Page 100 of The Mercy of Dawn

“I hit that right on the head, didn’t I?”

He beamed with pride as he smoothed down the front of his uniform.

“Gods, did you ever.” She wiped at her face, a wheeze of a laugh leaving her. “I’ve never—”

A single knock rapped at the door before the hinges creaked open.

Friendly and frightening stuck his head in, and Soren shrank back.

“Hi, dove.” Bron grinned at her in that wry way of his. He tossed an appraising glance around the cramped office before he said, “Have you eaten?”

A quiet growl rumbled in her stomach, and she shook her head.

“Come on then.” Bron pushed the door the rest of the way open. “Let's go for a walk and grab some dinner.”

A walk, in Brynnhold?

Cyril was out of her chair before Bron finished speaking.

The walk down to the docks wasn’t as long as Cyril hoped, but as they wove through the cobbled streets and towards the briny smell of the sea, she glimpsed three yellow ribbons and a single white one tied to the front doors of various row houses. Three new babies and a passing, if she remembered Soren correctly.

And just like he said, Brynnhold was a sweeping sea of stone.

She hadn’t given a second thought to the rows upon rows of stone structures when they first arrived, but now she understood the practicality of it.

It must have been one hells of a fire if after all this time the city-dwellers still insisted on building from stone. Except for easy-to-replace structures like doors and window sills, and little vendor stalls, the people of Brynnhold constructed everything from gray and cream-colored stone.

Well, everything except for the docks in the harbor, of course. There might have been more planks of wood there than in the rest of the city combined.

By this time in the evening, the hustle and bustle Cyril witnessed in the markets quieted into more of a gentle buzz, and the docks sat full of bobbing fishing boats moored for the night. Outside of a few straggling deckhands and workers still milling about, Cyril and Bron had the place to themselves.

Which was for the best, considering the ferocity with which she inhaled the mincemeat pastry that Bron bought for her on the walk down.

“What did you say this was?” Cyril asked after she swallowed down the last bit of it. She peeked back into the parchment, and her hope of finding another piece was crushed.

Cyril pouted.

Bron laughed as he crumpled his own parchment and tossed it out into the water. “No idea what it’s called. But I think I’ve eaten my body weight in them and they’re fucking delicious.”

“They really are.”

Cyril took one last look in the wrap before she tossed hers over the edge of the dock as well. She wondered if the palace kitchen would take any offense to her making a special request when they went back…

“So,” Bron started, knocking Cyril right off the cloud of food-induced bliss she drifted on. “I heard from a little Dion-shaped birdie that you”—he bumped her shoulder—“may or may not have beaten the ever-loving shit out of Prince Asshole a couple of weeks ago?”

“I did.” She beamed. “In front of a bunch of the guards too.”

“Good.” There was a sort of unrestrained pride on Bron’s face even as she swatted and swore at him when he reached to ruffle her hair. “I wouldn’t expect anything less, you know.”

She knew that well.

But at least Bron dished out praise and expectations in equal measures.

“Did Dion tell you about anything else I’ve been doing?”

Like maybe all the damn time she’s spent in the archives, trying to learn an entire other language. An almost dead one, at that.

“Well…” His brow creased. “He may have also less enthusiastically mentioned that the same prince is getting a bit too…comfortable with you?”