Page 165 of The Mercy of Dawn

“It’s been nearly two days, and if that useless fuck can’t be bothered to get her out of there before the pyre…”

“Mikael,” she intoned, features pinched as she rubbed at her brow, “they are both grieving a loss that I cannot even fathom and—”

“And she could be fucking dead in there for all we know.” He threw a hand towards Cyril’s door and his mother fixed him with a lethal stare.

“Do. Not. Even—”

“Ah, Your Majesties?” The poor housekeeper standing between them with an uneasy look on her face held up a key. “This is for Lady Cyril’s room.”

She made no move to unlock the door, and his mother took a step back as she said, “This is all you, my boy.”

Mikael sighed and took the key from the maid. The lock turned over easily, and the maid was gone the instant the key was back in her hands.

“Well?” Runa looked at him and then eyed the door expectantly. He scoffed. “We’ve come this far, open the damn door and let’s make sure she’s all right.”

It wasn’t easy to ignore the anxious feeling that surged up through him, but he smothered it down as he clasped the handle and turned it.

She was fine, he told himself, because there just wasn’t another option. Nothing bad had happened to her. She just needed time and probably had just cried herself to sleep. She hadn’t drowned in the bath. Or drank herself to death. Or hurt—

The door wouldn’t budge.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he grumbled as he leaned his weight against it and pushed. The wood groaned but didn’t yield.

“It’s stuck?” his mother asked from her safe distance of observation.

“Very.” Mikael took a step back and stopped to think.

More force didn’t seem like the answer, as much as he felt like just throwing himself against the door until it came off its hinges. He wouldn't put it past Cyril to have barricaded herself in with every bit of damn furniture in the room.

And if going through the door wasn’t an option…

“Wait here,” he said to his mother as he handed her his jacket and started heading back down the hall.

He didn’t even need to look back to know how unimpressed she was when she called out, “And where are you going?!”

Maybe it wasn’t the most well-thought-out idea Mikael ever had.

His front half was filthy and soaked through by the time he finished scaling the drainpipe running alongside Cyril’s balcony. It would be his luck that they’d just had nearly an entire day of rain. But it was fine because all that separated him from the reassurance he desperately needed was a set of already half-open patio doors.

At least one thing decided it wanted to work in his favor.

“Cyr?” he called out in a harsh whisper as he slipped through the doors. The room was dim, lit only by the fleeting traces of evening light.

Silence and damp, frigid air answered him.

He sidestepped the writing desk beside her patio doors, half pulled out from the wall with a tipped-over water jug on it, and slid a couple of discarded cushions out of the way with his foot.

Not only was the room freezing, but it was a fucking mess.

Admittedly, he was a little distracted during his last visits to her room, but this felt entirely wrong.

Books and linens and things he couldn’t quite make out in the shadows were tossed about everywhere, and an overturned armchair occupied the center of the room. And all it took to bar entrance to her room was the chair from her writing desk, jammed under the door handle, and a couple of slim books wedged beneath the door.

“Cyr, are you in here?” Mikael asked again, as gently as his budding guilt would allow.

Fuck giving her space. He never should have waited this long to check on her.

That unease swelled something fierce when his eyes caught on dark droplets woven in circling paths amongst her discarded belongings.