Chapter 25

Cyril

Agatha marked the white knuckle grip Cyril held on the door. The old woman saw entirely too much. He glared at her.

"You can inspect the room if you'd like," Agatha said.

"You wished to speak alone. Say your piece."

"There is nothing in here that could hurt you. Only help."

"What help do you imagine I require?"

"I'm not yet sure." Agatha dusted her hands off on her skirt. "The simple answer of course is whatever wounds you hide beneath the tunic you will not remove. Though the pain rolling off you is too potent to end there."

"I'm fine. With the exception of my growing irritation." He was fine. Hurt, yes. Tired. Buried under too many thoughts and expectations to have had a chance to work through them. But he was fine. And the sooner he could get some sleep, the more fine he would be. "Why did you want to separate me from my mate?"

"Because I care for Lilith's daughter too much to let Kitterny's mate flounder about in his own stubbornness." She sighed and Cyril thought he heard her mutter something about cocky males. "You are hanging on by a thread so thin, you are a breath away from shattering. I see it. And Kitterny will too, the moment she is not so exhausted she can barely sit upright. I know nothing about you, but she'll be hurt when you crack. So, for her sake, I'm offering a chance to pull yourself together. Whether you take it or not, well that's your decision."

Cyril released his hold on the doorframe slowly, unwrapping one finger at a time as he held back a rising growl. How dare this hag, this aged isolated human, presume to know his limits? Presume to protect his mate from him?

"Do you know—" he cut himself off before finishing the question. Do you know who I am? Of course Agatha had no idea. She'd never have dared to speak to him this way if she knew he was of the royal line, that he was the rightful king of Massa'eve. For a heartbeat, Cyril considered snarling the truth at the woman. That would make her hold that tongue of hers.

But there would be no going back if he did. The minute he opened his mouth, he'd no longer be Cyril. He'd be the king. And everything he said, everything he did, it would be with the seal of that office. And there was something preciously rare in being just Cyril. Just for a little longer. Even if that meant bearing the scoldings of an old woman.

You are the king, you coward. Cyril flinched at the voice in his head.

Agatha patted a seat on a circular stool. "I'm going to go fetch a bit of water and find you a clean shirt. At the very least, you can be stubborn and clean. And if you can suffer the indignity of accepting aid, I'll patch up what wounds I can. Who knows, maybe being on the mend might improve your disposition."

"Unlikely."

"And if you decide you are too frightened for that," she continued as if Cyril hadn't spoken, "well, there is nothing stopping you from running off, childish as it might be. I'm certainly too old to be chasing you down." With that she headed out, pausing for a moment to call over her shoulder. "And don't you eat any of my goats now. I'm quite attached to this lot, and the pups will be needing milk."

Pups. Multiple? He hoped to hell the rest of the eggs were not hatching any time soon. Because if they added more hatchlings to all this now… A tremor ran through Cyril's spine. The hag was right. He'd probably turn into his dragon form and curl up on a tree somewhere.

"Cyril?" Agatha prompted, making him realize she still awaited an answer.

"I won't eat the bloody goats," he muttered darkly.

With Agatha gone, Cyril stared at the simple room and the stool waiting for him inside, then plopped himself down on it. The hag was impertinent and overstepped all bounds of decorum. But she wasn't wrong. Cyril could not even reach the wounds on his back where Emric had peeled off the scales. If Cyril didn't let Agatha tend the injuries now, then Kit would insist on seeing to them tomorrow—which was the one thing Cyril wished to avoid. Kit knew what Emric had done of course, but there was a difference in knowing and seeing.

No matter how much Cyril told her that she wasn't responsible for Emric's actions, seeing the full raw extent of the destruction he'd wrought was too likely to launch Kit into a spiral of misplaced guilt.

At least a human like Agatha wouldn't balk at the damage of peeled scales the way a dragon would.

"Still here?" Walking back into the room, Agatha handed him a mug of tea. "Good."

Cyril sniffed the offered brew. Willow bark and something more pungent that he had little desire to put in his mouth.

"It's for pain."

"I'm fine." Cyril set the mug on the table and pulled off the shirt he'd not removed in days. That was enough to change his mind about the tea. He grabbed the mug and drained it to the bottom in large gulps. Truthfully, he didn't even know why he was fighting her at this point. Maybe because he was always fighting.

Agatha's hands were gentle as she worked, cleaning and laying poultices on the wounds. So different from the brisk, hard efficiency of military healers. She made no comment when a grunt of pain escaped Cyril's lips, but a few heartbeats later he heard her start humming a soft song, its soothing notes gentling his jagged edges. The melody was simple and kind, a contrast to a world that was neither. Cyril didn't know why that made his chest ache, but it did.

This was what Cyril wanted for the hatchling, if the little monstrosity ever scraped a scale. If he'd rushed to Ettienne as a pup, the king would have doled out a beating for clumsiness. No tea for pain. Certainly no song.

With one hand still fisted against the pain, he ran his thumb over Ettienne's sigil ring that he now wore.

Agatha paused, following the direction of his hand and for a heartbeat Cyril tensed with dread over being recognized. But Agatha did not appear to perceive the signet as anything but a fancy ring as she asked whether it had a special meaning to him.

"It was my father's," Cyril said carefully. "He died a few days ago."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Cyril said. "He was… he was a very hard male, who hurt many people to ensure he got his way."

"Did he hurt you?" Agatha asked.

Cyril nodded. "He hurt me. He hurt my brothers, who are Kit's mates too now. Hells, he tried to have Kit killed." He didn't know why he was even talking about it, but in the quiet of the goat barn the words were spilling over. "There were so many terrible things about him. And yet I miss him so much that when it gets too quiet it hurts to breathe. How twisted is that?"

Agatha's hands paused, then resumed moving smoothly as they had been. "Love is a complicated weave. It does what it does, not what we think it should. Your father, do you think he loved you?"

"I know he did." Cyril's chest tightened. Maybe Cyril hadn't always thought so, but now he knew without a doubt. And that made things even more confusing.

"Do you love the little hatchling?" Agatha asked.

"Of course I do." He loved the eggs too. Which also made little sense. They weren't even his. Except they somehow were. From the moment they had taken them from the citadel they were his.

"I promise there shall be times when you'll want to wring their scaly little necks. And yet you'll love them still. How twisted is that?" There was a hint of a smile in Agatha's voice as she said Cyril's own words back to him.

Cyril shook his head. "It's different. The hatchlings are innocent. What right have I to mourn a man who tried to hurt my mate?"

Agatha dabbed something against his wounds that burned like wildfire. Instead of flinching away, Cyril pressed into the ointment, hissing as he did. That manner of pain was easier to bear. A relief. But only for seconds. Escaping from the truth of his thoughts wasn't that easy.

"How does one tell a mate that he mourns the death of a male who'd once ordered her death? Or that he is terrified each time he holds their hatchling? Or that he'd spent years shirking a responsibility, and only realized the truth of it when his father died?" Cyril drew a breath, his heart pounding. He'd not expected to say all that when he'd opened his mouth, and now there was no way of snatching the words back from the air.

"I imagine you use the same words you just tried on for size." Agatha said mildly. Had she even heard what he'd said? "Raise your arm for me. Good. Hold it there."

"There is a world, a whole bloody destiny riding on Kitterny's wings now," Cyril snapped. "I need to do better than that. I owe her better than that."

"If you want an old woman's advice, then here it is. What you owe your mate is your trust and truth. Her destiny, your past, the world's fate itself—those are things you all might do. But the bond between you, the connection, what you mean to each other on a primal level, that's what you are. That's what gives your pack its power weather you are the lowest foot soldier in King Ettienne's army or the crown prince himself."

Primal connection.

Cyril jerked, twisting around on his stool as a sudden idea struck. Primal connection. Yes. That's what was at the root of it all. Primal connection. "You are brilliant," he told Agatha, and meant it.

A touch of color flushed her cheeks. "You are squirming." She batted at him in reprimand. "Sit quietly."

"No, you don't understand." Cyril grinned. "You just told me how to contact the rest of the pack."