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“I could never be sad with you around, Red,” he said, nuzzling into her neck and planting small kisses along the column of her throat.

“Eliza has red hair too, you know,” she said breathily, her head tilting to give him better access.

“Thia, if I called Eliza ‘Red,’ she’d string me up by my balls,” he deadpanned, pausing to look into her hazel eyes. The flecks of gold in them reflected the setting sun from the balcony of their room. “Besides, hers is more of a red-gold. Yours is true red. The color of flames.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into the shade of my hair, Cyrus,” she said, amusement in her tone.

“I put a lot of thought into everything about you,” he murmured onto her skin.

She hummed in response, letting him move down her neck to the hollow of her throat. Her fingers dragged through his hair, and he felt her curl them, gently tugging him back by the scalp.

“It is okay to miss him, Cyrus.”

“I don’t miss him,” he said quickly. “How could I miss anyone when I have you? You’re all I need, Red.”

“I know what day it is,” she replied quietly. Her fingertips skated along his jaw, gently tilting his face up to hers. “It’s okay to miss him, even if it is your fault he is gone.”

“What?” he said, jerking back from her.

She looked down at him, that same serene smile on her face. “You could have done more to save Merrik.”

“Thia, I…”

This wasn’t right. Something was wrong.

Cyrus shook his head, clearing his thoughts. He must have imagined what she’d just said.

“What could I possibly have to be sad about when the Fates have gifted me you, Thia?” he whispered, pulling her down to taste her lips, suddenly desperate to feel her, to feelsomething.

“I wonder the same thing,” Thia murmured against his mouth. “You certainly do not deserve me.”

Cyrus froze. “I…I know I do not deserve you, Thia.” He didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t know how to deal with the emotions crawling up from the depths of his soul. Thia always helped subdue them. She didn’t do…this.

“I think the Fates made a mistake,” he mumbled. “I don’t deserve you, but they gave you to me anyway. What if they realize their error and try to take you back someday?”

“Of course they made a mistake,” Thia sneered, her features twisting into something he had never seen on her face before. Cold. Disgusted. Cruel. “My prayers to the Fates are that they release me from this torment sooner rather than later.”

“Stop. Doing. That,” Cyrus gasped. His hands were buried in his chestnut hair, and he tugged at the roots. The pain sometimes grounded him, helped him remember what was real.

It did not help this time.

Of course they made a mistake.

He lifted his face from his knees. He was huddled in the corner of the room as far away from the cell in the Underwater Prison as he could get. Not that it mattered. The Sorceress had his blood. He could be in the Fire Court, and she could still fuck with him. He’d tried to leave once, to go up the stairs that would lead to other areas of the prison.

She’d made him relive Thia’s death over and over for hours.

He’d come out of that nightmare curled in on himself next to a puddle of vomit. He hadn’t attempted to leave this space again.

Cyrus caught her violet stare, her lips curving up slightly as she watched him. She had always been as pale as a spirit of the After, but there almost seemed to be some color to her skin now, as if torturing him with his own demons fed her soul somehow. Her long, black hair hung around her shoulders in straggly strands. The beige shift she wore made the splatters of blood on it stand out sharply. Splatters of his blood from when she would dip her finger into the vial Alaric had given her. Small drops from when she would draw Marks on the wall that allowed her to see into his mind.

This is what she did now. She would dig and turnover all the darkest corners of his soul, searching for the things that haunted him. The things that would break him. Except she’d changed tactics the last few times. Instead of pulling the gut-wrenching memories to the forefront of his mind and trapping him there, she had begun finding all the good ones. The Sorceress had started taking the treasured memories, the ones that let him breathe when he felt like he was suffocating, and tainting them. The cherished memories of Merrik and Thia were becoming stained with grief and cruelty, and his greatest fear was that she would leave him with nothing. That there would be nothing good left in his mind of Merrik and Thia. The only good parts of himself. She was taking them all and leaving him empty and broken and lost in the darkness.

“Would you like to make a bargain, pretty Fire Fae?” the Sorceress asked.

“No,” he gritted out.

He stood in a small flat, everything they owned in this one room. Ratty old blankets were in a corner where they slept. A trunk with clothes they shared. A small table with mismatched chairs.