35. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

T wo evenings later, Cyril couldn’t get her damn hands to stop shaking as she saddled up Attie, alone in the stables well after sundown. Whether that was from excitement or fear, she didn’t know.

Both, maybe.

Communicating with Mikael while Dion was at the palace had been a monstrously frustrating task.

When Dion was occupied with meetings? Mikael was in attendance.

When she would finally see the prince at dinner? Dion was glued to her.

He’d apparently interpreted her inquiring after his whereabouts as a sign that she missed him, that she was feeling uneasy on her own.

That couldn’t have been any further from the truth.

Feigning indifference to the prince had been a monumental exercise in restraint, especially when he found every opportunity to fix her with a piercing stare or brush his leg against hers under the table. Cyril didn’t have the faintest damn idea how to navigate a regular relationship, let alone one that demanded secrecy.

She didn’t know how the fuck she ended up here.

When Cyril woke up that morning, the same day Dion was heading back to the city, she found a note slipped under her door. Addressed to Wrath Incarnate from one Prince of Darkness , it contained a set of very specific instructions in the prince’s handwriting.

The same instructions that now had her riding towards the palace gates, a cowl pulled up over her head, and a kernel of excitement blooming inside of her. The guards manning the gate let her through with nary a second look, and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief when she found Mikael waiting down the road.

“You’re ready to go?” he asked her as if she hadn’t just shown up dressed and ready, on her horse.

“Where are we going?”

“Into the city.”

Cyril groaned, encouraging Attie into a faster trot to keep up with Mikael.

“Yes, but where in the city?”

Mikael looked back, his grin gleaming in the moonlight, and said, “You’ll have to wait and see.”

Even when they’d left their horses with the guards working the city gate and started walking through the streets, he kept his mouth shut. Mikael just took her hand and tugged Cyril along beside him, giving her an amused look when she grumbled about never being able to find her way back out of the city after the third or fourth turn they took.

“Our destination.”

Cyril blinked at the uninviting door that they approached.

Steel and a little rusted, it bore a worn sign that read The Stairs .

Her skittering excitement morphed into unease.

She planted her feet on the cobblestone and pulled the prince to a stop.

“Mikael, where are you taking me?” she hissed.

“Somewhere I think you’ll have one hells of a time. It’s safe, don’t worry.” He eased an arm around her shoulder and pulled her along. Cyril didn’t stand a chance at stopping him.

Mikael steered her right up to the door where he pushed back his cowl and exchanged a nod with a frightening moon-fae man standing watch outside. The door creaked open and Mikael motioned for her to go ahead of him.

“Watch your step,” he whispered.

Suddenly, the name made sense.

From a few feet inside the doorway, a winding staircase dropped off the landing. It looked like it wound down forever , and Cyril found herself holding on to the railing with a death grip while Mikael walked casually beside her.

With each half-flight they wrapped around, sound rolled up the stone walls. Murmurs at first, and soft rumbles of undecipherable noise, that gave way to the laughing, yelling, and chatter of what had to be dozens of people.

The air became heavier the further they descended too. Full of something smokey and sweet that made Cyril’s eyes water and her lungs burn.

So the prince had brought her to some kind of tavern. She supposed there were worse places to be.

A night out was a night out in her books.

When they finally reached the bottom, and she pushed open the door, the sheer burst of noise that hit Cyril had her staggering a step back into Mikael.

This wasn’t a tavern at all.

It was a club.

Mikael had brought her to a proper, bustling nightclub.

The two-story room that opened up in front of her was filled with bodies, packed nearly wall to wall. To her left, a crowd was gathered in front of a dark stone bar running the length of the wall, and to her right was the sprawling main room, well-appointed with tables and chairs, chaises, and nooks draped with burgundy curtains. The floor felt like it was nearly vibrating from the indistinct hum of conversation and laughter, and bodies moving across its surface.

Cyril had heard about clubs like this before when she’d eavesdropped on rogues coming back from their travels.

They would trade bawdy stories about everything from the sex to the staff, to what sort of drink and other relaxants the various establishments had. Helia, she knew, had at least one in Epheos that was renowned for the… willingness of the staff that worked there.

The entire notion of such a place always struck her as fascinating, but the thought of actually going to one? Cyril had never let herself consider that, for obvious reasons.

Mikael’s hand slipped around her waist as she gaped at the people, the scantily clad staff, and the general state of debauchery that wove itself with natural ease between all the patrons.

No one was shy, with their hands or mouths, or even their eyes, for that matter. Her own eyes snagged on a couple laid out on a chaise against one of the far walls. Half-dressed and wholly entangled with each other, they had an audience .

Heat flared in her cheeks.

“Welcome to The Stairs, Lady Cyril,” Mikael whispered in her ear, and Cyril turned back to look at him, her eyes wide. He grinned. “I thought I should show you what a proper night of fun in the city looks like. We’ll grab some drinks and get settled in.”

Cyril had no words.

She just nodded and let him guide her along as she gave in to the pull to look back at the crowd. Her eyes drifted as they walked, taking in faces and bodies, drinks and pipes, and lewd acts she wasn’t sure she understood the mechanics of.

Then she froze.

Those eyes… She wasn’t supposed to see those eyes here.

Or that scar.

“ Mikael ,” Cyril hissed, latching her eyes desperately onto him. He cocked his head at her. “Is that… Is that fucking Dion over by the—”

She waved her arm vaguely behind her. There was no way it wasn’t him, but a woman was straddling him and Cyril looked away quickly. His hands were moving, and she wanted no part in witnessing that.

“ Dion ? No, this isn’t the sort of—” Mikael looked past her and his eyes went wide. “Fuck me.”

For a moment that felt painful, he just blinked.

“Mika? I think we—”

“Change of plans,” Mikael said as he grabbed her hand and pulled Cyril past the bar with determination.

She kept her eyes glued to the ground, to the sheen of things coating the stone that stuck to the soles of her boots, and only dared to lift her attention when Mikael finally came to a stop.

They were at the base of a narrow set of metal stairs.

A glance upwards told her they led to some balconies up on the second floor that she still couldn’t quite see.

A fae woman stood there, clothed in a sheer black dress that just grazed her hips, and she grinned at Mikael.

“Your Highness. Should I tell Lily you’re here?” she said to him before her eyes darted to Cyril, “Oh, and with a friend? I’m sure she’d be willing to entertain the both of you.”

Mikael winced.

“No, gods. No. Just a suite.” He dug a gold coin out of his pocket that Cyril even blinked at. “And discretion, please. I’m not here, and neither is she.”

The woman took the coin without a second thought, slipping it into a velvet bag belted around her waist, and unlatched the gate at the bottom of the stairs.

“Go with her. I’ll be back with drinks,” Mikael said quietly to Cyril before he vanished into the crowd.

But Cyril’s damn legs didn’t want to move.

This night had gone from possibly one of the most exciting of her life so far to one she already wanted to forget about. The fucking odds that Dion —

“Come on, darling,” the woman’s voice drawled from halfway up the stairs, “I don’t have all night.”

Cyril took the stairs up behind her two at a time.

She followed the shimmering fabric of her dress down a catwalk at the top of the stairs, lined with dim faelights along one side, and numbered doors along the other. The muffled noises seeping out from under the doors told Cyril everything she needed to know about what went on up here.

“You haven’t been here before, have you?”

Unlatching a keyring from her belt, the woman looked back at Cyril with some unmistakable judgment.

Cyril shook her head. “No. I…I’m not from here.”

“Well, come on then.”

She unlocked a door halfway down the hall and ushered Cyril in. The private room was dark, and far quieter than it had any right to be, especially with its balcony open to the commotion below.

A spacious chaise and a couple of armchairs, in the same burgundy fabric as the drapes downstairs, and a low table filled the center. All simple and comfortable looking.

“Can I offer you some advice, dear?”

Cyril turned to face the woman, who had a tobacco roll hanging out of the corner of her mouth. Her long, honey-brown hair hung half in front of her face as she fished something out of one of the other velvet bags on her belt.

“…Sure?”

“Just speaking from years of personal experience, our dear prince doesn’t like a tense woman,” she said as she pulled a flint stick out, lit the roll, and extended it to Cyril.

Sweet smoke wafted up into Cyril’s face, and she blinked.

The entirely unsettling comment aside, whatever the woman was smoking was not tobacco.

“It’s just a faelock roll.” She planted a hand on her hip, waving the smoldering roll in between them. “A few puffs, and you’ll have a lovely evening. The first one’s on the house.”

Cyril didn’t know what compelled her to throw caution to the wind, but she took the roll from the woman and let the heavy, sweet smoke fill her lungs.