Page 105 of The Mercy of Dawn

“Cyr,” Dion sighed, “You could have come and—”

“It’s fine.”

Waking up Dion was not something she made a habit out of doing, ever. More often than not, he was up before her anyway, but on the rare chance that he wasn’t…Cyril knew better than to go knocking.

She had zero interest in seeing who might come stumbling out with him.

Cyril made it all of three steps outside the door—into the muggy and not-at-all-refreshing air—before Dion planted a hand on her shoulder and stopped her in her tracks. His tired, tarnished gold eyes scoured her face.

“What is your problem?”

“Nothing.” She ducked out of his grasp and kept walking down the street to where the stables sat tucked behind the inn. “I just want to go.”

Dion said nothing.

Cyril didn't bother to look back and check if he was pissed off or not. He probably was, and she didn’t care. He came into the stables a few steps behind her, paid the half-awake stable hand, and did not utter a single word to Cyril as they saddled and packed up.

They spent the entire ride back in tense silence.

Dion brooded so far ahead of her on the road that she wasn’t sure he’d notice if she just led Attie into the woods and left.

Not that she wanted to risk that today.

Dion didn't bother speaking to her until after they dropped off the horses at the royal stables, and she wished he hadn’t.

In the bright and airy atrium, abuzz with morning activity, he turned to her and said with no amount of gentleness, “I’d highly recommend you get your attitude in check before Summer Solstice.”

Cyril stared at him, stalled dead in her tracks.

Was that a threat?

Not like it would be the first time he held the prospect of barring her from celebrating as a behavioral condition. Cyril was fifteen the last time he tried, and it didn’t end well. She climbed out of her bedroom window and down to a second-floor balcony before she lost her footing on a drainpipe. She woke up hours later in Dion’s office with a hell of a sore back and confirmation that her bones would not break.

Cyril’s lips parted to fucking dare Dion to try locking her down, but she held her tongue, and it killed her.

The smirk that peeled across his face had Cyril balling her fists so tight that her nails bit into her palms.

“Smart choice,” he added, before turning and sauntering away in that infuriating, cocky way of his. Like the floors should be grateful he deigned to walk on them.

And Cyril?

She just stood there.

In the middle of the atrium.

Positively fuming.

She didn’t trust her own feet not to charge after Dion if she untethered them.

So she let everyone bustling about the atrium weave their way around her, their scoffs and sighs and dirty looks be damned. She fixed her eyes on a floral tapestry hung above an unoccupied seating alcove and she breathed, willing her heart to slow its pace.

“Uh…Cyril?”

She blinked—Kaia.

The guards woman ambled over from the open main doors, a glimmer of amusement lighting up her hazel eyes. She stopped beside Cyril, hand resting casually on the pommel of her sword, and said, “Just hanging out there with your bag, or…?”

Cyril gave Kaia a meek smile.