Page 173 of The Mercy of Dawn

Anger at Dion for leaving the day after the pyre without a single fucking word.

Anger at Ren and Tyr too, for leaving her when she needed them.

Tragedy had struck their tiny, cobbled-together family, and they all just left.

There was so much more to that anger too, simmering just beneath her roiling surface. Glimmers of words Dion uttered to her at the pyre that night that she struggled to forget.

She tried to drown it all with drink instead of letting it come up for a breath of cataclysmic air.

Mikael didn’t say a word each time she filled her glass, or as she traded barbs with Dion night after night. His eyes spoke volumes about how wary he was of everything that she did, but he never strayed from his self-imposed duties.

Even with underhanded comments from Dion seeing them out, Mikael would take her uncoordinated self back to her room and make sure she at least got her boots off before she crawled into bed. If he ever spent the night, she wasn’t sure, but he was always gone when she’d wake up at noon the next day.

Three weeks after Bronson’s death, everything reached its breaking point.

Mikael was at a loss for how to deal with Cyril anymore.

Comforting her through her sadness was one thing.

In a lot of ways, it felt like it came second nature to him to take care of her like that. He struggled a bit to change course when she built her walls back up, but they fell into a new routine again.

Now, though? He didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

And it wasn’t that Cyril’s anger was misplaced. In a way, though, he understood Dion as well. The Rogue Master didn’t seem like the sort of man to sit around and stew in his feelings, and he had work to do.

But it would have been in everyone’s best interest if he attempted to spend a day or two with Cyril before he took off. These were family politics he didn’t, and wouldn’t, understand.

Each night, he watched Cyril carefully as she and Dion traded snide comments, most of which devolved into nothing more than her calling him an asshole and him saying she was childish. Mikael usually found an excuse to wrangle her drunk ass up to bed shortly after that happened.

And every night, like fucking clockwork, Cyril would make some half-assed, liquored-up attempt at goading him into properly sleeping with her. Mikael refused to cross that line, and she’d usually pass out before he even turned her down.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t envy Astor and Reyna and the convenient excuse they found to spend the week back at her village after the first tense night.

And now? Mikael would give up a limb to be anywhere but this dining room after the words that just came out of Dion’s mouth.

“Gods, you are so much like your fucking father.”

Not a compliment, by any means, if the way Cyril stiffened and his mother intoned Dion’s name was any indicator. Mikael hadn’t even heard what she said to Dion before, and he regretted that lapse in attention.

“Excuse me?” A frightening sort of calmness settled into Cyril’s voice.

A cruel smirk tugged at Dion’s lips as he leaned in. “I said, you are just like your fucking father.”

“Like I’m supposed to know what the fuck that means,” Cyril scoffed and drained her wine. Mikael didn’t even have a chance to grab the bottle before she filled her glass again, nearly to the brim.

“It means you think the entire fucking world revolves around you,” he sneered. “It’s fuck everybody else and their feelings as long as you get yours, right? As long as someone is there to stroke your fragile fucking ego.”

Dion punctuated those last three words with purpose and the table fell silent.

“Dion, I think you’ve made—” his mother started, but Dion had the audacity to hold his hand up at her. The audacity to silence the Queen of Reykr in her own fucking home.

Mikael straightened in his seat.

“Oh, I am not done.” Dion leaned further forward, bracing his hands on the table. “Hector acted like a child until the very day that he ended his cowardly life and left everyone else to deal with his fucking problems. So until you grow the fuck up and start getting your shit together, you are no better than him. You are a drunk and a wreck and a burden to everyone, just like he was.”

The only purpose Dion’s words served was to maim, and brutally at that.

As the very man who raised her, he knew how to do it with frightening proficiency. He knew every little insecurity that Cyril bore the heavy weight of, every little thing that made her tick, and he wielded that knowledge with lethality.