Page 111 of The Mercy of Dawn

He wasn’t about to burst her euphoric little bubble, but lockmead-induced hangovers always swung towards the more miserable end of things, especially if you weren’t used to it. She could figure that out on her own in the morning.

“Did your chaperone abandon you again?”

An indignant snort left her.

“Of course he did. Pretty sure he took a nymph and some friend of his back to his room and I—” A shudder ran through Cyril as she cringed. “Don’t want to be anywhere near that.” She waved a hand vaguely towards the palace.

“Oh.”

Mikael didn’t blame her for that, even if part of him had a sliver of respect for her uncle’s prowess, his less admirable qualities aside. The forest nymphs that frequented these casual celebrations at the palace were…energetic, as Mikael had learned firsthand more than once. Dion and his friend were in for a hell of a night.

He opened his mouth, ready to dole out some sort of sarcastic words of comfort, but something he’d been so blissfully fucking ignorant of hit him.

Cyril’s snow-white skin.

Her sharp, striking features.

The bones she said wouldn’t break.

“Fuck me. You’re part nymph, aren’t you?” Mikael’s revelation just sort of tumbled out without an ounce of tact.

“I… Yes?” She pushed up on her elbows and gave him a look that spoke volumes about just how stupid he was for only realizing that then. Or how poor his delivery was. Both, maybe. “The otherwise unremarkable fae of mixed race, remember? What did you think I was?”

Cyril flopped back onto the grass after she finished her entirely inaccurate mockery of him. Inaccurate, but endearing in an alarming way.

Message received, though, loud and clear.

The comments he made that night… Not exactly his proudest moment.

“Shit, I don’t know. I never thought about it.”

Mikael rubbed at the back of his neck.

For a moment, he worried that he might have veered into offensive conversation territory, but Cyril just looked bored. Like she’d had the discussion a million times. She held her hands out in front of her, flexing and wiggling her fingers up at the night sky, paying him not an ounce of heed.

He was going to regret it come morning, but Mikael let the alcohol content of his blood make a remarkably stupid decision.

He drew in a slow and deep breath, letting it fill every inch of his lungs. As he exhaled, Mikael narrowed every bit of his attention deep within himself. Down to that shallow and dark, glimmering creek of fae power that ran through his very core.

It stirred to life.

“Your mother, then. She was a full nymph, or…?” he asked, eyes fixed on her hand.

Mikael drew up from his power as he inhaled again, careful to not be greedy as his mother had told him so many damn times, and let it flow as the air left his lungs.

Cyril hummed a thoughtful noise. “She was half. And half—”

Lips parted and eyes wide, Cyril stilled as darkness coalesced in the air.

A loose, smokey tendril of it took shape on her forearm, just above where the embroidered cuff of her sheer sleeve slipped down. The wispy and inky blue-black of it was such a stark contrast to her skin.

It wrapped a slow path up and around the narrow column of her arm, slipping across her hand and weaving in between her fingers.

Mikael fed the manifestation as long as he could, to keep the utterly bewildered look on Cyril’s face for even a moment longer. But when the pang of an ache that he knew was a precursor to trouble throbbed in his chest, he let the darkness dissipate.

Every bit of his manifested magic drained in a matter of moments.

“What the—” She examined her hand, turning it back and forth as she wiggled her fingers, and her eyes shot up to him. With her voice full of what sounded like spite, she said, “What the fuck was that?”