Page 13 of The Mercy of Dawn

It turned out that Dion had a wildly different opinion on what soon enough meant compared to Cyril and the rest of her uncles.

Frigid darkness bathed the rift almost in its entirety by the time Cyril noticed Dion veering from the middle of the passageway, towards shadowed openings lining the outer edge of the bend they traveled.

Carved openings. Not jagged splits in stone.

These were smoothed and squared with purpose.

Cyril sagged with relief.

Dion was the first to dismount, with the others following close behind. Cyril's struggle to dismount Attie against the vehement protests of her stiff body went unnoticed, thankfully.

She hadn’t known what to expect when she crossed through the threshold of the angled stone entryway behind Bron, but it sure as fuck wasn’t a hallway carved into the rock.

Wide enough for the horses to move about with ease and twice as high as Ren was tall, the hallway had several posts hewn right into the walls, which her uncles had already begun tethering their steeds to.

Dion must have noticed her gaping.

He took Attie’s lead from her hand, passed it off to Bron, and steered her further into the mountain.

“Better than some inns we’ve stayed in, hey?” Dion chuckled, and Cyril could only nod as her eyes swept around the cavern they entered. She didn’t even care that her uncle conjured a flame in his palm to light their path. That minor fact would circle back to gnaw at her later. But for now…

The cavern had to be three or four times the height of the hall, and easily as wide as it was tall. A pit sat in the center of the imposing space, perfect for the fire Dion already set about starting, and—

Cyril looked at her uncle and blinked.

Dion had a fucking log in his hand. They had packed nothing of the sort, and gods knew nothing could grow in the middle of a damn mountain.

“Where did you get that?”

He pointed at a cubby carved into the stone wall.

Full of logs.

Cyril gave him a sheepish smile. She may have been a well-prepared rogue, but she sure as fuck wasn’t an observant one.

“Reykr royal patrols make sure the basics stay stocked for any travelers, even though they’re scarce.” Dion looked amused at her bewilderment. “You didn’t see the feed for the horses, did you?”

She blinked back towards the hall.

“…I didn’t.”

Truthfully, her mind was struggling just to wrap itself around the fact that the refuge existed in the first place, let alone was stocked.

“It’s almost like those freaks aren’t as bad as everyone thinks.” Dion cocked a brow at her as he rose from the fire pit, his flames now engulfing the logs and kindling.

“You can set your bedroll down into one of those—” He nodded over to a row of shallow basins carved into the stone floor. “More comfortable than they look, and you won’t have to worry about Ren rolling over and smothering you in the middle of the night.”

She wished that was just a joke, but it had happened twice already, and Cyril was dying for a single damn night of uninterrupted sleep.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Cyril glanced between her uncle, the beds, and the fire.

It was all mighty fucking weird.

Chapter 4

With their dried rations stored for the morning, Cyril headed back to where Dion had settled on a folded bedroll in front of the fire to clean his blades.