Page 48 of The Mercy of Dawn

Her hands felt unsteady as she brushed Attie again, but the sweet black mare nuzzled and nudged her insistently. She even drew a short huff of a laugh out of Cyril when she wedged her muzzle so aggressively under her arm that she stumbled a step back.

No more brushing, then.

“Is there somewhere I can take Attie to ride?”

If Runa took any offense to Cyril’s decision to not pursue any bit of their previous conversation further, it didn’t show.

“There is a lovely trail just out here, to the south.” The queen gestured out the sliding doors nearest them. Cyril noticed as the sleeve of her robe slipped down her arm that those ornamental tattoos decorating her hands extended up Runa’s forearms as well. “It’ll take you to a beautiful glen in the woods and back in a couple of hours.”

Cyril offered her a smile. “Thank you.”

Runa turned to leave, but stopped a few steps away.

“You are welcome to join Lars and I for dinner tonight. Everyone else is away or occupied, so it would just be us three.” She gave Cyril a small, tentative smile. “Only if you feel up to it, though. Don’t feel obligated.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Runa nodded and left Cyril to saddle up Attie.

Chapter 13

If someone had told Cyril how she'd wake up on her third morning at the palace, she'd have laughed and called them a liar.

She’d slept terribly the night before, even after her ride with Attie. They rode that trail twice, hard and fast until they were both spent and the sun slipped towards the horizon. She bathed and changed, and decided that an evening alone with the King and Queen of Reykr was low on the list of things she felt like doing.

So she’d eaten alone in her room, again.

When Rika came to clear away her dishes and the entire bottle of wine that she put back on her own, the maid must have picked up on Cyril’s lingering unease.

Rika had stacked all the dishes neatly by the door and started asking Cyril questions. First about her time at the stables, and how her ride with Attie was. Then she wanted to know about what other things Cyril liked to do back in Helia, and if she liked books or art, or boys.

Books? Absolutely.

Art? Sometimes.

The last one was something she vehemently denied.

All simple and light-hearted things, but an hour came and went like nothing. Rika’s entire face tinged pink when she realized how long it had been and she excused herself with the promise of seeing Cyril the next morning.

Cyril had realized then, as the emptiness and quiet unease settled back in, that perhaps the woman’s kind demeanor was something she sorely lacked in her life. She hadn’t had any sort of true female companionship since, well…it had been years, and she didn’t want to dwell on the circumstances of why for long.

Left with little to do other than sit on her balcony in silence, Cyril had wrapped up in a thin blanket and settled on the chaise. The evening breeze was warm, a touch humid, and laced with the sweet scent of the palace gardens.

It had her dozing quickly.

The third or fourth time she woke, the breeze had cooled into a late-night chill and Cyril dragged herself into bed.

She hadn’t gotten more than a few hours of solid sleep when a shrill, bloodcurdling scream echoed through the hallway and jolted her back to consciousness.

It took a minute for Cyril to get her bearings and for the sound of slamming doors and noise in the hall to confirm that she wasn’t dreaming.

Bleary-eyed and out of sorts, she never considered throwing on a robe over her night slip or even donning shoes, for that matter, before she cracked open the door to her suite. The polished stone floors felt like ice on her bare feet when she stepped out into the hall.

A hushed sort of commotion came from further down the hall, and Cyril’s legs were leading her there before she knew it.

Other heads poked out of the sparse doorways along the residential wing as she walked. Most seemed to decide they wanted nothing to do with whatever in the hells was happening and returned to the comfort of their bed. Two maids, crying softly as they held each other, walked right past her.

Cyril continued on and on towards where a small group gathered near the seating alcove at the bend in the hall. A group, she realized about halfway there, comprised of Dion, Mikael, and Lars.