Crusader

Cyrus looked back at her, unflinching. “I’m a warrior. Taking pain is what I do. Gather the officers together, tell them I’ll met with them in the dining hall in fifteen minutes.” He straightened. “Truly fifteen minutes, this time. Let them know.” He turned away, trying to keep an even pace on his journey through the halls until he reached his room. His urge was to throw the door open and storm in, but he restrained it, shutting it near-silently. He heard something stir in the bedroom, and Cattrine’s head peeked around the doorframe, followed by the rest of her, shyly displaying her nude skin, the scars obvious and plentiful. She had done much the same for the last thirty days, and every time it enticed him, drew him in, the sight of her this way.

Now he saw only the scars, jagged, angry, marring the perfect skin, interrupting the smoothness of her flesh, things he barely noticed yesterday, but were now glaringly obvious, standing out, filling his vision. They were all he could see. “Get dressed,” he said. “Your brother threatens war on Galbadien.”

Cyrus watched her confidence crumple, the smooth, seductive look evaporating from her face like a mirage when one draws too close. One of her hands wrapped around her breasts while the other sank lower, as though she could cover herself with them. “He what? I’m sorry?”

“He threatens war. On Galbadien, for harboring the Sanctuary army.” Cyrus’s gaze was cold, unmerciful, and he could feel Cattrine wilt before it. “The King and his advisors seem to believe it’s his way of salving his wounded honor, because he’s embarrassed that a foreign army marched through his realm, slapped down one of his barons, and stole away his own flesh and blood without challenge.”

“That … does sound like him,” she said. “But it’s just the rattle of the sword, surely he can’t mean to-”

“They think he does,” Cyrus said. “They think he knows they’re weak on the border and that he won’t hesitate to exploit that to save himself some rich embarrassment.”

Her eyes flicked down, even as she stood away from the doorframe, exposed, in the middle of the room. Her hands hovered near uselessly around her body, and she seemed to shiver, though the room felt warm to Cyrus’s skin.

“I didn’t mean … I’m sorry,” she said, still not meeting his eyes, “for not telling you.”

“Yes,” Cyrus said. “I’m sorry, too. Would it really have been that bad? I already took you on knowing what your husband was. Did you think having an ass of a brother would have stopped me?”

“I was afraid,” she said, as her body jerked from an unseen chill, “that you might think something like this could happen, and you would change your mind. I thought that perhaps it would be dangerous to tell you, that you weren’t as honorable or decent as you appeared to be. I had reasons,” she said, finally looking up at him. “Very good ones, every single one, or at least they sounded so in my head.”

“I trusted you.” Cyrus stared at her, and she flinched away. “In a way I haven’t … with anyone … in a long time. I understand your reasons, but as of about thirty days ago … when you knew who I was and what I stood for … they should have been null and you should have told me the truth.”

“I’m sorry.” She still did not look up, focusing instead on the floor, the marble, anything but him. “I’m sorry, Cyrus …”

“Yeah.” He heard the scrape of his boots on the floor as he turned back to the door. “I have to go meet with my officers. King Longwell is leaving tomorrow; they’ve been summoned to Enrant Monge by Briyce Unger.”

“Will we be going as well?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Cyrus said.

He heard her move across the floor, taking tentative steps, her feet making a slight sucking noise as they pulled from the marble floor with each step. “Will you hand me back over to my brother? As though I were a piece of property?”

Cyrus felt the answer within him, steeped in the rage he felt inside at her betrayal. Yes! I’ll hand you over to him, let him have you, be done with you and your lies, your deceits, with your … He nearly choked at the memory of her fingers tracing lines down his skin. “You should get dressed,” he said simply, and walked out the door, careful to open it no more than was necessary to slip out, so as not to expose her to anyone who might be walking down the hall.

As he walked away from the closed door, he stopped, halted by some unseen feeling, something that ran through him, a ripple of strong emotion, and he tried to quiet it. She lied. She betrayed you. Just like Vara. Just like Imina. He felt his fist clench. Felt his mask of emotionlessness deteriorate, and he placed his hand on the stone wall of the hallway, as though he could draw some unseen strength from it. He imagined pebbles falling within him, into the giant void, the roiling maelstrom in his chest, the storm that threatened to break loose out of him and cause him to shed tears, something he had not done since … He remembered, and then pushed it down, back into the depths, along with the storm, along with everything else.

One foot in front of another. Keep walking. I need to meet with the officers. I need to decide what we’re going to do next. He took a breath, then another, slow, as though he could excise the venom within simply by breathing it out. He imagined the stones falling inside him again, rocks, boulders, dropping into his center, weighing down his heart, so that he couldn’t feel the emotion within. He imagined ice, cold, frigid blocks of it, stacked all around his pain, cooling him, building a wall that it couldn’t escape. He let it contain the emotion, bury it, push it far out of sight, behind the wall, where he could no longer taste the bitterness of it in his mouth, and the blood rushing through his ears subsided.

One foot in front of another, he told himself again, pulling his hand from the wall, letting his own strength hold him upright again. He stood up, trying to straighten his spine, as though standing as tall as possible could help somehow, disguise his weakness, put it to the back of him, where he wouldn’t feel it and no one would see it. He resisted the urge to let his knees buckle, fought it, let the ice hold his emotions in check. One foot in front of another. Keep walking.

He took a step, then another, and the pace became quicker and quicker as his feet carried him away from the door, away from the handle he wanted to turn, the words he wanted to say, away from the feel of her skin against his-and back to his duty.

Chapter 24

“Did you know?” It was Ryin who asked the question, after Cyrus had laid out everything that King Longwell had told him. Reactions had ranged from shocked horror (Nyad, who had her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wider than usual) to calm acceptance (Curatio and J’anda, each of whom let only a single raised eyebrow appear on their faces-Curatio, the left and J’anda the right, the contrast of their light and dark skin and facial reactions making them appear as bizarre mirror images) to unflinching, uncaring emptiness (Terian). Only Ryin spoke, though Samwen Longwell had a question of sorts on his face.

“Of course he didn’t,” Nyad said, turning to slap Ryin across the arm with a backhand, drawing an annoyed look from the druid as he rubbed his shoulder. She turned back to Cyrus, and her expression changed to perplexed. “Wait, did you?”

“He didn’t,” Curatio said, studying Cyrus. “This is not the sort of thing our gGeneral would have hidden from us.”

“I’d like to hear him say it,” Ryin spoke up again, still massaging the place where Nyad had struck him. He looked at the faces around him, Curatio, J’anda and Nyad in particular, showing some irritation with him. “It’s not as though it’s the first time he’s played games with the truth to get something he wanted. I just want to hear him say he didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know,” Cyrus said, his voice devoid of any emotion. “But now we have consequences to deal with.”

“Actaluere’s declaration of war isn’t as problematic as one might think,” Longwell said, drawing the officers’ attention to him. “They’ll have received a summons to Enrant Monge as well, and they’ll be obligated to attend. We’ll have a chance to smooth this over with Milos Tiernan himself.”

“What if our esteemed General doesn’t want to smooth it over?” Ryin asked. “I mean, we are talking about handing over his lover-”

“She’s my nothing,” Cyrus said, drawing a gasp from Nyad. “She is nothing to me, now.” He didn’t wait for the officers to react before plunging ahead. “She is, however, under the protection of Sanctuary, granted asylum