Page 243 of The Mercy of Dawn
Cyril drew a shaky breath and blew it out slowly.
A part of her felt empty in the most painful way, like Mikael carved out a piece of her when he walked out that door. She wasn’t sure how that could ever ease, how it could not feel like a void lingered in his absence. But Cyril was too exhausted to consider the implication of the ache tethered deep in her chest.
Runa’s fingers skimmed through her hair idly, and the queen said, “Get some rest.”
Chapter 63
Nothing but screaming filled Cyril’s ears.
Her own screaming.
A terrifying, familiar slickness coated her skin, and she…
Her chest heaved of its own frantic volition. Bursts of pain tore up through her side with each sawed breath her lungs fought to draw of damp, decay-laced air. The sickly metallic tang of blood coated Cyril’s mouth as she struggled to get herself upright, the cold and gritty ground biting into her palms and knees.
Not plush carpet runners.
Not smooth, polished moonstone.
Despite her frantic blinking, the abyssal black filling her vision refused to clear.
No hearth crackled gently across the room.
No dull murmur of life in the hall.
No wind rattling the window panes.
Thick, heavy silence filled the air around her.
Cyril’s heart raced, goosebumps rippling up her flesh, and every instinct in her body told her to run, to move, to go.
But she struggled to get up.
She could barely will her leg to bear the full breadth of her weight, the muscle locked and searing, the bone aching and—
“It wakes.”
Every bit of air knocked from Cyril’s lungs with a sob, and she fucking ran.
Nausea-inducing agony be damned. She had to move. She had to get somewhere, anywhere but here.
Cyril clasped a hand over her traitorous mouth, trying to smother the cries that the rattling, otherworldly voice pulled from her. It echoed and rumbled from every fucking direction. No matter how hard she ran, no matter how far she ran.
In the unyielding pitch black, her collision with a stone wall was jarring.
Smooth and cold, the impact rattled her bones, and she staggered away.
“Cyril!”
No.
No.
No.
Cyril had to go. She had to keep running.
But she fucked up.
