Page 5 of The Mercy of Dawn

“Bloodsucking? Oh, Cyr, for the love of—”

“Yes, Dion, bloodsucking. Virgin sacrificing. Naked seances under the full moon, type fucking lunatics.” Her old governess, Millie, had told her as much. Most of the guildsmen she’d grown up around thought just as little of them and their dark arts, too.

Them, being the moon-fae of Reykr, the secluded and northernmost region of Carinae. They were strange and reclusive fae, marked by the wicked sets of sharp, double canines they all bore, who retreated to their isolated lands centuries upon centuries ago when the Great Kingdom of Carinae first fell. Retreated—or were pushed out, depending on who you asked—to the north of the Stygian mountain range.

“Well, if that’s what you want to believe, then I guess that makes you a quarter lunatic.” Dion had the audacity to look amused. He raised his brows at her in that smug, knowing way of his and took a long sip of his tea before he muttered, “Really explains a lot.”

Cyril ignored that.

“Do I even have a say on if I’m going or not?” Cyril planted herself in front of a window, staring out down the path towards the stables. She waited for the answer she already knew.

It took a single breath for Dion to say, “No, you don’t.”

Cyril picked at the jagged corner of her nail, likely a casualty of her ass meeting the floor one too many times. She hesitated before she asked, “When do we leave?”

She heard Dion stand and turned to see him smoothing down the front of his tunic as he said, “Two days. Well, a day and a half now since you slept half the damned day. You need to be packed for tomorrow afternoon, though. It was the only day I could hire porters to transport our things through the anchor stone in Epheos.”

Cyril felt nauseous.

Mostly the hangover’s doing, sure, but not a single bit of this conversation helped whatsoever. Nothing like a fucking single day’s notice to pack and uproot her entire life for gods knows how long.

“…Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

Another answer she already knew.

Dion usually opted to lead with any information he felt like sharing, which rarely amounted to much.

“For now, yes. Since Bron covered your ass this morning, Sebille is expecting you downstairs to help her prep for dinner. We’ll talk more when we eat.” Dion was halfway through the door when he added, “Besides, we’re looking at a ten-day ride if we’re lucky. We’ll have plenty of time to talk then.”

If it wasn’t for fear of Sebille’s wrath, Cyril would have crawled right back into bed and made all of this tomorrow’s problem.

Reykr. Moon-fae. Ten fucking days on a horse.

It was happening.

Cyril swore as she flopped back on her bed. She tugged the tie from her hair and ran her fingers through its lengths. The brutal grip of her hangover had eased, at least, thanks to a tincture a scullery maid slipped her before dinner, but she was sure no sort of salve or tonic existed to soothe any of her other frustrations.

Dinner was…insightful. Nowhere near enough to sway her opinions on the people she refused to acknowledge made up a quarter of her heritage, though.

Nothing would ever be enough, truthfully.

Cyril wanted nothing to do with the moon-fae and any of their black magic fuckery, and Dion’s argument that they were her mother’s people was bullshit.

The woman who birthed her was little more than a mystery, propped up by annoying comments the rogues and townsfolk loved to make about how kind, caring, and beautiful her mother was. The same sort of empty compliments that are tossed around about every damn dead woman in existence.

It didn’t help that, of their small entourage making the trip to Reykr, the prospect enthused precisely no one. If the ask hadn't come straight from Reykr's royal family—along with a payment that Cyril was stunned to hear the upfront portion of—she bet that not a single one of them would have agreed to go.

How nice for them to even have that option.

Dion prattled on about some old ties he had to the moon-fae kingdom. But, of course, he refused to elaborate any further than that. Apparently, that was all the explanation any of them needed—or deserved, Cyril was more sure of—when they asked why such a lucrative contract fell right into his lap.

What Dion did give them, though, was a handful of details about the contract itself.

In Brynnhold—which he explained was Reykr’s port city—a series of gruesome murders had surfaced over the last few months that had the locals all looking over their shoulders twice. The victims spanned all walks of life—a barmaid, a carpenter, and a popular textile merchant—and not a single one had a jilted lover, bad debts and dealings, or anything to give even a thread of justification for losing their lives. Even after a rather exhaustive search by the Royal Guard, nothing substantial surfaced to tie these three people together outside of the brutality of their deaths.

It wasn’t saying much for the capabilities of Reykr’s military if their entire guard service was now deferring their investigation to a band of rogues from outside their own kingdom, but Cyril kept that thought to herself.

Dion himself hadn’t been privy to the exact details of the deaths, which resulted in no shortage of outrage at the dinner table. But he seemed confident they would have plenty of other details to discuss during their lengthy ride north.