13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

I f someone had told Cyril how she'd wake up on her third morning at the palace, she'd have laughed and called them a liar.

She’d slept terribly the night before, even after her ride with Attie. They rode that trail twice, hard and fast until they were both spent and the sun slipped towards the horizon. She bathed and changed, and decided that an evening alone with the King and Queen of Reykr was low on the list of things she felt like doing.

So she’d eaten alone in her room, again.

When Rika came to clear away her dishes and the entire bottle of wine that she put back on her own, the maid must have picked up on Cyril’s lingering unease.

Rika had stacked all the dishes neatly by the door and started asking Cyril questions. First about her time at the stables, and how her ride with Attie was. Then she wanted to know about what other things Cyril liked to do back in Helia, and if she liked books or art, or boys .

Books? Absolutely.

Art? Sometimes.

The last one was something she vehemently denied.

All simple and light-hearted things, but an hour came and went like nothing. Rika’s entire face tinged pink when she realized how long it had been and she excused herself with the promise of seeing Cyril the next morning.

Cyril had realized then, as the emptiness and quiet unease settled back in, that perhaps the woman’s kind demeanor was something she sorely lacked in her life. She hadn’t had any sort of true female companionship since, well…it had been years, and she didn’t want to dwell on the circumstances of why for long.

Left with little to do other than sit on her balcony in silence, Cyril had wrapped up in a thin blanket and settled on the chaise. The evening breeze was warm, a touch humid, and laced with the sweet scent of the palace gardens.

It had her dozing quickly.

The third or fourth time she woke, the breeze had cooled into a late-night chill and Cyril dragged herself into bed.

She hadn’t gotten more than a few hours of solid sleep when a shrill, bloodcurdling scream echoed through the hallway and jolted her back to consciousness.

It took a minute for Cyril to get her bearings and for the sound of slamming doors and noise in the hall to confirm that she wasn’t dreaming.

Bleary-eyed and out of sorts, she never considered throwing on a robe over her night slip or even donning shoes, for that matter, before she cracked open the door to her suite. The polished stone floors felt like ice on her bare feet when she stepped out into the hall.

A hushed sort of commotion came from further down the hall, and Cyril’s legs were leading her there before she knew it.

Other heads poked out of the sparse doorways along the residential wing as she walked. Most seemed to decide they wanted nothing to do with whatever in the hells was happening and returned to the comfort of their bed. Two maids, crying softly as they held each other, walked right past her.

Cyril continued on and on towards where a small group gathered near the seating alcove at the bend in the hall. A group, she realized about halfway there, comprised of Dion, Mikael, and Lars.

The men were all in various stages of dress and undress—Dion in his night pants, Mikael in nothing but shorts, and Lars with a hastily tied robe—and they all held grim, tired faces.

“Dion?” she called out, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Each member of the group gave a bit of a start in her direction. “What happened?”

“Shit, Cyr .” His shoulders heaved with a sigh. “It’s…I…”

Dion never struggled to find words. He motioned for her to come instead.

Noises started up from behind her—guards, it sounded like, with the echo of heavy boots on stone—as Cyril hurried the rest of the way down the hall.

The smell of blood—sharp, metallic, and a little sweet—hit her first. Then the thick, foul smell of death. Goosebumps rippled across her bare arms and legs.

Dion stepped back a bit, and Cyril laid eyes on what had left them all with such grim looks on their faces—a nude and gutted body, female, sprawled out on the floor in front of the alcove.

Runes of all shapes and sizes painted around the body in blood and—

Cyril clamped a hand over her mouth when she took in the woman’s face.

The gouged-out eyes that should have been hazel and full of bright curiosity. The golden blonde hair, soaked half through with burgundy.

A muffled noise still escaped her.

No. Nonononononono—

Mikael sighed from her left. “If she can’t handle—”

“She’s been tending to you, hasn’t she?” Lars asked, his voice uneven with what Cyril could only assume was shock.

She nodded.

“Rika. I…I just saw her last night…” She couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth, and she couldn’t pull her eyes away from Rika’s mutilated face.

“And when did you get in? You’re usually the latest one of us all.”

Cyril hadn’t realized who Lars was speaking to until Mikael cleared his throat.

“Midnight? One, maybe,” the prince said. “And this was not here.”

Lars said something else, and Dion replied to him, but Cyril didn’t hear any of it over the low humming in her ears. A twisting knot of guilt worked its way up her stomach, and she felt like she was going to be sick.

How long after their lighthearted conversation had something so vile happened to the poor woman? Rika was so small and gentle that Cyril didn’t know if she would have it in her to fight off an attacker. Maybe Cyril should have told her to stay, should have told Rika to shirk her responsibilities for the rest of the night, and keep her company.

Dion’s hand smoothing over Cyril’s shoulders served as an abrupt tether back to reality as Mikael began issuing orders to the group of guards gathered behind them.

Some were to head to the servants’ quarters to begin questioning, others assigned a full sweep of the palace, and he tasked two with moving Rika’s body. If Cyril hadn’t been in such disbelief over this, she may have had a sliver of appreciation for the respect the guard had for the prince, given the circumstances .

She wasn't sure anyone at the guild would've listened to Dion if he was issuing orders bedraggled and wearing nothing but his shorts.

“We need every bit of this cleaned up before the palace is alive.”

And just like that, all of Cyril’s senses came rushing back to her.

“Absolutely not,” she said as she whirled around.

Her uncle, Lars, and Mikael all stared at her.

“ Excuse me? ”

Oh. There was the bite of the Prince Commander.

"These runes can’t be touched yet," Cyril asserted, standing up taller. The Rogues’ Guild Heir could bite back. “They need to be documented, exactly as they are, so we can compare them to the others.”

The prince’s glacial eyes narrowed.

“Right…” he sighed, turning back to his men. A point for Cyril. “You heard Lady Cyril. Move the body, but touch nothing else.”

His men exchanged a few words with each other before departing and Mikael turned, cutting Cyril a look so spiteful she struggled to not take a step back. She likely would’ve, if Dion’s hand hadn’t stayed firmly planted on her back.

The prince opened his mouth, nothing but a gleam of sharp canines, but a door down the hall creaked open.

“Mika?” A woman’s voice, sleepy and like a songbird, said, “Are you going to come back to— oh .”

She was a slight thing, with warm, olive skin and a mane of curly hair. Mortal, Cyril realized, as she tucked her hair behind a rounded ear. She looked utterly bewildered and was wearing a shirt that seemed…prince-sized.

Cyril felt her cheeks warm as Mikael swore under his breath. He scrubbed his hands over his face with one hell of a sigh before he trudged over and steered the woman back into his room.

Dion cleared his throat, and Lars just shook his head.

“Well, we’ve got a long day ahead of us.” Her uncle squeezed her up against his side, giving her a wry smile. “Get yourself decent and start on the runes. I’ll send word to the boys that their vacation in the city is over.”

Cyril was on her last nerve.

In the two hours she spent carefully documenting the runes, the intolerable prince spent nearly an hour of it just hovering . He was dressed now, at least, his black and blue uniform giving a feigned air of respectability that nearly made Cyril laugh when he first came down the hall.

Sometimes he just leaned against the wall, watching. Other times, he paced behind her or around the runes at a slow, measured speed. More than once he nearly kicked or stepped on—entirely on purpose, she was sure—the paper and charcoal the archive’s scribes so graciously gave her to use.

Cyril wasn’t sure if his presence or the lingering whisper of blood and death hanging in the air was more off-putting.

Mikael said nothing the entire time, giving barely even a grunt of acknowledgement when she had the decency to say hello to him. For having a mother and father who were such polite, warm people, he was an arse.

Now, leaning back near a window, he cleared his throat, and Cyril’s last nerve frayed.

“Is there something I can help you with, Your Highness ?”

She didn’t bother restraining the annoyance in her voice as she set down her charcoal and wiped her hands on her pants. She enjoyed quiet work like this, and he had ruined nearly all of it.

Amusement glimmered in Mikael’s eyes.

“Oh, me ?” He chuckled, and Cyril clenched her teeth at the smug, grating sound. “No, no. I’m fine. Just observing.”

“You like to just observe , don’t you? Stand around and watch things you have no business being part of?” The words tumbled out of her a bit clipped, but based on the way his brows climbed, the prince knew exactly what observation she was referring to. “I’m sure you have far more pressing things to attend to now.”

Mikael pushed off the wall, starting that slow, infuriating pace again.

“My men are more than capable of carrying out their orders.”

Doubtful, Cyril thought, considering that four people had now died like this and his men did not have any leads.

“Your girlfriend, then?” Cyril waved a hand vaguely toward his room. “I’m sure she’d appreciate some attention after that rude awakening.”

“ Girlfriend ? Oh, no .” Mikael barked a laugh so rich Cyril nearly dropped the papers she was stacking with care. “No such thing. Just a bit of fun.”

“ Fun ?” Cyril snorted.

She shouldn’t have expected anything less from him—he was an asshole and a pig, and, gods…he was just like Dion.

“Yes, Lady Cyril. Fun. I’d highly recommend you try a form of it someday. I think it would do you a world of good. ”

Cyril needed to walk away, and she needed to walk away now. They’d only interacted like this twice, and he already knew how to get under her skin almost as easily as Dion did.

As calmly as she could manage with annoyance simmering under her skin, Cyril gathered her last few papers and the box of charcoals, and started walking as far away as she could from the prince. Slow, measured steps she hoped conveyed nothing but calm confidence.

“Where are you going?” he asked, as if she had any obligation to keep him apprised of her whereabouts.

“To use my brain in the archives.” Cyril waved her stack of papers in the air, not giving the prince the benefit of looking back at him. “It might do you a world of good to try that someday.”

She grinned to herself as she left the residential wing.

Earth, air, fire, water. Dawn, tribulation, estate, thorn. Earth, air, fire, water. Day, need, heritage, danger. Earth, air, fire, water. Dawn, need, estate, danger. Earth, air, fire, water. Day, need, estate, thorn.

No matter what order Cyril wrote the runes down in, or what combination of dialects and interpretations she used, Cyril couldn’t make any sense of the meaning.

The runes of the old language left with Rika’s body were the same eight as the first three murders, drawn again in a slightly different arrangement, like the elements had completed some sort of rotation. But Cyril couldn’t figure out why .

It wasn’t for a shortage of reference materials either.

An entire row of the Royal Archives teemed with tomes and scrolls and texts on the language of old, but none of them painted a picture any clearer than what they’d already learned in their briefing.

Some runes had different meanings, she knew now, like day being interchangeable with dawn, or danger with thorns. But despite spending almost all day working through every different combination of meanings her brain could muster, all Cyril had to show for it was a splitting headache.

Oh, and about a hundred tiny parchment cuts on her hands.

The trio of scribes working in the archives was the only silver lining.

They understood her plight more than anyone else and seemed happy to watch over her. The most tenured of the scribes, Tobias, plied her with tea and water and small plates of finger foods to fuel her, always waving off her thanks with a smile before he’d hurry away.

Her uncles didn’t need to know she hadn’t the faintest idea of where any of it came from. The rumblings of her stomach overran any semblance of caution.

With the genuine smiles the scribes bore as they hunted down texts for her, Cyril got the impression guests were not a regular occurrence. Not to mention one so hells bent on digesting every bit of literature they had on old runes.

Isa, a sprightly young woman, even stopped by every couple of hours to remind Cyril to stretch her limbs, offering to show her this and that in the archives. The woman didn’t even bat an eyelash when Cyril asked to borrow a couple of their tomes on ascension.

Cyril had barely been at the palace for four days, and its working people were eroding the wall of resentment that had been steadily constructed against the moon-fae throughout her entire life. Truthfully, she didn’t know who the fuck to believe about anything anymore, and focusing on her work was a much easier thing to do.

But the moment the smell of hot, spiced wine wafted into the archives and cut through all the dusty old tomes? That wall threatened to come crumbling down entirely.

As Tobias rounded a few carts of tomes to be returned to their homes, carrying a tray of four mugs, Cyril scrambled to clear a spot on her worktable. She hadn’t realized just how thoroughly she’d invaded their little world until she was frantically compiling pages and pages of notes.

“I thought, perhaps, you could use some gentle encouragement to end your research for the day.” Tobias set down the wine and gave Cyril a quick, teasing grin as Isa and Konnor drifted over.

They, too, sniffed out the wine.

“Thank you,” Cyril said, as she gave her eyes a hearty rub.

She would have lost track of herself for a day or two unsupervised, truthfully.

“And thank you for all of this”—she gestured at the table, the stacks of papers and tomes—“as well.”

“Oh, we are more than happy to help with your research.” Tobias handed her a mug. The others nodded their agreement as they each settled into a chair. “Most of the younger folks around the palace seem to have an aversion to the smell of our old books.”

“I love how it smells here.” Cyril grinned, and the three scribes treated her to a round of warm laughter. “Does the family not come down often?”

The trio exchanged glances, and Tobias sat up in his chair—their spokesperson.

“Well, Queen Runa is quite fond of the archives and has been since she first moved here. And the princes, well…” Tobias tapped his fingers on his mug. “Astor always had a nose in a book when he was a boy, just like his father did, but the duties of Crown Prince do not seem to leave much time for such pleasures now. Mikael always preferred steel to parchment, so we do not see him often. Ever, really.”

Just like his father did .

Cyril processed little after that.

“You… How long have you each worked here?”

“Right into the serious questions now, Lady Cyril?” Tobias chuckled.

Cyril’s eyes flared.

“I… Gods, I’m sorry. My manners—”

“I only tease you. Drink your wine before it goes cold.”

Cyril grabbed her mug and took a hearty sip of the soul-warming, spiced potation. Hopefully, it would get into her system fast enough to mask the warmth of embarrassment in her cheeks.

“I started my tenure under the earlier years of the reign of His Majesty’s father,” Tobias continued, and Cyril gaped. “Isa joined our merry little band just a couple of years ago. I believe you are close in age. Konnor has been here for what, seventy or so years now?”

Konnor nodded. A man of precisely zero words since she had arrived.

Cyril did not want to be rude, but she was stunned. She met plenty of old fae at the guild, but never more than a few hundred years.

If her rough math and the few details she knew about Reykr were correct…

“Were you… Were you alive when the Great Kingdom fell?” Cyril must have looked like an awestruck spring babe to Tobias, but she was too fascinated to care.

He gave her a lopsided smile. “Now I’m not sure how old I look, but that was a bit before my time.”

Cyril tried to reign in her disappointment as the other two scribes traded amused glances, taking another sip of her wine.

“Can I ask you a question, Lady Cyril?”

Cyril blinked over at Isa.

“Me? Of course. And you can just call me Cyril.” She winced. “I’m not fond of the title.”

Isa opened her mouth, but she hesitated.

“In the south, do they talk about us? Moon-fae, I mean. The village I grew up in is near the mountains, you see, so we would sometimes get scholars or tradespeople passing through from Theras, I believe. They seemed to have…strange opinions of us.”

Cyril swallowed.

So far, she had seen none of what her staunch sun-fae upbringing wanted her to believe. It had only been a few days, sure, but they were nothing but kind and welcoming to her—except for the fucking intolerable prince—and she already felt a twinge of guilt. But if Cyril couldn’t trust what her damn governess taught her…

There had to be a tactful way to say this.

“I don’t think the time spent divided has done our people any good in that regard.”

Isa nodded, if only a bit sadly. Cyril didn’t know what else to say.

“I heard that the woman who lost her life today was your maid?” Tobias asked when the silence sat a bit too heavy.

“Rika is— was her name.” Gods, that felt awful. “She was such a sweet woman.”

“It’s heartbreaking to hear of such a young life being taken from us, in circumstances like that too.” Tobias offered her a sad smile. “Are you alright?”

Cyril blinked.

“Am I alright?”

“Has no one asked you?” He tipped his head at her. “La— Cyril . Someone you knew, for however short of a time, died today. If no one has checked to see how you are doing, I am disappointed.”

Truthfully, no one had.

This was work, after all, personal feelings aside.

As soon as she’d gotten dressed and had a bit of food in her system, Dion had her documenting the runes. He was dealing with getting the rest of their cabal back to the palace—he wanted them to stay for a few days, do some supplementary investigation to the King's Guard—and everything settled into the regular flow of business.

Cyril hadn’t even stopped to think if she was okay .

“I’ll be fine,” she tried to reassure, but all the scribes looked wary.

There wasn’t an easy way for Cyril to explain that she had to be fine.

She was in Reykr to work, to carry out the guild's business, and Dion wouldn’t tolerate anything other than her total focus. And truthfully, now she had even more of a reason to work with determination—she wouldn’t let that kind woman’s death be in vain.