Page 120 of The Mercy of Dawn

Cyril shook her head as she slid off the bed and staggered down to the footboard. She leaned against the wooden post, quietly sighing and cursing as she struggled to pull off her boots. They ended up tossed in opposite directions, one soaring right past Mikael as he stood.

“Not going to say anything?” he asked.

The caustic glare she cut him spoke volumes to her thoughts.

“Fuck off and leave me alone,” Cyril mumbled, pushing off of the bedframe, but Mikael hooked her around the waist and pulled her back against him.

“Cyril,” he said quietly, “I’d be happy to be your first, okay? Just not like this. Maybe get to know me a little and then decide if that’s something you actually want to give me.”

Now wasn’t the time to delve into why he held such a firm stance on the matter. Another day, maybe, if she deigned to speak to him again, but not now.

“I said, fuck off and leave me alone.” Her voice wavered, and she pushed away from him.

Mikael didn’t bother to stop her.

She stalked over to her wardrobes and started rifling through cabinets and drawers, and he decided it was time to leave.

“Oh, before I forget…”

Hand on the door, he turned back just in time to glimpse Cyril’s bare back as her bodice sank around her hips. She tossed the laces he just had his fingers tangled in onto the floor.

What a sight to be walking away from.

“Someone will come around with food and tonics in the morning. Try to survive on your own until then.”

Cyril didn’t say a damn thing or even bother to look back at him. She just raised her hand and flipped him off.

Mikael left her room with a smile on his face and an ache he was going to settle for sating on his own.

Chapter 29

Cyril never wanted to hear the word lockmead again in her life.

She told herself that over, and over, and over in the hours she spent huddled on the cool tile of her bathroom floor, wrapped in a blanket and fucking miserable. She wasn’t sure exactly how much sleep she’d gotten after Mikael left—the reasons for which she wasn’t allowing herself to entertain—but it definitely hadn’t been enough when the waves of nausea hit and forced her out of bed.

She never made it back in.

Her throat was raw and her stomach ached something fierce from all the retching and purging. Anything more than a few sips of water refused to stay down—she’d learned that the hard way, multiple times—and it was safe to say she had at least a handful of regrets.

Aside from the painfully obvious one relating to how thoroughly she celebrated the solstice with foreign spirits, the other was how barren she’d let her medicine bag become.

Satchel of chewing tablets for nausea? Empty.

Tonics to ease every bit of a hangover? Nowhere to be found.

Pain tonics? She had a single vial left, and one smell of it sent her straight back on her knees in front of the toilet.

All she had left in any reasonable quantities were a dozen tincture packs bearing the stamp of Bright Apothecary that she’d brought to ease her cycle in the horrible event that it reared its ugly head while she was in Reykr. It hadn’t even been anywhere near six months since the last, but still—better safe than sorry, and—

Cyril was an idiot.

A complete and utter moron.

Her head rolled back against the cupboards with a sigh before she pulled herself up, slowly.

It had been hours since she looked at those packs and wrote them off as useless because she wasn’t cramped into a fetal position and bleeding. Hours, since she never considered that she didn’t have to be either of those things.

Draped in a blanket and wearing the dark tunic and shorts she got herself into between vomiting fits, Cyril braved the blistering morning light filling her room. She grabbed a cup from her desk and her canvas medicine bag.