60. Chapter 60

Chapter 60

T he steel and sandstone pillars of the palace gates were still at least a hundred feet away, a flurry of night-shrouded activity happening behind them, when a white-haired, uniformed body came barreling down the path.

“Mikael, what the fuck ?!”

Kaia always was remarkable at sprinting.

“Is she—oh gods . She isn’t…? Nononono .” Kaia came to a stumbling stop beside Mikael’s horse. “She’s okay?”

Her wide hazel eyes darted between him and Cyril’s limp body, but Mikael didn’t stop riding. He honed all of his focus on getting Cyril inside the walls that he could see now, on getting her warm and clean and dry as soon as possible.

It killed him to jostle her battered body around on horseback, but options weren’t plentiful. What was he going to do? Carry her to some shady inn for the night and then haul her back in the daylight, when she was conscious and far too aware of the scale of her injuries?

That would have been unfathomably cruel after all she endured.

“She’ll be okay,” Mikael said, his voice far more uneasy than he wanted.

His words were something he didn’t entirely believe yet, despite Wren’s reassurances. Healing magic of the scale Wren administered—bringing someone back from the brink of fucking death—came with no shortage of side effects, and Cyril was in store for a brutal recovery.

“Come with me to the doors. I’ll need help to get her down.”

“Of course, I…” Kaia kept pace, jogging alongside his horse, but the look of disbelief never left her face.

There was a tinge of guilt in her eyes too, the same as Mikael was sure sat in his own—that they did this to her. That they were the ones that gave her everything she needed to nearly get herself killed.

“Mika, what…” Her attention lingered on Cyril and she shook her head—an act of composure, he knew. “What happened to her…?”

“She found something she shouldn’t have. Nearly bled out.”

It came out so cold, so callous, but that was all he knew.

And truthfully, he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to know the finer details of what happened for her to sustain injuries that grievous.

“…but who attacked her? Do we know…are they still…?”

Kaia was not usually a woman who struggled with her words.

“She killed two people. I…that’s all I know. A contingent is there cleaning up…everything.”

Kaia nodded and didn’t say another word as they crested through the gates and cleared the last stretch of the road. Right past the slew of gawking and wide-eyed guards and officials scattered through the courtyard.

The hopes he had of getting Cyril upstairs with any privacy were gone.

At the base of the stairs, he tipped her head back, choosing to ignore the shocked breath Kaia sucked in as she took in Cyril’s bloody and battered face. A ring of black bruises had already bloomed around her throat.

“Cyr?” Mikael said softly, “We need to get you down, and Kaia is going to help. Then we’ll go upstairs and clean you up, okay?”

He hadn’t expected a response, but Cyril nodded. Her tongue darted out to wet her chapped and blood-crusted lips.

“Mika, I…”

Mikael stilled.

Cyril’s voice was just a rough rasp of noise, and the whine that came out of her was heart-rending. She hadn’t made a sound the entire damn ride. Had barely even moved against him as he rode faster than he was sure he ever had.

It was all catching up with her now.

She shifted, tensing, and made another quiet noise. “Everything hurts…”

“I know, I know.” Mikael didn’t waste any time, untying the lead wrapped around them and easing her uninjured leg up and over his horse’s neck. Something that sounded like a protest left Cyril when he turned her to the side in front of him, readying to slide her down into—

Tears streaked down Kaia’s face as she looked up at Cyril.

“Not now, Gatlin, please ,” Mikael said quietly.

Kaia gave her cheeks a rough wipe, her chest heaving with a shaky breath.

“Sorry, gods , I…” She cleared her throat, extending her hands up. “Give her here.”

Lowering Cyril down felt like moving a cracked piece of glass. Mikael’s movements were slow and measured, and he waited until Kaia had her hands tucked up under Cyril’s arms to let her take the brunt of her weight.

Not that there was much to her anymore, not with all the weeks she spent not eating, sleeping, or really living. Her body didn’t go into this with a fighting chance.

Kaia took a step back from his horse, and Cyril’s body slumped against her. The cry of pain that left her had Mikael gritting his teeth.

A slow, deep breath, and he dismounted his horse onto unsteady legs.

“You’re okay,” he heard Kaia say over and over, her voice quiet and thick with emotion. Her eyes met his, and she just shook her head.

“What else can I—” They both grimaced at Cyril’s sob as Mikael eased her away from Kaia, sweeping an arm behind her knees and one at her back. “What can I do? For you, for her?”

Mikael inclined his head up the steps.

“Doors, please, then deal with the horse, if you don’t mind. Someone needs to go back and find Attie too. I don’t know where she left her…”

Kaia nodded and took a few steps ahead of him before she hesitated.

“I should warn you…everyone is still here, from the dinner. Ari tried to keep it quiet when he notified your father and the general, but it turned into fucking mayhem. They were all too afraid to leave, not knowing if there was some kind of…imminent risk.”

Mikael scoffed. The men in that room were a bunch of fucking cowards, his father and the general included.

“Well, you can tell them to pull their heads out of their asses, because she took care of the issue for them.”

Mikael looked down at the battered and broken woman tucked in his arms, her hand clutching at his blood-soaked jacket. His chest fucking ached .

“Oh, I will, gladly .” A smile tugged at Kaia’s lips as she set her hands on the palace doors.

The wood groaned as the enchantment pulled them open. Beyond the threshold, the humming activity pouring out from the atrium fell silent. Dozens of bodies turned slowly, and shock spread across their faces like a wave.

In only a whisper, Kaia wished him good luck before she strode toward a group of lords and councilors, waving her arms in the air.

“Alright!” she shouted, “Gentlemen, if you’ll gather ‘round…”

Mikael locked eyes with his father.

On the far side of the atrium, near a seating alcove flanking the main staircase, Lars stood with a handful of advisors who looked like they still hadn’t clued in. Beside him, Dion sat on a cream-colored bench, hunched over with his head held in his hands.

Mikael wasn’t sure when the fuck the disgraced Rogue Master made it back to the palace, but Dion paled when Lars nudged him and jerked his chin towards Mikael and Cyril. Mikael didn’t feel an ounce of empathy for the man though. How fucking convenient for her well-being to be a thing of importance to him now.

Against his better instinct, Mikael came to a stop at the base of the stairs. He waited as his father peeled away from the group of advisors, a thunderstruck-looking Dion trailing behind him.

Cyril shifted in his arms, making a quiet noise of discomfort as she gripped the front of his jacket. Her eyes fluttered, her eyebrows knit, and then she was gone again. The damn woman was burning through any bit of energy her body tried to muster up.

“Is she…”

Dion's voice, filled with unease, pulled his attention from Cyril. Wary and hoarse, it was unfitting of the callous man Mikael knew he was.

The sheen in Dion’s dark and tired gold eyes was unmistakable.

“Wren couldn’t mend everything at once, but she’ll recover,” Mikael said flatly. Truthfully, that was more than Mikael felt Dion deserved to know. But in the presence of his father? He’d pull out a measure of diplomacy.

“Alright.” Dion nodded slowly. He eased back a step, like he couldn’t bear to be that close to her fragile form. Coward. Discomfort sat clearly on his face too, when he looked Mikael in the eyes and said, “Thank you.”

Mikael didn’t treat him to a response.

The last time Dion deigned to give Mikael that much of his attention, he was threatening him just a few feet from where they now stood.

He left Dion to stand there in silence as he started up the stairs, his father following up behind him.

“What can I do?” Lars asked, but Mikael didn’t feel like speaking with him either. Not when he had a part to play in this fucking disaster too. Lars couldn't be bothered to do anything except bend over and take whatever bullshit General Ezra fed to him.

“Is my mother upstairs?”

“Yes, she is. Do you want her?

“I’ll need her help.”

If there was only one other person in the entire fucking kingdom who could help with the vulnerable task of cleaning up Cyril, it was his mother. He couldn’t trust anyone else, not now.

“Of course.” Lars nodded. “I’ll send her to you.”

He sprinted up the steps past Mikael, disappearing beyond the residential wing doors.