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He may as well get this over with. He’d been selfish long enough, stealing moments with his family and nights with Cassius, just wanting a few good memories to cling to. Ones the Sorceress hadn’t touched. But they needed to know. He could go, and they could figure out how to work around what he had cost them.

“She altered them all,” Cyrus finally said. “Merrick. Thia. Memories of my family. All the good ones are tainted now, but then… Then she came for memories of you.” He heard Cassius suck in a sharp breath. “She altered one, and I begged—beggedher, Cassius—not to touch any more. To let me keep those, because I could live without memories of my past, but you were not my past. You were…everything I did not deserve in the future.”

“Cyrus—”

“So I made a bargain with her,” he pushed on, speaking over Cassius. He brushed his fingers over the Bargain Mark that wound around his bicep. “Everyone knows you don’t do that. Everyone knows to deal with her is to make a fool’s bargain.Iknew it was foolish and could ruin so much for everyone else, but you? You were the one sacrifice I was not willing to make. Merrick and Thia were already gone. But you were here. And you made me feel again. And the thought of her twisting your words? Of carrying memories of you looking at me with derision? I couldn’t—”

“There is nothing you could do that would make me look at you like that, Cyrus.Nothing,” Cassius said vehemently. “How could she even do this? Because Alaric gave her your blood?”

Cyrus nodded mutely. He could say that, but he still didn’t know—

And then Cassius was in his face, forcing him to look into his eyes. One brown, one pale and white. “I will never look at you with derision, disgust, or hatred. Never, Cyrus. Do you hear me? It is impossible when I love you.”

Cyrus stopped breathing because he couldn’t have heard him right.

“Say it again,” Cyrus whispered.

Cassius gripped his face in his hands. “It will not matter what you traded to the Sorceress because I love you, Cyrus. Whatever you promised her, we will figure it out.”

Cyrus wrapped a hand around the nape of his neck, closing the distance between their mouths. His other hand ran down his chest, fingertips sliding along the muscled indents and grooves of his abdomen. A low rumble came from Cassius, and he pulled back after a moment, his breathing ragged and eyes glowing. “We need to finish talking about all of this.”

That was the absolute last thing Cyrus wanted to do at the moment. Not with Cassius pressed up against him in nothing but loose pants that could be taken care of far too easily.

“Cyrus,” Cassius growled, a knowing look on his face.

He let his hand fall from Cass’s neck and sat back with an embellished sigh. “Fine.” He swiped a hand down his face, trying to calm the want racing through his blood. “We should wake the others.”

Cassius stood, and Cyrus saw just how hard it was for Cassius to stop this right now.

“We should change,” Cass said.

“Why?” Cyrus asked with a smirk and a pointed look.

But what Cyrus had intended to be a taunt had Cassius’s eyes glowing brighter as he leaned over him in a move that had Cyrus tipping his head back against the sofa to see him. “Remember what I said, Cyrus,” he said, his tone rough and low. “I’m not as selfless as you believe me to be. I want, and I take.”

Cyrus scoffed, despite this doing nothing to calm him down. “You’re the most selfless person I know. Except maybe Tava. She might have you beat.”

Cassius said nothing, but the corner of his lips tilted up in a knowing smirk. He brushed his knuckles across Cyrus’s cheek before his thumb brushed along his mouth. Cyrus found himself trying to remember how to breathe. Do you take air in first? Or out?

“Make no mistake, Cyrus,” he murmured. “I’ll take what’s mine.”

Well, fuck.

That was all he could think as Cass straightened and started heading back to the bedchamber to change.

“Cass,” he called out, his voice a hoarse rasp.

Cassius paused, looking back over his shoulder.

“I love you too.”

* * *

“You could at least put on pants,” Sorin grumbled as he emerged from his room behind Scarlett.

She waved him off with a yawn. “If I’m going to be dragged from bed with the sun, I’ll wear whatever I please.”

While Sorin had put on pants and a tunic, Scarlett had only slipped on a dark silk robe that scarcely came to her knees over her nightgown. Or at least, Cyrus assumed there was a nightgown under there. The way Sorin was fretting over her attire, he wasn’t so sure.