Page 246 of The Mercy of Dawn

“Afternoon,” he said, and that certainly explained why the sunlight pouring in through her bedroom windows hurt her eyes so fucking badly. Well, that and the head injury too. “How are you feeling?”

She sighed through her nose. “I don’t know.”

“Better than yesterday?”

Well, her throat didn’t feel like it had as much glass in it. The pounding in her head had settled into something a shade or two away from bearable too. The tight, pulling ache low in her chest was new though, and not something she was impressed to wake up to.

“A bit, I guess. It’s—”

Her attention snagged on the papers that Dion absentmindedly straightened out and tossed on the end of her bed.

“What’s that?” she asked, as if he might deign to tell her something for once in her life. Dion eyed her and then the papers with unease for long enough that Cyril pressed half of her face into the plush end of her duvet and sighed, “Never mind.”

“It’s Wren’s report on your injuries, Cyr.”

Cyril blinked down at him. Dion already had the papers back in his hands.

“And what does it say?”

“...You really want to know?”

“I’d like to know why I feel like such shit—” Cyril couldn’t hold back her ragged cough. The shards of glass were back. “Aside from the broken leg business.”

To that, at least, Dion huffed a laugh and shook his head.

“Let’s see.” He sat back in his chair, shuffling through the papers until he found one to pull to the top of the pile. “You had…a fractured pelvis and shattered femur, a complete abdominal tear, a collapsed lung, multiple damaged organs, a severe concussion…”

The unimpressed, sidelong glance Dion cast at Cyril drew a quiet “Oh” from her.

“Oh, indeed. And where was…” He flipped through the pages again. “Ah, here. ‘Upon my arrival, the patient—Cyril Rhodea, age twenty-one—presented with near critical exsanguination as a result of her grievous abdominal injuries’...”

“Exsan—” Cyril’s eyes narrowed. Maybe the concussion was to blame but… “What does that mean?”

“You nearly bled to death.”

The hint of bitter amusement vacated Dion’s voice, leaving tension in the air that Cyril wanted nothing to do with.

And it wasn’t easy to shove aside the part of her that wanted to go toe to toe with him on instinct. The part of her that wanted to joke about how fitting it would have been if she went out like her mother did. But she was exhausted.

She didn’t have it in her to fight with him, though.

Instead, she pushed herself upright in a slow and painful motion, and said, “I’m sorry about last night.”

That, at least, was the truth.

The finer details of what drove her screaming out into the hall hadn’t stuck around, and for that she was grateful, but the aftermath was clear. She owed Lars and Runa an apology too, for having a fucking meltdown in the hallway and ruining their evening.

“Cyr, you do not have to apologize for that.” Dion’s eyes softened. He sighed, tossing the medical report back onto the foot of her bed. “You shouldn’t have been alone, not so soon. I…I hadn’t known he—”

“Mikael had to go, he didn’t have a choice.”

That was what she kept telling herself, at least, that he had duties and obligations that had to come before all else. But just saying his name hurt a part of her deep down inside. A single day, and she was pining after him like a lost puppy.

She’d blame that on the head injury, too, or maybe the blood loss.

“I realize that now, and I don’t envy what he has to do.”

As Dion leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, Cyril wondered just how many times he delivered news like that, to the families of men who died far too soon, all in the name of their work.