1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Four Months Earlier

T he mead was a terrible idea. And the wine. And whatever in the hells that Bron spent the evening passing around in that strange, serpentine-shaped bottle. He claimed it was an exotic and expensive potation, imported from some unpronounceable place in the mortal lands.

To Cyril, all it tasted like was firewater, and the precursor to a fucking miserable morning. The other rogues all agreed too. Not that it stopped a single one of them—herself included—from partaking in another round, and another, and at least another few after that.

It had been such a dreadfully long time since the great hall at the estate ran so rife with the sort of raucous, celebratory energy Cyril happened upon when she went down for dinner. It would have been remarkably rude, she told herself when Bron shoved a bottle of wine in her hand, to not stick around and take part in the revelry.

Never mind the fact she’d never caught whose birthday it was, or why the hells they were celebrating so thoroughly .

Cyril drank and laughed and sang along with her uncles and the other rogues to bawdy, cheek-warming tunes even as the entire great hall became a muddy, distorted thing. She was certain Tyr had stuck her in a chair at some point, though she hadn’t the faintest idea why.

When the first whispers of dawn trickled through the towering windows stacked at the far end of the hall, the debauchery came to a rather abrupt end. Dozens of them all swept out the main doors in a wave of profanities and laughter before singles and duos—and even a few eyebrow-raising trios—filtered off to their rooms and outbuildings.

Cyril remembered little of what happened after that.

She made it back to her bed, at the very least, if the familiar cream and gold canopy draped above carved oak bed posts was any indicator.

Her list of befuddled accomplishments ended there though.

A criminal amount of midday sun poured through the uncovered windows flanking her bed, and she hadn’t even made it under the damn covers to shield her face. Apparently being sprawled out, fully dressed, on top of the bedspread beckoned to her last night.

Truthfully, that she made it that far was impressive.

Less impressive was the steady, wicked beat her head pounded to with increasing intensity every second since she cracked her eyes half-open. It fell in perfect tune with the footsteps that started echoing down the halls just a moment ago. Heavy, determined footsteps that Cyril knew meant she was about five seconds away from being in such deep shit.

Five.

Four.

Cyril slid a pillow over her face and groaned—she didn’t have a single fucking hope in any of the hells of talking her way out of this.

Three.

Two.

Wait. Tyr or Ren certainly wouldn’t be awake yet, not with how much they each put back last night. Maybe one of them would weather Dion’s wrath for her.

One.

The hinges of her bedroom door protested miserably as it was forcefully flung open.

“Cyril Rhodea, get your spoiled ass out of bed, right fucking now .”

“Morning, Dion,” Cyril mumbled from behind her pillow.

His boots thumped across the floorboards. “So, were the horses just supposed to clean out their own stalls this morning, or…?”

Oh. Dion was pissed .

Cyril knew that the moment she braved uncovering her face, her uncle’s gold eyes would be molten with fury. Their most defining family trait shone vividly when fueled by anger—a regular occurrence for them both.

Dion wasn’t even the sort to have unreasonable asks of people, not usually at least, but chores at the estate were non-negotiable. He expected everyone to pull their weight one way or another and, even with being his blood niece and heir, Cyril was no exception.

Hells, she bore heavier expectations for those reasons alone.

Her list of chores was one of considerable length, and spanned all areas of the estate. She would rotate through everything from servicing weapons and organizing their storerooms, to working kitchen shifts and helping to maintain the training grounds. A woman of many talents, Dion always said he wanted her to be. That was an entirely debatable notion, but she was never bored at least.

Unfortunately for Cyril though, this week’s rotation was stable duty.

Not the fun kind either, spending evenings grooming horses and bringing about order to the tack room for the next day. No, this stable duty involved nothing but shoveling shit and hay at the first miserable blink of dawn.

There was the most minute possibility that she conveniently forgot about her last day of duties when the festivities started. Convenient, yes, but completely accidental.

That’s what she’d run with.

“Cyr, I’m not leaving. So for the love of all things good in this godsforsaken fucking world, get up .” Even behind closed eyes, Cyril could picture Dion’s frustrated gesturing. He had either pinched his brow or pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. The man was terribly predictable.

Cyril tossed her pillow off the side of her bed with a full-bodied groan.

If the way the room tilted when she pushed up on her elbows was any indicator, the firewater most assuredly was the mistake. Her wobbling eyes anchored on her uncle, planted statue-still at the foot of the bed.

With his arms folded tight across his broad chest, clad in one of those fine black tunics he seemed to live in, Dion could almost pass for the perfect form of dis-fucking-pleased , if it weren’t for how the corners of his lips tugged outwards. He was fighting it, she knew, but the Rogue Master’s stoic mask had cracked.

“You look like you fought a bush. And where—” A stifled wheeze of a laugh left him. “Where is your other boot?”

Cyril’s eyes dipped to her feet—one boot.

“I…” Cyril hauled herself up, taking stock of the floor around her bed in slow, measured movements. “I have no fucking idea.”

When in the hells did she lose a damn shoe? It hadn’t even been a month since Bron took her to the city and bought these for her. At least Dion’s amusement finally reached his eyes with that.

He shook his head at her and said, “Go wash up, kiddo. I’ll scrounge up some food for you, and then we’ve got a contract to talk about.”

Just like that, it was back to business.

The distance from Cyril’s bed to her wardrobe to the bathroom felt like it had tripled in length from the previous day once she shut the door behind her and peeled out of her day-old clothes.

She didn’t have the faintest fucking clue when a glass of red wine met her once crisp, white tunic, or who the culprit was, but the laundress was going to be furious with her. At least she’d worn her usual black pants.They smelled just like the sweet red wine she drank too.

Dion was right, though. She looked like hell.

Those brilliant Rhodea golds? Something tarnished lingered in her eyes, framed by puffy bags and smudged kohl. There was barely a whisper left of the crown braid she’d wrangled her waist-length hair into last night too. Just loops and twists of black shooting out in every which direction remained.

Gods, she could have used another day or three of sleep.

At least the frigid water from the tap was enough to shock a bit of life back into her as she gave herself a hasty scrub down. Profanities spilled through her clenched teeth for the entirety of those few brutal minutes.

The hinges of her bedroom door whining again carried into the bathroom—a promising sign that Dion had found food—and Cyril hurried to get dressed. She tugged on a pair of soft, loose pants and a fitted top, both charcoal gray, and tied up her hair before slipping back out into her bedroom.

That bright, blistering light was something she hadn’t been entirely ready to reemerge into.

But at least Dion was there, settled into an armchair by the fire with a spread of tea, toast, and fixings on the low table before him. Cyril’s stomach rumbled in anticipation.

Dion gave her a wry smile and gestured to the seat opposite him as he said, “You look paler than usual.”

Cyril snorted. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

Her pasty, wan pallor wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, as much as it irked her to not have the same warm, sun-kissed complexion as Dion.

Her near-total lack of pigment was a gift from her mother’s half-nymph blood that never went away, despite her best efforts day in and out in the sun. Her borrowed uncles liked to say she looked like expensive porcelain or fresh snow. A sharp contrast to the townsfolk, who often wished her a speedy recovery.

Cyril dropped into the plush, welcoming embrace of her favorite burgundy armchair and pried the lid off the teapot to take a sniff. Whatever was in there burned and made her eyes water.

“Sebille said she brewed you something strong,” Dion chuckled.

Cyril sighed and stuffed the stopper back in, pouring herself a mug anyway. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”

“Well.” A single word and Dion’s voice had taken on that patronizing lilt that made her blood boil. “If you are so desperate to partake in adult activities, you should be prepared to deal with the repercussions.”

Cyril cast her uncle a withering glance as she piled a few bits of bread and cured meat on a plate.

“I’m twenty-one.” She slumped back in her chair, tossing her legs over the arm. “It’s not exactly like I’m a child anymore…”

Dion sighed and shook his head at her.

“A drop in the bucket, kiddo, and you know that as well as I do.”

“Tell that to my—”

“I did not come here to bicker with you.” Dion braced his elbows on his knees, scrubbing his palms over his face.

“Really?” Cyril scoffed and popped a piece of bacon into her mouth. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Cyril.”

He fixed her with a flat, unimpressed gaze. Cyril sighed.

“Fine then, my dearest uncle , what did you come here to not bicker with me about?”

Dion closed his eyes, his shoulders heaving with a slow breath. Something they both had to do, often, to avoid strangling each other.

“I’ve accepted a contract that involves a bit of…traveling.” Dion spoke slowly when he opened his eyes and looked at her. “I hoped you didn’t have any grand plans here in Helia for the summer.”

Plans . What a laughable statement.

The Summer Solstice was still over a month away, and it wasn’t like Dion would let her celebrate anywhere other than under his watchful eye at the estate. Never mind the fact that going anywhere on her own outside the bounds of their property wasn’t something he let her do, ever .

“No, I don’t think so.” Cyril cocked her head. “By travel , you mean…”

Travel wasn’t exactly uncommon with the… variety of contracts that came through the Rogue’s Guild. Some liked to call them mercenaries or thieves or even headhunters—as if those titles were somehow insults—but their services were always in demand. Lords and ladies and folks from all walks of life in Helia, and their neighboring states of Southern Carinae, often hired the rogues to do their more nefarious or clandestine bidding. Trips lasting a few days to a few weeks were commonplace.

From Dion’s tone, though, this rang differently.

The mortal continent to the east would be the experience of a lifetime for Cyril. At least a handful of the rogues that passed through the estate worked over in the foreign lands at some point in their lives, and every story painted it as a lively place full of trade, art, and absurdly good food.

There were always the nymph lands to the west, but Cyril doubted her uncle would be overly enthused about sending his men to work in a land known for its bodily pleasures and little else.

Dion cleared his throat.

“We’re going to Reykr.”

“ Reykr .” Cyril nearly choked on her tea. “Why the fuck would we want anything to do with helping those lunatics?”

“That mouth is going to get you into so much trouble one day.” Dion’s sigh carried palpable frustration as he raked a hand through his chestnut hair. “Those lunatics are technically your mother’s people, Cyril, and by proxy yours, too, in case you’ve forgotten. I hardly think you know enough about them to be slinging accusations like that.”

“They are not my people,” Cyril bit out. She wasn’t sure when she shot out of her chair, but pacing seemed like a better alternative to throwing a teacup. “And I know plenty about those oppressive, blood-sucking freaks, thank you .”

“ Bloodsucking ? Oh, Cyr , for the love of—”

“Yes, Dion, bloodsucking. Virgin sacrificing. Naked seances under the full moon, type fucking lunatics.” Her old governess, Millie, had told her as much. Most of the guildsmen she’d grown up around thought just as little of them and their dark arts, too.

Them, being the moon-fae of Reykr, the secluded and northernmost region of Carinae. They were strange and reclusive fae, marked by the wicked sets of sharp, double canines they all bore, who retreated to their isolated lands centuries upon centuries ago when the Great Kingdom of Carinae first fell. Retreated—or were pushed out, depending on who you asked—to the north of the Stygian mountain range.

“Well, if that’s what you want to believe, then I guess that makes you a quarter lunatic.” Dion had the audacity to look amused . He raised his brows at her in that smug, knowing way of his and took a long sip of his tea before he muttered, “Really explains a lot.”

Cyril ignored that.

“Do I even have a say on if I’m going or not?” Cyril planted herself in front of a window, staring out down the path towards the stables. She waited for the answer she already knew.

It took a single breath for Dion to say, “No, you don’t.”

Cyril picked at the jagged corner of her nail, likely a casualty of her ass meeting the floor one too many times. She hesitated before she asked, “When do we leave?”

She heard Dion stand and turned to see him smoothing down the front of his tunic as he said, “Two days. Well, a day and a half now since you slept half the damned day. You need to be packed for tomorrow afternoon, though. It was the only day I could hire porters to transport our things through the anchor stone in Epheos.”

Cyril felt nauseous.

Mostly the hangover’s doing, sure, but not a single bit of this conversation helped whatsoever. Nothing like a fucking single day’s notice to pack and uproot her entire life for gods knows how long.

“…Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

Another answer she already knew.

Dion usually opted to lead with any information he felt like sharing, which rarely amounted to much.

“For now, yes. Since Bron covered your ass this morning, Sebille is expecting you downstairs to help her prep for dinner. We’ll talk more when we eat.” Dion was halfway through the door when he added, “Besides, we’re looking at a ten-day ride if we’re lucky. We’ll have plenty of time to talk then.”

If it wasn’t for fear of Sebille’s wrath, Cyril would have crawled right back into bed and made all of this tomorrow’s problem.

Reykr. Moon-fae. Ten fucking days on a horse.

It was happening.

Cyril swore as she flopped back on her bed. She tugged the tie from her hair and ran her fingers through its lengths. The brutal grip of her hangover had eased, at least, thanks to a tincture a scullery maid slipped her before dinner, but she was sure no sort of salve or tonic existed to soothe any of her other frustrations.

Dinner was…insightful. Nowhere near enough to sway her opinions on the people she refused to acknowledge made up a quarter of her heritage, though.

Nothing would ever be enough, truthfully.

Cyril wanted nothing to do with the moon-fae and any of their black magic fuckery, and Dion’s argument that they were her mother’s people was bullshit.

The woman who birthed her was little more than a mystery, propped up by annoying comments the rogues and townsfolk loved to make about how kind, caring, and beautiful her mother was. The same sort of empty compliments that are tossed around about every damn dead woman in existence.

It didn’t help that, of their small entourage making the trip to Reykr, the prospect enthused precisely no one . If the ask hadn't come straight from Reykr's royal family—along with a payment that Cyril was stunned to hear the upfront portion of—she bet that not a single one of them would have agreed to go.

How nice for them to even have that option.

Dion prattled on about some old ties he had to the moon-fae kingdom. But, of course, he refused to elaborate any further than that. Apparently, that was all the explanation any of them needed—or deserved, Cyril was more sure of—when they asked why such a lucrative contract fell right into his lap.

What Dion did give them, though, was a handful of details about the contract itself.

In Brynnhold—which he explained was Reykr’s port city—a series of gruesome murders had surfaced over the last few months that had the locals all looking over their shoulders twice. The victims spanned all walks of life—a barmaid, a carpenter, and a popular textile merchant—and not a single one had a jilted lover, bad debts and dealings, or anything to give even a thread of justification for losing their lives. Even after a rather exhaustive search by the Royal Guard, nothing substantial surfaced to tie these three people together outside of the brutality of their deaths.

It wasn’t saying much for the capabilities of Reykr’s military if their entire guard service was now deferring their investigation to a band of rogues from outside their own kingdom, but Cyril kept that thought to herself.

Dion himself hadn’t been privy to the exact details of the deaths, which resulted in no shortage of outrage at the dinner table. But he seemed confident they would have plenty of other details to discuss during their lengthy ride north.

Ten fucking days.

Four to get them up through the foothills and forests north of the estate, another three to reach and clear the Obsidian Rift up in the Stygias, and a final three to get to the palace after they crossed the border into Reykr.

Dion thought they might shave a day or two off if the weather cooperated and they hauled a few long days, but Cyril didn’t plan on holding her breath about that.

Given how high tempers flew just at dinner, she wasn't even convinced they'd make it through the trip without Dion or one of the others pummeling each other. Never mind the idea of having efficient riding days.

She was thankful, though, that Dion picked three of his highest-ranking rogues to round out their merry little cabal for this fucked up trip—Tyriel, Bronson, and Rendal.

They were three men who had seen and done things that gave Cyril the chills to think about. But they also took on the role of surrogate fathers when Dion found himself unexpectedly raising his baby niece. Not a single one of them knew what the hell they were doing raising a child, but they loved to comment that Cyril turned out mostly alright.

And, for what it was worth, they sided with her over Dion more often than not.

There would be no shortage of commiseration between her and the three of them on this trip, and she was immensely thankful for that.

But there was still the daunting matter of packing…

“Fucking hells,” Cyril sighed as she hauled herself out of bed and stalked over to her wardrobe. Maybe, just maybe, if she knew what kind of shit-storm awaited her, she would have forgone the firewater last night.