Page 52 of Nemesis Mine
He wanted to turn and demand an explanation, push back at Balthazar until he could make sense of all that had happened. But he could not afford to waste any more time. He had to get out.
It never meant anything.
He couldn’t think of it; he had lingered too long already. A breath tried and failed to calm his erratic pulse. It would have to do.
Cyrus steeled himself and walked on.
He thought of Maximillian as he dispatched the gaoler. Sleepy and sluggish, just as Balthazar had promised. The man barely managed a groan as Cyrus seized the arm he threw up in flailing, uncoordinated defence and shoved him headfirst into the stone wall. The wound burned and fresh red seeped through the bandages. Cyrus welcomed the distraction.
He thought of Maximillian as he made his way up the stairs, sucking in a lungful of musty, chilled air to keep his head clear and his strength up. Balthazar’s directions led him to a horse: a bay with a glossy black mane, friendlier than he was used to. He walked alongside for the first few minutes before clambering up onto the horse’s back in an ungainly lurch. At any moment he expected to hear yelling, angry cries and pounding feet on the dusty ground; tofeel grasping hands at his ankle, the edge of his borrowed cloak. His nerves bristled on high alert. Still, he thought of Maximillian.
When the yells did start, they were distant enough for Cyrus’s breath to come a little easier. He rode to the outskirts of the city, taking a slower, more circuitous route to avoid the suspicion of careering directly through Heliarth’s central district at a frantic pace. The squat cottages here were packed tightly, red stone shouldering russet with thin alleyways snaking between, too narrow for the washing lines strung up by optimistic residents. In contrast to the glamour of the centre with its designer shops, the residential quarter leaned into practicality: butcher, blacksmith, grocer, carpenter. The baker folding down his awning sold bread rather than fancy pastries, though intricate leaves still curled into the golden-brown sourdough piled in a crate by his door.
A gang of children ran barefoot from an alleyway, giggling as they darted past his horse, led by a young girl with smudges of red dust on her cheeks and flyway hair. Clutching a twig in one hand, she pointed it towards the rest of her group before posturing with a hand planted against her hip. “I am the mighty Maximillian, and I will destroy you, evil wrongdoer!”
Clearly, putting the champion from his mind wasn’t an option. Cyrus, his head bent low over the horse’s neck, couldn’t resist a quick glance up. Another girl, black hair almost to her waist, held her own twig aloft. “Not if I get you first, disgusting champion!” she bellowed with gusto.“I am Earthshaker and all fear me!” She stomped hard on the ground, then darted forward and jabbed her companion unnecessarily hard. The first girl shrieked and ran off, the other leaping to enthusiastic pursuit. The rest of the horde ran after them, chanting eagerly for a fight.
Well. At least he’d achievedsomethingtoday, even if it was only providing a bad influence for Heliarth’s children. He nudged the horse onwards until he left the suburbs behind, the archway of the city’s main gate materialising before him.
There, on the most westerly hill, sat a fine manor house, sprawling over three floors and overlooking lush green gardens. Thick hedgerows framed the grounds on all sides. The house was built from the same red stone with cream balconies stretched across wide, airy windows, and as Cyrus stared he couldn’t help but imagine Maximillian standing upon one of those balconies, the sun catching in his hair as he surveyed his kingdom.
Maximillian, who had planned this from the start.
Cyrus dragged his gaze away from the house, looking through the archway instead. He could just about make out the stable by the paddock where he’d tethered Soulripper. It would take two days to get back to Ranragh, if he abandoned Balthazar’s plan and went home.
He wanted to. In some ways, he very much wanted to.
But then there was Maximillian, and the invisible thread that seemed to bind them so inexorably. His eyes on Cyrus’s, willing him to trust.
The way that Cyrus did, despite everything.
A moment more of indecision. His side pulsed. Two days of riding loomed before him, sore and painful. An empty lair at the other end.
Or...
Cyrus swallowed, and turned the horse towards the westerly hill.
Chapter Thirteen
“There you are!”
Cyrus jerked awake. The movement jarred and his hand went to his abdomen with a groan. Maximillian, standing above him, immediately dropped to a concerned crouch.
Damn it.
He’d planned to be ready for Maximillian’s return. Stony-faced, prepared for confrontation. But he’d been so tired. The house on the hill was deserted, as Balthazar had said it would be. Nobody would bother to look for an errant wrongdoer among Maximillian’s roses. Cyrus had let the horse loose in an orchard of fig trees behind the house and scoped out the rest: the front of the building looking out over the lawn, the enormous wooden gate at the back flanked on each side by thick, dense hedges. On any other day, Cyrus would have carved his own entrance through those hedges with ease. But his magic remained stubbornly dormant just as it had in the gaol, resistant now to any attempt to call it.
Sitting down in the orchard had been pleasant; a moment of peace. Most of the spring fruit had gone unharvested, falling shrivelled and overripe to the ground, but a fresh crop was purpling overhead. A family of sprites, their wings a shade darker than the pale lilac of his own nuisances, had clustered around a ripe fig hanging from a nearby branch. They startled when they saw Cyrus, flitting back to their tree, but they soon ventured out again. He watched through half-open eyes as minuscule fingers prodded the fig to test it. One sprite unsheathed the tiny elbow barb they used for digging out tree sap and slit the fruit open. The pleased buzzing as they fed was a familiar backdrop.
He had only intended to rest—just close his eyes for a minute or two. But he’d fallen asleep in the orchard up on the hill whilst Heliarth panicked below.
Now Maximillian was here, knelt before him, blue eyes full of worry as he looked Cyrus over. As though he wasn’t the onedirectly responsiblefor Cyrus’s predicament in the first place.
Outrage stirred. Rather than any of the well-considered and suitably confrontational openings he had mulled over in the shade of the tree, what came out was a petulant:
“You fucking stabbed me.”
Maximillian blinked. Whatever he had been expecting, that was not it. “I know. I—”
