Page 163 of The Mercy of Dawn

She always knew it was only a matter of time before Dion’s habits caught up with him. Before he smoked and drank too much and hurt himself badly. Or worse.

But she wasn’t ready for that to happen here.

Not here, not now. Not anywhere, or ever.

“Dove, wait, do not go in there.” Tyr was moving, his voice desperate, but Cyril was closer to the infirmary doors than he was.

“Tyr, what happened?” she choked out, tears already running down her face. “Is Dion—where is he?”

“Please dove, wait—”

Panic tore through Cyril as she flung the infirmary door open.

She shouldn’t have been worrying about Dion.

Halfway into the room that reeked of death, her uncle was staring down at an exam table. Laying on that table, battered and broken, and draped up to the chest in a sterile white sheet, was Bron.

A ragged, broken sound left Cyril.

She surged forward, but two broad arms wrapped around her and held her in place.

Nononononononono—

“You shouldn’t see him like this, Cyr.” Tyr’s voice was hoarse, laden with grief.

She fought against his hold, writhing and twisting, and sobbing for him to let her go.

She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the lifeless pallor set into Bron’s skin.

The gaping wound in his throat.

His blood-soaked, matted hair, still half braided back.

“Please, dove, come outside.”

Cyril’s feet left the ground, and she threw her elbows back against Tyriel’s chest, clawing at the arms wrapped tightly around her.

“No!” she cried. “No, no, no, no—”

“Tyriel, let her go.”

Dion’s flat, empty voice stilled them both, and Tyr eased his hold on her.

She pushed away from him, making it all of two steps forward before the cold, stone floors met her hands and knees.

The sobs that seized every inch of her body were violent, and she couldn’t catch her fucking breath. The weight of the entire room felt like it bore down on her, the air so thick with death that her lungs refused to take it.

Bron couldn’t be… No.

She needed him more than she needed anyone else in her life.

The possibility of an existence without him was never an option.

The man who taught her how to swim and ride and fight; how to nurse her first hangover, and the dozens that followed. The man who knew all her secrets, who helped her clean and wrap her wounds when she was too afraid to tell Dion. The man who held her after Keelie died, when everyone else wrote it off as a shame and nothing more.

Glimmers of it all ravaged her mind.

And he was so smart, so careful. He never, never would have…