusion, not that there were many. And that was wrong, wasn’t it?
There should have been more, many more. Just the ones from last night… Only they were mostly gone, and the ones from today…
Had there been any from today? But there must have been, right? I couldn’t have gotten through all that unscathed.
No, I hadn’t. When I’d caught up with the dark mage leader, he had peppered me with spells, next-level ones. So what…
I couldn’t think straight, and my head hurt. Maybe something of his had connected, after all. Maybe a lot of somethings.
That would explain a few things.
The fourth bath full of soapy water was apparently the last, because Cyrus, who had been bathing me from outside the tub, like a mom taking care of a filthy toddler, finally stripped off and climbed in.
He pulled me back against him, and it felt good.
Smelled good, too, like the hotel’s toiletries, which were scented like fresh citrus and herbs, and like him.
“Better?” he asked, resting his head on top of mine.
“Better.” And I slowly realized that it was the truth.
His touch helped to ground me, to bring me back to Lia instead of the wolf, to the point that holding my own shape no longer felt like a burden.
It felt like it always had, normal, peaceful, good.
“Better,” I repeated, and felt his arms tighten.
“I’ve been spending too much time with Sebastian,” he whispered. “I told myself he needed me, but—”
“He does. We’re at war.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have responsibilities here. I didn’t even know Jace was gone until the clan returned from Tartarus, and only then after I heard them yelling. They weren’t allowed in to see me—my own clan!”
“I should have told you, but I thought I knew where he was. That it was just going to be a case of going and picking him up, maybe feeding him some pizza…”
“It’s not your fault. The problem was on this end, and it will be dealt with.” His voice was grim.
“That may be harder than you think,” I said. “The guards only see vargulfs. We can call ourselves a clan, but nobody believes it. And now there are three hundred more! Cyrus, what are we going to do?”
“Same thing we’ve been doing. Get them fed, get them a safe place to sleep, and wait.”
“For what?”
“For them to trust us, to open up, to let us in. That’s how I dealt with our first bunch of traumatized boys, and that’s all we can do here.”
“But…” I turned to face him because I needed to see him. He sounded so confident, so sure. How the hell could he be so sure? “There are three hundred—”
“You keep saying that,” he said, the dark eyes warm under their fringe of black lashes.
Which were wet, glistening with droplets like he’d been under a shower, because he’d had to turn it on several times to get me clean.
His hair was wet, too, and was curling around his neck.
Just looking at him made me feel better.
“It’s relevant—”
“It’s not, though. Three or three hundred, it’s all the same—”
“Is it? When there are only two of us? And when your brother wants to imitate the Black Circle and use his ‘new army’ as cannon fodder!”
I needed Cyrus’s calm because just the thought made me furious all over again, to the point that I started trembling. Until he caught my hands in his big, warm ones and smoothed up and down my arms. Up and down, up and down, and I felt my blood pressure go back to something like normal.
“That isn’t going to happen,” he assured me.
“Isn’t it? Cyrus, it was the first thing he thought of!”
“Yes, because he’s desperate. Vargulfs would have always been a contentious issue whenever they were raised. But right now, they’ve become a symbol for everything the clans see as a threat—”
“Which is basically anything different!”
“You said it yourself: it’s war.” The dark eyes were somber.
“People get antsy in war; they cling to the old tried-and-true ways, even if those don’t work anymore.
But they revert to them anyway because they want stability, reassurance, bedrock under their feet instead of quicksand. And they want a scapegoat.”
“But our clan can’t be that!” I said. “And they can’t be expected to fight and die in their damned war for them. For what? A system that disowned them? That threw them into the street? That’s what they’re supposed to give their lives for?”
“No. And they won’t. We’ll protect them. But right now, Sebastian isn’t thinking about them. He’s thinking about holding the clans together and dealing with Rand before the civil conflict grows any worse. He’s balancing a lot, Lia. Not just our conflict, but the Circle’s war as well—”
“It isn’t just the Circle’s war! It affects all of us, as we saw today. If the clans think they can stand apart, they’re lying to themselves!”
“I misspoke,” Cyrus said, his voice as calm as mine wasn’t. “I’ve been in too many meetings lately where that’s what everyone is calling it. I know differently, and so does Sebastian. But the clans don’t look at it that way.”
“And this whole thing today is going to make Sebastian’s job harder,” I said bitterly.
“Yes, but he’ll deal with it—”
“Cyrus—”
“He will. That’s why I risked what I did to get him the big chair,” he said, talking about the reason Cyrus had been vargulf for a while himself.
He had challenged his brother for control of Arnou back when Sebastian was one candidate out of several under consideration to lead the Were world.
He was the best choice by any possible rubric—except the one the clans used.
They wanted to see fierceness, a warrior, a big, slavering brute who could strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, as if this were the Middle Ages.
Which I sometimes thought was when most of the clans had stopped evolving.
So Cyrus had challenged and then thrown the fight, giving Sebastian a chance to look like the warrior he wasn’t. Not that he couldn’t throw down with the best of them, but he didn’t have that reputation because he preferred other methods. Methods that the clans didn’t value.
But the challenge—yeah, they had understood that. And as a result, Sebastian now had the big seat. I wondered whether he was currently happy about that.
“It’s his war, and we’ll help where we can,” Cyrus said, as if he’d been following my thoughts. “But we have our own war to fight, getting these people… something. Rehabilitation, recognition, some chance at a life.”
“How?” The more I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. “The clans aren’t going to help us, and Sebastian—I don’t know what he can or will do, but I doubt it’s going to be enough. It’s down to us, and Cyrus… God. What the hell have I done?”
That last came out in a whisper, because I was only now realizing the enormity of what I’d taken on.
Three hundred—and possibly more—broken lives.
Three hundred shattered psyches. Three hundred traumatized, marginalized, and desperate people who were now looking at me like I was the Second Coming, and how the hell had this happened?
“What you had to do,” Cyrus said softly. “Or most of those people downstairs would be in the hands of the dark. That’s a victory, Lia. You won today.”
“Sure.”
He arched an eyebrow at me. “You did,” he repeated, “but you’re right, we’re going to need help. I’ll work on that, but first, I need to know what has been going on with you. And don’t say you’re fine. We both know that’s a lie.”
“But it’s not, is it?” I had taken my arms back to wrap them around myself, but now I held them out again. “Look at me. A few scars, sure, but nothing serious, nothing debilitating, when I should be… I don’t know. But not like this!”
“No,” he agreed, the warm, dark eyes searching my face. “Not like this. What happened today?”
“I don’t know. What I told Sebastian—it was all I could think of, and he wanted an answer, but it doesn’t really fit. Not… everything.”
“It might. We don’t know what the captains of our people could do. Even the name has passed into legend.”
“Yeah, legends that don’t say anything useful! How am I supposed to deal with this when there’s no one alive who remembers—”
Someone knocked on the door outside.
“That’ll be the healer,” Cyrus said, getting up.
I caught his hand. “Tell them to come back later.”
He arched another eyebrow at me. “You need this, Lia.”
“You’ve seen me. I’m fine—”
“Physically, yes.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you just backed your bardric against the wall and bared teeth while you did it!”
“I didn’t!” He just looked at me. “Not the teeth!” That could have been interpreted as a direct challenge. Hell, it was one!
“Lia, I was there. And the fact that you don’t remember…”
He let it hang, and I gave up. Because yeah, there was something wrong with me. But why didn’t I think a healer was going to help?
Cyrus went outside, and I tried to figure out something to put on. I finally settled on the bathrobe, which was far too big, but it was either that or an evening dress. The only daywear the girls had bothered to pick up was now shredded on the basement floor.