Page 11 of The Mercy of Dawn

The water-bearing healer who couldn’t mend her own wounds as she bled out.

Just who Cyril wanted to take after.

“You’ve made your point,” she muttered. Maybe she could still salvage their conversation, get something out of him that wasn’t his usual runaround. “Was it obvious when your ascension happened?”

Dion snorted.

“Incredibly.” His tone bore a hell of a sharp edge to it—any patience he had for her was gone.

“How so?”

The sidelong glance he cast her was chilling.

“Not up for discussion.”

And just like that, Dion urged his horse to pick up speed and left Cyril to fall back in line. She knew better than to say another thing to him, even if her pounding heart screamed at her to do otherwise.

“Everything alright?” Bron murmured as he trotted up beside her. Strands of his long, golden-blonde hair had already slipped from the braid he let her weave it into before they left camp.

Cyril squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to acknowledge the burn that pricked at the corners of them, and took a shaky breath.

She shook her head.

No, things weren’t alright and no, she did not want to talk about them.

She couldn’t let Dion get to her, not this early on.

“You’ll get there, dove.”

Bron believed in her to a fault, far more than Dion and her other uncles ever did. And that was why, right now, she couldn’t look at him. Not when his forest-green eyes would be soft and full of so much pity. Empathy, he would argue, but it always felt like pity.

That night, when they settled for camp, Dion tasked Cyril with taking their water skins to the river for refilling.

When she returned, the campfire was already lit.

Chapter 3

Cyril spent plenty of her life on horseback, sometimes days at a time traveling to other guild contracts, but on the fifth day of their trip to Reykr? She contemplated her odds of making the journey on foot.

She hadn’t been able to feel her backside for about a day, and a miserable, achy pain pulsed up her spine with every step Attie took.

The terrain did her sanity no favors, either.

Their cabal reached the base of the Stygia Mountains the previous night, enjoying what would be their last meal of fire-cooked game for a few days. As the first warm, pink, and blue whispers of dawn washed over them from the east, they began their alpine ascent.

Long gone were the gentle slopes of packed earth trails leading them from the dense forests into the copse-dotted foothills. All that carried them now was a cragged stone trail winding up to the Obsidian Rift. Cyril missed the soothing sounds of the forest and its denizens, the soft bubbling of the creek running beside them. Now the only noise that filled her ears was that of hooves on loose rock and the brutal wind howling all around them.

Even donning a thick cloak with a heavy cowl, and gloves she rifled from her saddlebags hours ago, Cyril felt like a block of ice. Her uncles, both blood and borrowed, seemed unphased by the drastic change in weather, and she did not know how.

Hells, they even seemed to enjoy themselves now.

What a cruel turn of the tides.

Ahead of her, Bron and Dion rode together and held some semblance of casual conversation for most of the day—guild business from the bits and pieces she overheard from them. The first time they laughed, it startled her and made her wonder if the cold had gone to her head.

Behind her, Tyr and Rendall rode a bit more staggered, but one occasionally caught up to or fell behind the other, discussing things she could never quite hear over the wind.

And then there was Cyril.