Page 53 of The Mercy of Dawn

“I heard that the woman who lost her life today was your maid?” Tobias asked when the silence sat a bit too heavy.

“Rika is—was her name.” Gods, that felt awful. “She was such a sweet woman.”

“It’s heartbreaking to hear of such a young life being taken from us, in circumstances like that too.” Tobias offered her a sad smile. “Are you alright?”

Cyril blinked.

“Am I alright?”

“Has no one asked you?” He tipped his head at her. “La—Cyril. Someone you knew, for however short of a time, died today. If no one has checked to see how you are doing, I am disappointed.”

Truthfully, no one had.

This was work, after all, personal feelings aside.

As soon as she’d gotten dressed and had a bit of food in her system, Dion had her documenting the runes. He was dealing with getting the rest of their cabal back to the palace—he wanted them to stay for a few days, do some supplementary investigation to the King's Guard—and everything settled into the regular flow of business.

Cyril hadn’t even stopped to think if she was okay.

“I’ll be fine,” she tried to reassure, but all the scribes looked wary.

There wasn’t an easy way for Cyril to explain that she had to be fine.

She was in Reykr to work, to carry out the guild's business, and Dion wouldn’t tolerate anything other than her total focus. And truthfully, now she had even more of a reason to work with determination—she wouldn’t let that kind woman’s death be in vain.

Chapter 14

If there was a single, minuscule thread of silver lining to Rika’s death, it was that Cyril was no longer stuck alone with Dion.

Her uncles had been at the palace for days now, put up in another corridor of guest suites, and they occupied most moments of free time she had. One of them always came banging on her door in the morning to drag her down to breakfast before she’d slink away to the archives for the day.

Not that any of them were having much luck getting any closer to understanding what the fuck was happening in Reykr. From what Bron just finished telling her, residents and staff of the palace all said the same things that the city folk had.

Everyone felt like they had witnessed someone or something out of place, but no one could definitively say where or when. It was common, Cyril knew, in the aftermath of crimes, for people to become paranoid, to notice things they may not have paid any heed to before.

The only fruitful thing to come of their questioning was the uncovering of a get-together down in the servants’ quarters on the night of Rika’s death. It was the birthday of one of the tenured cooks, and they’d all enjoyed food and drink as duties wrapped and the rest of the palace went to sleep.

Not an unusual night by any means, except about half the staff couldn’t remember anything that happened after midnight.

Bron sighed. “Apparently, most of them thought a groundskeeper spiked their glogg again, whatever the fuck that is.”

“Again?”

“I know,” he sighed. “So needless to say, we know fucking nothing useful.”

Bron shot back the rest of his drink, his frustration palpable. She could tell that all of her uncles were frustrated, and she sympathized with them entirely.

There was one thing, though, that always improved Bron’s mood—gossip.

“You know,” Cyril dropped her voice and Bron leaned in immediately, “we had an interesting…interruption when they first found Rika’s body.”

A bit of life sparked up in Bron’s eyes again.

“Go on, dove…”

“We were all standing there, and some mortal woman came stumbling out of Prince Asshole’s room wearing nothing but his shirt, wondering when he was coming back to bed.” Cyril tried and failed to imitate the woman’s singsong voice, but it got a hell of a chuckle from Bron.

“Talk about a hell of a thing to wake up to,” he said.