Page 235 of The Mercy of Dawn

They were going to drive him fucking mental.

Mikael tucked her back against his chest, to wash away the other reminders of the day he couldn’t have fathomed when she was nothing but sleepy smiles that morning.

He worked his fingers in feather-light sweeps up her arms and legs, across the thinning muscles of her back and stomach, rubbing away the more persistent smudges of blood and dirt and gore. He tried to not let his touch linger on the expanses of fresh, uneven scars on her thigh and waist.

When he was done, Mikael tipped Cyril’s face up and he kissed her.

Just a soft, affectionate touch, fueled by the selfish urge to soothe his soul a bit. But her eyes tracked him, half-hooded with rings of glimmering gold peeking out, and another smile tugged at her lips. A weapon that she wielded so damn effortlessly.

When she shifted, nestling her face into the crook of his neck, Mikael let out a shaky breath.

“You scared me today, wrath,” he said, because the silence felt suffocating.

“Why?” Her voice was so small, so tired.

“I thought I was going to lose you, and I’m not sure what I’d do without you.”

That was the frightening truth he’d come face-to-face with inside that cellar.

Cyril had been in his life for only months now, but he couldn’t imagine the possibility of it without her. She was everything to him, and the prospect of a future where she wasn’t the first thing he saw in the morning, or the last thing at night, wasn’t something he could come to terms with.

Cyril made a quiet, contemplative noise, but he didn’t get anything else out of her. And that was alright, because it wasn’t the time to pour out his undying feelings, not when he couldn’t fathom where to even begin.

So he held her instead. Kept every inch of her frame tucked safely against him, exactly where she belonged, until his mother’s voice carried through the bathroom door.

“Mika? Can I come in?”

The water in the basin was filthy and murky crimson, but he would’ve sat in here for another hour if it meant he got to keep holding Cyril. The filtration would catch up, eventually.

Runa knocked on the door.

“Come in,” he called out.

Mikael gathered Cyril up and started moving towards the submerged steps—he wasn’t looking forward to any bit of what was to come.

“These are for you,” his mother said as she nudged open the door and set a pile of clothing on the bathroom counter. She grabbed a plush, white towel from one of the side racks and held it open at the top of the steps. “I’ll take her out there and get her dressed and into bed while you get cleaned up and dried off.”

She glanced at the sopping wet pants that were now weighing him down as he climbed up the steps.

Point taken.

Mikael tried to ignore the whimper that left Cyril when he eased her down onto her feet, her body swaying uneasily as his mother wrapped a towel around her and tucked it in on itself. Those whimpers continued, rolling into protesting whines as Runa pulled Cyril’s arm across her shoulders, bearing the brunt of her weight, and started leading her out of the bathroom in slow steps. Every pained noise she made felt like a physical blow.

Mikael waited until his mother made it through the door with her to peel off his wet clothes and give himself the hastiest wash down of his life.

By the time Mikael was clean and dressed, his mother had worked a miracle.

Not only was Cyril propped up in bed against a nest of pillows, but she was dressed in a dark tunic and shorts, and his mother was wrapping a bandage around her thigh. The room was warm and dimly lit, and a crate of what looked like medical supplies sat at his mother’s feet.

“It’s frightening how fast you—”

Mikael stilled when he got close enough to see Cyril’s face.

Her eyes glistened with tears and she coughed quietly into the sleeve she had pressed to her face. Miserable wouldn’t even scratch the surface of how she looked.

“Compliments later.” Runa's voice was clipped as she kept working the roll of bandage around Cyril’s thigh. The scent hit him then, of pungent medicinal ointment—like mint and clove, and something unpleasantly bitter. “She’s in a bit of pain, but the tonic the infirmary sent up for her should take effect soon.”

His mother kept talking, something or other about the properties of the ointment compound, but Cyril had every bit of his attention hooked. The waves of pain that crested in her face. The tears that just rolled down her cheeks.