Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
- MARCELLA -
“Are you going to tell me where you’re taking me? What this is all about?” I hiss at Devin a step above me as I ascend the last stair.
He doesn’t even afford me a glance. “No.”
As we exit the dining room doors and my attention slides to my left down the hallway, I snag on a particular wall. It holds no paintings. No curtains. Flat and plain, yet I can’t help staring at it. Waiting for something I can’t place before Devin grabs my arm to pull me away.
“Keep walking,” he grunts. “We’re on a tight timeline.”
I rip my arm out of his, glaring. “I will not walk until you tell me where you’re taking me.”
He turns to me with a sly chuckle. A hint of a bruise graces the bridge of his nose. “I’m not afraid to throw your stubborn ass over my shoulder.”
“I’ll scream.”
“And that’ll do…what exactly?” he challenges. Then nabs my arm again and shoves me forward. “Move. And don’t make me ask you again. Cyrus is requesting your immediate presence.”
Cyrus.
I pull a breath into my lungs as the flash of his letter from the night of eliminations replays through my mind.
We need to talk. Come to me alone.
Please.
Swatting Devin off me, I walk down the hall toward Cyrus’ office. He needed me, and…I never showed. Why? Had I fallen asleep?
That night is a blur in my mind. Layered over by the events of the trial, the ball, the elimination. As I try to sift through them, to pick out what happened after the eliminations, I come up empty-handed as Devin reaches past me to knock on Cyrus’ office door.
“Come in.” Cyrus’s voice is gruff on the other side.
Devin swings the door open. Cyrus has his back to us, leaning against the desk with his arms crossed and looking out the window at the mountain range.
The view alone evokes a massive wave of deja vu. His silhouette facing the window, head low.
“Make sure you close the door when you leave, Devin,” Cyrus says without looking at us.
Oh, Gods. He’s upset. Maybe angry. I glance at Devin, catching his eye before he shuts the door. Leaving me alone with Cyrus. I rest my hand at my thigh, feeling the absence of my knife.
“You never came,” Cyrus says quietly.
I open my mouth—unable to form the truth.
He turns slightly, his chin tucked into his broad shoulder as he looks down at my feet. “Why? I waited for you.”
“You’re angry with me,” I offer bluntly. “Am I to be punished for insubordination?”
He turns his face away again, hiding his expression as he looks out the window. For a long moment he is quiet. “No.”
I stare at his back. The sculpted set of his shoulders, framed by the soft fall of a white long-sleeved shirt. I wait for him to explain why he’s called upon me. Perhaps share what he needed me for two nights ago.
“Then why have you brought me here?” I whisper.
But when he doesn’t say anything more, I take a cautious step toward him.
Then another, glancing around him toward the windows to see what he’s fixated on.
I slide my hand across the top of his ornate desk, free from clutter.
Empty entirely. I revel at how smooth the wood is beneath my fingertips.
I stop. Flashes race through my mind too quickly it’s hard to capture them. Scratch marks. Spilled ink. A letter.
He whispers, “I’ve questioned long before we started this if it was a mistake. Every day, every moment, I’ve wondered if it was the wrong choice.”
I flinch away. Part of me doesn’t blame him. Have I made a public fool of him at the ball, then doubly so when he didn’t dismiss me? Again, when I have no clear answer of who the assassin is? I can only imagine what words about me Devin puts in his ear.
I turn at the edge of the desk a few paces away from him. Now that I have a view of his profile, he’s not looking out at the window. His eyes are low. Glued to a spot on the floor.
The somberness in his sharp expression gives me pause.
Gently as I can, I murmur, “It was wrong of me to not show when you called. But, Cyrus, can’t you see how hard this is for me?
I’m in the dark here. Fumbling around for answers to questions I don’t even know to ask.
And then I’m having to relive these…” I grit my teeth, forcing out, “painful memories, for a second time.”
“I know.” He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head harder. When he pushes off the desk and begins to walk away from me, he mutters, “I know, and I don’t fault you for it.”
But his defeated walk to the hearth has me striding after him. Feeling nearly desperate to have him not give up on me.
The words spill out. “I’m getting closer to the women. The trials, while traumatic, offer a special scenario where I can aid them and develop trust. I’m learning more. I’ll find the assassin. You have to believe me—”
“I do.” He grabs something off the hearth and turns to me. Then stretches his open, gloved hand out.
My jaw drops. Instantly I recognize what’s in his hand. My golden jeweled dagger.
“Take it,” he whispers, dipping his head. “Don’t tell anyone I let you have it.”
I glide toward him, slowly taking the dagger and flipping it over to where MB is carved into the hilt. “Am…I in danger?” I flick a look up at him.
“I need you now, more than ever, to trust your instincts.” His voice is gravely low. “Beyond what you can see or hear. Beyond what you can touch…” His voice trails off. He stalks over to the desk and pulls open a drawer, fishing out a sheath and holding it up for me.
As I take it from him and pull up the side of my skirts, he turns his face away. I secure the sheath there, then slide the dagger in before dropping my skirts and standing. Twisting and patting, I test to make sure it’s well hidden.
“What if I’m not successful?” My voice tightens with the onset of worry. This may very well be my last chance to set my brother free.
“Marcella…” He sighs my name, turning back to me. “You are the most skilled and intelligent woman I know. And unless there are…traitorous bees,” a soft chuckle interrupts him as he gazes into my eyes, “then you will surely find the traitor. And destroy them.”
“Destroy?” I take a step back.
“It is what you agreed to, yes.”
“That’s…” My face falls. “That’s why you’ve given me the dagger?”
His silence is confirmation. And though I’ve killed plenty of people in my years as a soldier, one question remains. “What if I’m wrong? What if I kill someone entirely innocent?”
“I trust in your instincts. And you have other eyes—Lady Bethany, Devin—”
“I do not trust Devin, first and foremost.” Don’t trust either of them.
“Why is that?” His question sounds genuine.
Shaking my head to clear out the cobwebs, I dig for a suitable reason. “I just don’t.”
“He values my life and this throne. I know you two have never gotten along—”
“Because he’s an asshat,” I growl.
“Marcella,” Cyrus warns.
“Fine. An overambitious man who thinks he needs to prove himself by overexerting his dominance, when really he’s just a frightened little—”
He holds up a hand. “I cannot stop your bickering, nor fix your shared distaste for one another. But while you’re assigned to this task, I ask that you don’t undermine him.
And certainly no laying of hands—and that goes for Devin, too.
If either of you breaks these rules, there’ll be severe consequences. ”
There’s a roaring in my blood. Anger I’m trying to suppress. I bow lightly. “Of course then, my King.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t call me that.”
I stalk toward him until I am at an arm’s length. “Why do you dismiss my formality with you? Why can’t anyone know about this dagger? Why does Devin hate me?”
“You know more than I do,” he whispers, holding my gaze.
“Don’t. Do not do that. You will not prance around the truth. I was within your circle as a soldier years ago. When I watched you walk into that reflection room with Lyra—” I jab a finger at his chest.
He takes a step back, flinching in shock, and I follow him to keep the same space between us.
“—I remembered. You took me in there before. When I found out about my brother being missing. And you…” I let my hand relax and my finger slide down his shirt for a moment before I drop my hand completely. My breath shudders in my chest as the emotions tumble in.
Pain. Fear. I’m experiencing it all over again.
I flit my gaze up to him, already watching me with a storm brewing in his eyes. Licking my lips to rid the dryness, I continue, “You held me in there. Brushed…brushed your hand down my hair.” I shake my head, tearing my gaze out of his to look at the bookshelf beside us.
“Yes,” he murmurs softly. “Keep going.”
I stroll along the bookshelf and glide my fingers across a shelf. Hundreds of books are tucked tight into each section. I can only wonder if he’s read them all, or simply collects them. “You have the Blood Ring.”
He clears his throat. “I do.”
I stop at a section on the bookshelf with an empty slot. As I survey the rest of the bookshelf, it’s the only empty spot. Turning, I glance at the desk and then at Cyrus. “Are the trials to test us for it?”
He nods once.
“Why?” I slip my hand off the bookshelf to face him entirely.
“Not everyone can wear it.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Not even you?”
He flinches, the movement subtle but I catch it in his shoulders. “No. Not even me.”
“This entire competition isn’t because you’re yearning for love, is it? It’s because you need someone to wield the ring.”
He crosses his arms over his chest, then leans a hip into one of the tufted armchairs. “I want it to be for both, but I don’t think it’s possible.”
“And why is that?”
He shakes his head, eyes falling to the floor. Taking a deep breath, he responds, “Because it’s not possible to love someone like me. Not truly, anyway. And over time, I’ve come to accept that. Because what I am will always overshadow who I am.”
I take a step closer to him, squinting at where I had sworn I saw fangs in the garden days ago. A trick of the light? Hallucination from stress and exhaustion? Or opium poppies, as Lyra suggested? “And what are you, exactly?”
He sweeps his gaze off the floor to me. “I am a King. I’m power, royalty, riches, and honor. If they do not fear me, they idolize me. And I’m afraid that the amount of power I have will always be why people surround me. Not because of who I am, but because of what I am.”
I frown, eyes trailing from his face down his shirt, his legs, to his boots. “You think they’ve all come here for the title of Queen. Not for love.”
He pushes up and walks to the hearth again. His back is to me. Using his boot, he toes a half-burned log up onto the others. “How can I blame them? And when one of them wants me dead? That they’re either here for fortune, power, title, or to kill me.”
“You’re afraid,” I murmur quietly.
He pauses, still staring down at the hearth.
“That’s why I called upon you after the elimination.
Before it, I wanted to consult with you before excusing some of the women, but you were angry with me.
I couldn’t get you alone. I had to make choices—ones I fear might have been wrong.
” He rests a forearm on top of the mantle.
“I stayed hours in this room after the eliminations, pacing it like a madman. Thinking that maybe you’d come and I could explain things.
Or I could at least know that keeping you wasn’t a mistake.
That you still wanted to be here. And when you didn’t come, I thought… ”
He blows out a breath. Something keeps me from walking to him. Something that keeps me silent.
Shaking his head, he whispers, “I thought that perhaps I did make a mistake. Perhaps I should have excused you, and I was holding you against your will.”
“I was processing,” I say quietly. “I still am. But you know it’s important to me to free my brother—and I do not back out from an agreement.”
A soft knock raps the door, and we both turn toward it. Devin calls from the other side, “My King, the women are moving to their lesson if you want Marcella to join them.”
We both slide our attention from the door to each other. Dipping my head, I glide toward the door. As I wrap my hand around the handle, I toss Cyrus a quick glance. “I did want to come see you. And I wish I had.”
Then I open the door and leave.