Page 237 of The Mercy of Dawn

Reliving it felt a thousand times worse.

Breathing became a laborious thing, with how fucking tight his chest felt. But the memories didn’t stop, and not because he was letting them flow.

No, his mother was pulling them.

Because once a skilled vefari was in your head, once they grabbed onto that thread of your subconscious mind, they didn’t leave until they wanted to.

Mikael didn’t want to see that cellar again.

He didn’t want to see Cyril sitting in a pool of her own blood, kneeling fucking helplessly at her side as death worked its greedy claws into her.

He didn’t want to see the bodies again—of his men, or that woman, or that fucking creature—or smell the blood and the decay.

But he did.

Because his mother wanted to—needed to see it all, he told himself, to stave off the nausea that rolled through him. Easier said than done though, as a tremor set in to his already sweating hands.

“Mother, that’s enough,” Mikael ground out, his voice hoarse, but she kept going. Through Cyril’s heart-rending plea to go home, through him holding her near lifeless body, through Wren arriving and— “Enough.”

He couldn’t take it anymore, he couldn’t fucking breathe.

His mother left his mind with such urgency that a cold, piercing pain shot through the backs of his eyes.

“Mikael, I…” Runa was breathless as she stared at him. Her own pale blue eyes were wide, her lips parted for more words that never came.

Mikael lost the grip he had been holding for hours.

He choked back the sob that climbed its way up his throat and buried his face in his hands as his senses betrayed him in the worst fucking way. He could still hear those wet, rattling breaths she took. He could smell that sickening, copper tang of blood—her blood—and feel its slickness in the tears that fell onto his hands.

Mikael’s shoulders shook, and he cried. More than he was certain he ever had.

He cried because he failed Cyril. His people, his court, and everything he ever trusted in his damn life? They all fucking failed her.

He cried because there had been a genuine possibility that he would never see her smile again, or hear her laugh, or have her give him shit for one of the dozen reasons she found in a day. He would never see her flush and stammer when he teased her again, or see fire ignite in the addictive, sun-spun gold of her eyes.

And that? It was a reality he wasn’t sure he could have handled.

“Oh, my boy. It’s alright,” his mother murmured.

Her words and the hand she rubbed across his back brought him no comfort.

He huffed a bitter laugh and straightened up, wiping his face on his sleeve.

“Things are so fucking far from alright.” Mikael glanced over the back of the sofa, to where Cyril was nothing but a lump beneath the blankets on her bed. “I can’t fathom how scared she must have been, how much she fucking suffered, I—” He shook his head. “She nearly died because our court is run by cowards who are too fucking worried about disturbing the peace. My men died because those same fucking cowards won’t listen to a goddamned thing anyone else says. Things are not alright.”

Runa’s eyebrows pulled together, and she frowned.

“Mikael, she survived. Against all odds, and that is remarkable. It would be wise to not forget that so quickly.” His mother studied him for a long moment before she stood. “Go be with her. You both need each other more than anything else right now. We’ll figure out the rest.”

Mikael should have thanked his mother for her help, but he didn’t even have it in him to say goodbye to her when she kissed his cheek and made her way to the door.

It took everything just to haul himself off the sofa and have his uneasy legs carry him over to Cyril’s bed. She didn’t stir at all when he eased in beside her.

He swept her hair back from her face, tucking it behind the delicate point of her ear. Sleep schooled her usually striking features into something deceptively serene, like she hadn’t just spent the night fighting for her life.

Her nose wrinkled at his touch, a quiet noise leaving her, and Mikael loosed a shaky breath.

She survived. She survived. She survived.