Page 161 of The Mercy of Dawn

“I, uh, yeah—”

“Only when he drinks, just like his father,” Runa interjected, because Mikael was evidently a child and couldn’t speak a damn word for himself.

She smiled too warmly, too forced, like she was desperate to remind Dion that Mikael was cut from the same cloth as his dear friend.

But Mikael wasn’t.

He and Lars had painfully little in common.

Dion tossed him the case and held open his hand once Mikael fished one of the tobacco rolls out, a lick of flame swirling across his palm. It shouldn’t have felt degrading to lean over and light the end of his tobacco like that, not with how many times Gunner had done the same thing for him, but it did.

A subtle display of dominance, and a message fucking received.

“Appreciated.” Mikael tossed the case back to Dion, getting nothing but a silent half-nod.

Mikael didn’t let his gaze linger long, but there was not a single trace of the man he glimpsed in his mother’s memories left in Dion. Memories from only twenty-five years ago, at that. Not kind years, Mikael supposed, with the tragedies that ravaged the Rhodea family. Dion was nothing but hard edges and darkness now.

Mikael turned his attention to the fireplace and let the tobacco fill his lungs.

“Will you all be here for long?” Runa broke the budding tension, as his mother was always good at doing. “I’m thinking we should eat outside if we’ve got a crowd, I’ll just need to—”

Dion shook his head.

“Don’t worry about making plans for us. The others are heading back tomorrow and I’ll likely go the day after. They needed a change of scenery. Morale has been…” He laughed roughly. “Well, it’s been fucking piss poor to put it lightly.”

“Not much luck with leads?” his mother asked, even though Mikael was aware how loosely his father spoke with her. She knew everything.

“Nothing that holds up once one of the boys gets through with it.”

Mikael didn’t even want to know what that meant.

Cyril had made a couple of offhand, drunk comments about what each of her uncles was skilled at—what they had each taught her to do—as casually as if they were good at knitting.

That was enough for his imagination.

“No one had any complaints when I suggested a night off. I know that one has missed them too.” Dion took a drag of his cigarette and jerked his chin back towards where Cyril and the others sat as he exhaled. “So, four birds, one stone.”

“You always have been painfully pragmatic,” Runa chuckled, and Dion held up his hands in some kind of mock defense. His lopsided smile tugged at the wicked scar down the right side of his face.

The next hour proved to be one of the most awkward of Mikael’s life.

His father and Dion supplied nearly all the conversation, shooting back and forth about something to do with the politics of the mortal lands that Mikael didn’t quite understand, and his mother provided airy little top-ups where she could.

Get to know Dion. Easy for his mother to say when the man actually spoke to her.

Mikael polished off another two glasses and three tobacco rolls—all proactively and silently supplied by Dion—and finally saw his opportunity for escape when a few lingering guards filed out.

“I’m going to turn in as well,” Mikael cut in and stood when his mother and father and Dion’s gazes followed the group out.

He did not expect Dion to stand as well.

“I’ll walk with you.”

Mikael almost sat back down but his mother was up next, giving him a less than discreet smile of encouragement as she hugged them both goodnight before she sat on the arm of his father’s chair. Lars didn’t even bother getting up, just waved them both off with a wry smile Mikael knew meant he was a little too far into his cups.

“After you.”

Dion motioned to the door and, against every instinct to not leave his back open to this man, Mikael walked ahead of him. He caught the briefest glimpse of Cyril, braiding Bronson’s hair of all damn things with a shit-eating grin on her face, before he slipped down the hall.