37. Chapter 37

Chapter 37

T hankfully, faelock of the smoked variety didn’t have the same gut-turning effects that the distilled kind had. But it still left Cyril with a headache for almost three days after her trip to The Stairs with Mikael.

A trip which, much to her annoyance, she remembered abysmally little of.

The start of that night? Crystal fucking clear.

The end of that night? Fuzzy, but there. Sort of.

The entire middle of that night? She didn’t have a damn clue.

All normal, according to Mikael, and he even agreed to take her back to the club another night with the strict rule that she not ingest anything unless it came from him. Cyril was just relieved he didn’t want to delve into why she smoked it to begin with. Explaining the strange twinge of jealousy that woman had stirred up in her wasn’t a conversation she felt like navigating.

In those three days, Dion still hadn’t returned from the city, and for that she was grateful for a few reasons.

She remembered the start of that night far more clearly than she ever wanted to, and she wasn’t sure if looking her uncle in the eyes was something she could stomach.

Plus, the longer he was gone, the more time she got to spend with Mikael. Even if that meant spending her evenings getting wound up in his office after spending a few hours mingling in the barracks.

The exercise of patience was becoming exhausting.

Today though? The prince surprised her.

She had mentioned to him, entirely offhand, that she was going to give afternoon rides a go, instead of her usual early morning forays. A change to break the nagging pull that she had to lose herself in the archives all afternoon, lest Dion show up and accuse her of researching forbidden topics again.

She hadn’t expected to see him waiting for her in the stables when she wandered in after lunch.

Mikael gave her some spiel on how he wanted to ride with her so they could talk and see each other in the daylight for once. One look at the glint in his eyes when they made it to the glen told her talking would be the last thing they’d do there.

She didn’t mind.

Especially not now that she sat comfortably in his lap, her fingers carded through his hair and his lips working a steady path up her throat. They’d lasted a matter of minutes sitting under the generous shade of a white wisteria tree, talking about nothing important, before he hauled her over.

“Gods, you’re going to drive me mad,” Mikael murmured on the tail end of a breathy groan.

Cyril wasn’t shy about seeking the friction she was desperate for anymore. She would do anything to grant even a fraction of relief to the merciless, empty ache between her legs, caused entirely by Mikael.

He swore every time she did, but it never stopped him from sinking his fingers into her hips and pulling her down a little harder.

“Then do something about it.” She cupped his face in her hands, grasping onto a little current of boldness that ran through her. “Stop being a coward and touch me .”

His eyes locked on hers, the glacial blue flickering with something she couldn’t quite place.

Cyril almost thought she went too far with that.

But Mikael shifted, and she was on her back in the grass before she could process why his hand had suddenly splayed across her shoulders. His fingers started tugging at the laces of her pants, and Cyril’s breath caught in her chest.

She should have called him a coward a week ago.

“Tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” he murmured against her mouth.

She wanted to say okay, intended to vocalize it fully, but Mikael’s hand ended up under her shirt and it felt like a fucking brand . His fingers brushed up her stomach, slipping beneath the band of her breast wrap, and some half-whined agreement left her instead.

The prince laughed, but he didn’t tease her for long.

The warmth of his hand, seeping into every fiber of her flesh, traveled southward, dipping just below her waistband. Her core clenched with anticipation, hips arching up to meet his hand, but Mikael stopped.

He leveled his gaze with hers—a silent question.

“ Please ,” she whined.

Mikael’s eyes flared.

“Be careful with that word,” he said roughly, but Cyril didn’t have a chance to ask why. He was kissing her again, drawing his fingers through the slick heat waiting for him between her legs. He stole every bit of breath from her lungs.

Mikael eased a finger into her, pumping slowly to start, and Cyril lost any hope she had of forming words. His hands dwarfed her own, and he used them in the kind of way that made her doubt she’d ever find her own fingers satisfying again.

“You’re so wet.” Mikael’s half-groaned words oozed smug, masculine pride, and Cyril didn’t have it in her to even try to knock him down a peg. This was entirely his doing, and he knew it. “More?”

She whined and nodded, and Mikael sank a second finger into her. He swore, Cyril groaned his name softly, and she wasn’t sure if they were going to make it out of this glen in one piece.

Mikael was eager to drink down the wanton, desperate noises he drew from her with the slow, steady rock of his hand. The fullness she felt from his fingers was as foreign as it was blissful, and Cyril was entirely at his mercy.

She knew she wasn’t long for this world.

All it took was Mikael crooking his fingers just so , and telling her just how fucking good she felt, and she came apart. It was like a little crack of lightning skittered up and down her spine, taking every fleeting strand of conscious thought it with.

She gripped Mikael’s shoulder, a shuddering incantation of his name rolling off her tongue and onto his lips, and he worked her through what may have very well been a life-altering orgasm.

The cocky grin on his face told her he probably assumed as much too.

Cyril let her head fall back in the grass with a groan.

“I take it that was to your liking?” Mikael chuckled, placing a trio of decidedly tender kisses up her throat.

“Shut up,” Cyril mumbled.

It wasn’t just to her liking, it was un-fucking-real.

And despite becoming acutely aware of just how fucking hot it was outside, she still made a quiet noise of protest when Mikael’s weight shifted away from her.

They were not done yet.

Cyril reached for him, skimming a hand up his thigh as she asked, “What about you?”

“I seem to recall my cowardice only extended to me not touching you .” Mikael caught her hand and kissed her palm before he set it back down in the grass. “Besides, I’m fine. And we should head back before they send someone looking for the two of us.”

“You do not look fine.”

No, he looked hard as hells, straining against the laces of his pants, and Cyril was riding a wicked high. When she ran her hand up his thigh again, Mikael didn’t stop her. She palmed him gently, like she’d done so many nights at the barracks now, and leaned in to kiss his jaw.

“C’mon Mika,” she murmured. The shift in his hips as he tipped his head back was subtle, but it was all the encouragement Cyril needed to touch him a little more firmly. “Let me make you feel good.”

Mikael took a ragged breath. The heat in his eyes when they slid over to her had Cyril’s heart beating faster than it already was.

“Wrath,” he said roughly, “I don’t want someone to come and find you on your knees for me.”

There was no stopping the sultry smile that crept onto Cyril’s face.

“Is that what you think about? Me on my knees?”

The sharp breath Mikael took and the throb of his cock beneath her hand answered that.

“You have no idea,” he said as he notched his fingers under her chin and ghosted his lips against hers. “But when I fuck this perfect mouth of yours for the first time, wrath, I want time and privacy, and we have neither of those here. Okay?”

Cyril swallowed thickly as the budding confidence driving her hand and her thoughts banked, yielding to some deep-seated submissive pull. It should have been alarming that a few haughty words could steer her like that, but she fucking loved it.

“Okay.” She nodded, easing away from him, and Mikael smiled.

He leaned in to kiss her once more before he stood and helped haul Cyril to her feet with him.

As she tucked her shirt back and righted the laces on her pants, Cyril sighed the entire time. She made a mental note to never get off in a place where she couldn’t immediately take a nap again. Her limbs still felt like they were half-filled with lead, and getting saddled up on Attie while she was still drifting in her post-orgasm haze was a task that took an egregious amount of effort.

The self-satisfied smile Mikael kept tossing her way made it worth it though.

Cyril was flustered and still giddy as all fucking hell by the time she and Mikael made it back to the stables, because the arrogant prince suggested they race back.

So, of course, instead of just sprawling across Attie’s back and letting the horse meander back, Cyril rode like her life depended on it.

Her pride did, at least.

She was tempted to ask Mikael if he made a habit of pleasuring a woman within an inch of their damn life and then challenging them to a fucking competition when their guard was down. Cyril would have, after they passed off their reins to one of the stable hands, if Mikael hadn’t swept her down the aisle and kissed her again.

“We have to be careful,” she murmured, right against his lips.

Discretion had gone out the fucking window, and the prince was becoming brazen. Even now, as he backed her against one of the stone pillars, the stables were full of late afternoon noise and commotion. It was only a matter of time before someone—

“I know.”

Mikael drew back enough to notch his fingers under her chin, dragging his thumb across her bottom lip. She must have made a noise because he smirked at her.

“I was thinking.” He leaned down and kissed her again. Cyril’s bones felt like they were giving way. “Tonight, after the barracks, you should come spend the night with me.”

The haughty gleam in Mikael’s eyes told her she did not misinterpret what he was suggesting at all.

Her entire damn chest tightened, but she nodded and managed to get out, “I’d like that.”

“Good.”

Mikael kissed her again , and Cyril wasn’t confident she would be able to walk out of there on her own if he kept it up. It was a mercy that the stable master’s voice began echoing through the stables far more prominently than Cyril ever heard it before.

Boone wasn’t a quiet man by any means, but he was speaking with some purpose.

She flattened her hand against Mikael’s chest, forcing some room in between them, and gods that was a scowl if she’d ever seen one. The prince opened his mouth, but she clamped her hand over it and shushed him.

“Oh, Lady Cyril ? Is that … Black hair, right? With the lovely gold eyes? ”

Cyril’s lovely gold eyes widened, and she watched as Mikael reeled himself as fast as a bolt of fucking lightning. She barely blinked, and he had tied his hair back into something decidedly less handled and smoothed down his shirt.

The stable master was doing them one hells of a favor.

“She just came back from a ride. Should be ‘round somewhere if you’ll follow me.”

Cyril couldn’t hear who he was talking to, but his voice was far too close for comfort and closing in every second. Gods, if Dion was back…

“ Go ,” she hissed at Mikael, shooing him with waves of her hands, and the twit had the audacity to look amused . He bowed at the waist as he walked backward, turning around just in time to sidestep Bron and Tyr as they came through the doorway.

Cyril loosed a tiny breath of relief.

“Gentlemen,” Mikael said by way of a remarkably calm and collected acknowledgement, and then the prince disappeared from her sight.

Bron tracked him for a moment, though, with a look of wicked curiosity, and Cyril felt sweat slip down her back as she walked to meet them. The raised brow Bron pinned her when she came to a stop beside Tyr did nothing to help. Even Tyr’s usual quiet smile had an air of judgment about it.

“Hi, dove.”

Bron pulled her in for a hug so tight the hilts of the knives strapped across his chest dug into her cheek. Her uncles hadn’t been back long if they were still geared for travel.

Cyril wrestled herself away from Bron, but he slung an arm across her shoulders and started steering her back through the stables. Tyr fell in step behind them.

“I didn’t know you were all coming back,” she said. “Is everything alright?”

Bron half shrugged. “Eh, just an impromptu visit. Investigation’s a bit stale, felt like getting out of the city for a little.”

“Oh. Ren didn’t come too?”

“He did, but he’s with the boss. Probably for the best that someone kept him busy.” Bron winked at her, and Cyril was just about ready to disappear. “And if I could offer you a morsel of advice, dove? Scrub up before dinner, and get changed. You reek .”

Cyril blinked at him.

She lifted her shirt to her nose and…No? A little sweaty, maybe, from the damn blistering heat that didn’t want to break, but reek? Unless…

“Is it the horses?” Cyril sniffed her sleeve. She was probably just so damn used to it by now, not that they smelled bad…

“No, not the horses.” Bron shook his head, and Tyr fucking laughed .

“If you’re just being an arse—”

“You smell an awful lot like the prince, Cyr, and he smelled an awful lot like you.”

Cyril nearly tripped.

Oh, fucking hells.

“I… We— ” She cleared her throat because she needed half a fucking second to think. “We went for a ride together. Of course, we smell like each other with your freakish sense of smell.”

Cyril, perhaps, hadn’t thought about what a problem ascended fae and their absurd senses could be. She was going to have to talk to Mikael as soon as everyone left, or she could catch him alone.

The total silence they met her with had her looking from Bron to Tyr, and back again between each when they met her with tight smiles.

“Oh, this is all you, friend,” Tyr said to Bron after they exchanged a look that Cyril understood no part of.

A sigh slipped through Bron’s entire body as he said, “Dove, dear, you smell like sex. Reek like it, in fact.”

That stopped her right in her fucking tracks. Cyril nearly swayed into the bushes lining the pathway back to the palace.

“We did not …”

Gods, she didn’t even want to say the words, not to her gods damned uncles , of all people. And they hadn’t, truly! Not that this was the place to get into technicalities…

“ I did not…” Cyril waved a hand back towards the stables, like that would help her case out at all.

The doubt in both of their faces spoke to just how convincing any of that was.

But it was Tyr that said, “Cyr, you have grass in your hair.”

Her eyes flared, and she fought to get the tie out of her braid, shaking it all out. Grass, white wisteria petals, and a single fucking twig fell out.

Backup plan.

“ Please don’t say anything to Dion.”

Cyril looked at Tyr first. The rich hazel of his eyes softened, and he held up his hands in a show of submission she wholly appreciated.

“Not my place, don’t worry.”

Next, she looked at Bron. He still looked far too fucking amused with all of this.

“Not my business, either. But…” Bron gave her a wry smile, and Cyril clenched her teeth. He needed to stop there. “I take it this means you don’t want me to break his hands?”

“No! Gods, do not ,” she hissed and flashed a forced smile at the pair of maids that stepped around them on the pathway, unease flickering on their faces.

“Well, the offer always stands.” Bron pinched her cheek before she had a chance to swat at him, and he turned to start back down the path. “Oh, and make sure you take a tonic, yeah? Be smart about it?”

“Bron!” she whined.

Not this conversation, no no no.

“He’s right, dove.”

Cyril stared at Tyr, but he only shrugged.

“Not you too! Mikael and I…we aren’t…we haven’t …!” Cyril groaned and stalked away from her uncles and the rumble of laughter that broke out between the two of them. She’d take the damn long way back inside if it meant getting the fuck away from them and this topic.

“Cyr, I’m just teasing you!” Bron called out, but she flipped him off and kept walking.

Mikael would be lying if he said the day’s turn of events hadn’t left him disappointed.

A trip to the barracks with Cyril wasn’t going to happen, and that meant that after the barracks wasn’t happening either. Likely for days now too. A cruel thing to accept, with little glimmers of the afternoon still drifting around in his head. Namely, those gods damned little noises she made, and how fucking good she felt—

“Distracted, boss?” Ari muttered from his right, all thinly-veiled amusement.

Mikael blew out a slow breath and knocked back the rest of his wine.

He knew he wasn’t observing Cyril as discretely as he should as she talked and drank on the other side of the lounge, flanked by her three more personable uncles.

The damn woman was just, well…distracting.

Her budding, drink-laden laugh tore through the white-noise chatter and thin haze of smoke that filled the room—entirely his father and Dion’s doing—and her lips kept peeling back into a wide, eye-lifting grin. She was having a far better night than he was.

Mikael sighed. “Long day.”

Ari made a non-committal noise and turned his attention back to whatever bullshit General Ezra was rambling on about. Eleven years now of listening to his lifeless, grating voice and it never got easier.

Mikael supposed he only had himself to blame for making such an impulsive choice when his blood ran a little too fucking hot. Not the first time, and probably not the last, truthfully, not with how thoroughly fed up he was with his self-imposed test of patience . He wanted to bed her so fucking badly, but things were getting…complicated, and in a way that he wasn’t sure how to navigate.

Mikael may have had plenty of experience with women in the physical sense, but courting? He was fucking lost. The feelings, and romance, and sweeping someone off their feet were not things he ever had to worry about. Nevermind with a woman who had a family brimming with men that frankly horrified him.

The men she sat with right now, joking and laughing without a care in the world, were the same men who tortured and killed mercilessly, just in the name of contracts . He didn’t want to imagine what they would each be willing to do for Cyril.

Mikael needed another damn drink, and a stronger one at that.

He slipped away from the group of captains and commanders still feigning their interest in Ezra’s droning lesson about fucking whatever piece of irrelevant history.

The moonstone-topped sideboard tucked along the far wall had a bottle of something dark and pungent on it that seemed like it would do the trick. He poured himself a few fingers worth and the half he shot back burned the entire way down.

“You’re brooding more than usual.”

Mikael stiffened and glared down at his mother.

Out of thin-fucking-air, every damn time.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Runa smiled at him and smoothed her hand over his back.

“Usually, you’re a little broody,” his mother spoke quietly as she sorted through the open bottles of wine and found one that caught her interest, “But tonight, you’ve been especially broody. A little pouty, even.”

Mikael just cast her a sidelong glance and drained his glass. He wasn’t sure how his father enjoyed drinking this firewater, but that didn’t stop him from pouring himself another.

“Did something happen?” A little more softly, she added, “With Cyril, maybe?”

“Nothing happened.” And that was the entire damn problem.

His mother hummed. “Interrupted plans?”

Mikael might have scoffed. “Something like that.”

One of them looked amused, at least.

“You really like her, don’t you?” More a statement than a question from his mother, her eyes lingering past him for a long while, to where he knew Cyril sat with her uncles. He could hear her over there, giving shit to one of them about something he couldn’t quite make out. “And I actually mean her , as a person, and not just her body.”

Mikael knew he didn’t have a shining reputation for his comfort with commitment, but fucking hells…

“Good to know you think so highly of me.”

Runa rolled her eyes. “It’s just nice to see, Mika.”

“That’s not what you were saying a couple of weeks ago.”

He seemed to recall having a remarkably different conversation with her in the atrium the day after the state dinner.

“And I see things differently now.” His mother took a long sip of her wine. Gods forbid she admitted she was wrong about something. “Why don’t you go join her?”

“Join her?” Mikael stared at his mother. “There are four people in this room I am certain would enjoy dismembering me if I get too close to her. So, discretion .”

It felt better than it should have to toss his mother’s advice back, as if she conveniently forgot about that lecture. He’d had so many, it must have been hard for her to keep track.

She didn’t have an immediate argument against that.

Her eyes lit up, though, and Mikael feared whatever just ran through her mind. He would have walked away if she hadn’t linked arms with him and started tugging him along.

“You should try to get to know Dion a bit. I think it would do a world of good.”

Absolutely fucking not.

That man was about as thorny as they came, and Mikael had no interest in getting to know any bit more of him. But his mother was stronger than she looked and Mikael wasn’t about to cause a scene.

“Mother, I don’t think–”

“Lars, my love? Dion?” Runa called out, waving a hand delicately in the air. “Can we join the two of you?”

Like hells, his father would never say no to her.

The King of Reykr stood, a hint of sway in his step, and Dion followed suit. They hauled over another two armchairs to the fire and his mother all but corralled him into the one between herself and Dion.

He should’ve just stayed for Ezra’s lecture.

“Do you smoke?” Dion asked, and it took Mikael a second longer than he’d have liked to realize that Dion was speaking to him . The Rogue Master fixed his eyes on him, a metal case tucked between his middle and pointer fingers.

“I, uh, yeah—”

“Only when he drinks, just like his father,” Runa interjected, because Mikael was evidently a child and couldn’t speak a damn word for himself.

She smiled too warmly, too forced, like she was desperate to remind Dion that Mikael was cut from the same cloth as his dear friend.

But Mikael wasn’t.

He and Lars had painfully little in common.

Dion tossed him the case and held open his hand once Mikael fished one of the tobacco rolls out, a lick of flame swirling across his palm. It shouldn’t have felt degrading to lean over and light the end of his tobacco like that, not with how many times Gunner had done the same thing for him, but it did.

A subtle display of dominance, and a message fucking received .

“Appreciated.” Mikael tossed the case back to Dion, getting nothing but a silent half-nod.

Mikael didn’t let his gaze linger long, but there was not a single trace of the man he glimpsed in his mother’s memories left in Dion. Memories from only twenty-five years ago, at that. Not kind years, Mikael supposed, with the tragedies that ravaged the Rhodea family. Dion was nothing but hard edges and darkness now.

Mikael turned his attention to the fireplace and let the tobacco fill his lungs.

“Will you all be here for long?” Runa broke the budding tension, as his mother was always good at doing. “I’m thinking we should eat outside if we’ve got a crowd, I’ll just need to—”

Dion shook his head.

“Don’t worry about making plans for us. The others are heading back tomorrow and I’ll likely go the day after. They needed a change of scenery. Morale has been…” He laughed roughly. “Well, it’s been fucking piss poor to put it lightly.”

“Not much luck with leads?” his mother asked, even though Mikael was aware how loosely his father spoke with her. She knew everything .

“Nothing that holds up once one of the boys gets through with it.”

Mikael didn’t even want to know what that meant.

Cyril had made a couple of offhand, drunk comments about what each of her uncles was skilled at—what they had each taught her to do—as casually as if they were good at knitting.

That was enough for his imagination.

“No one had any complaints when I suggested a night off. I know that one has missed them too.” Dion took a drag of his cigarette and jerked his chin back towards where Cyril and the others sat as he exhaled. “So, four birds, one stone.”

“You always have been painfully pragmatic,” Runa chuckled, and Dion held up his hands in some kind of mock defense. His lopsided smile tugged at the wicked scar down the right side of his face.

The next hour proved to be one of the most awkward of Mikael’s life.

His father and Dion supplied nearly all the conversation, shooting back and forth about something to do with the politics of the mortal lands that Mikael didn’t quite understand, and his mother provided airy little top-ups where she could.

Get to know Dion . Easy for his mother to say when the man actually spoke to her.

Mikael polished off another two glasses and three tobacco rolls—all proactively and silently supplied by Dion—and finally saw his opportunity for escape when a few lingering guards filed out.

“I’m going to turn in as well,” Mikael cut in and stood when his mother and father and Dion’s gazes followed the group out.

He did not expect Dion to stand as well.

“I’ll walk with you.”

Mikael almost sat back down but his mother was up next, giving him a less than discreet smile of encouragement as she hugged them both goodnight before she sat on the arm of his father’s chair. Lars didn’t even bother getting up, just waved them both off with a wry smile Mikael knew meant he was a little too far into his cups.

“After you.”

Dion motioned to the door and, against every instinct to not leave his back open to this man, Mikael walked ahead of him. He caught the briefest glimpse of Cyril, braiding Bronson’s hair of all damn things with a shit-eating grin on her face, before he slipped down the hall.

Mikael was ready for the most awkward hour of his life to just roll into the most awkward walk of his life, but Dion stopped as soon as they cleared the first few steps into the atrium.

The look that the Rogue Master fixed Mikael with raised every alarm in his body.

“I will only say this to you once, Prince . My niece is not some object for your amusement. If you value your hands, keep them to yourself and stay the fuck away from her.” Dion spoke with a quiet, lethal sort of calmness, but Mikael held his gaze. He just didn’t have any fucking words. “Is that clear?”

Mikael knew there wasn’t a true answer he could give to that question that wouldn’t spark disaster.

Dion did not wait for a response before he turned and stalked toward the main doors, oblivious to the determination he had just ignited in Mikael.