Page 208 of The Mercy of Dawn

Murmurs and muffled voices came in waves from the door just a few feet away, but Cyril couldn’t pick up on the details of what was being said. Mostly Runa, she could tell, with another unfamiliar female voice and occasional top-ups of what could have been Lars or Mikael, she wasn’t sure.

Her eyes had slipped shut for long enough that when the hinges of the door squealed, she jolted upright.

“Cyr? I—Ah.” Mikael looked down and gave her a lopsided, exhausted smile. “There you are.”

Cyril went to haul her ass off the ground, but Mikael’s back met the wall and he slid down beside her, legs splayed out in front of him. Cyril offered him her hand, and he laced his fingers tightly with hers.

“Is he…?” There were too many ways for Cyril to end that question.

“Lucid, sort of.” Mikael nodded absently. She couldn’t imagine what the inside of his head felt like right now. “It comes and goes.”

“Do they know what’s wrong?”

“Something with his blood. An infection, I think? I didn’t entirely understand, but…”

“…He’s going to be alright?”

“Wren thinks so, but it’ll be a slow recovery. He’s ascended and hasn’t been able to fight it off on his own, so it’s something severe.” The prince freed his hair from its knot and raked his free hand through. “If his half-lucid ramblings are to be believed, he hasn’t been feeling well for weeks.”

“Weeks?” Cyril blinked. “And he didn’t tell anyone?”

Mikael nodded. “Apparently he didn’t want to worry anyone, with everything going on, so Reyna arranged for him to be treated in the city by healers from her village.” He cast Cyril a sidelong glance. “The same ones who have been treating her.”

Her eyes widened. “No.”

“Oh, yes.” Mikael huffed a bitter laugh. “Turns out I’m less of an idiot than everyone likes to assume. All these trips back home? Treatment. Because our healers here aren’t trustworthy.”

Cyril just shook her head.

The Forn’s renowned and beloved healers were nothing but a farce, acting in smoke and mirrors, and fear. It only took a single afternoon in the archives for Cyril to figure out that much. They were more worried about the state of those damned cosmic scales than they were about proper medicine.

It just never felt like Cyril’s place, to surface facts that Runa surely knew about her people. To weigh Mikael down with things that weren’t important. Every bit of knowledge she ever pulled from the archives proved to be useless, and why wouldn’t that have been any different?

But now? Maybe Cyril should have said something if it meant there was a sliver of a chance of sparing the family slowly becoming her own from this stress. If it meant she could have prevented the unease that she could see strung through every fiber of Mikael.

Maybe she should have told Mikael about the Forn’s beliefs on balances and scales and their archaic practices.

Maybe she should have told Runa about Mikael’s suspicions with Reyna’s health, and been a voice for him like he’d done endlessly for her.

Gods, maybe all three of them should have talked together about beliefs and farces, about scales and cleansing, about purists and the Forns.

Maybe she should have…

Cyril’s entire body tensed.

“Mika…?” she said quietly.

“Hm?” Mikael shifted in her periphery, but Cyril couldn’t pull her eyes away from the sterile, white wall opposite them. “What is it?”

“I…”

Cyril cleared her throat.

If she put any of this into words, there would be no going back.

If Mikael thought she was out of her mind, or overstepping her bounds, she had no course of recovery.

But she had to trust him.