Page 59 of Blood King, Part I (Crowns #4)
“Miriel.” He drew in a sharp breath. “You are… a very beautiful girl. But I…” He struggled for words.
“I screwed it up, didn’t I?” she cried.
He stopped. “What?”
A tear spilled down her cheek. “If I’d just been honest with you right away, instead of lying. I just didn’t know how to tell you. I thought if we got to know each other a little better first—”
“Look,” he interrupted her. “The truth is, it wouldn’t have gone well with your father either.”
Her eyes widened with dismay.
“I came here because I thought you had an army I could use,” he said. “And you don’t.”
She quieted. “Oh.”
“I’m struggling to rebuild Rael, and soon, I’ll move against Serra and the Shadowlands. I have neither men nor resources nor time to spare. So, you see—I can’t help you.”
She swayed and lowered herself to sit in the side chair nearby. “What am I supposed to do?” she whispered.
He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know. Where is your mother?”
The girl quieted, and she shifted her eyes to the floor. “My father exiled her.” There was a long pause before she added, “After she tried to kill me. She said there was an evil inside me.”
Cyrus froze. Cold rippled over his skin. Those words…
“It was several years ago,” she said, “when I first started showing signs of my ability. She tried to get Amish to do it—to throw me from the south cliffs into the sea.”
The weight in his chest threatened to crush him.
Her eyes welled, and her lip trembled. “I was lucky it was Amish she asked. So many others wouldn’t have hesitated. The thought still gives me nightmares.”
Cyrus couldn’t speak.
“But you know what’s worst of all?” Tears spilled down her cheeks now.
“I begged my father to forgive her, to let her stay. But she said she’d rather be exiled.
Even as she was leaving, I cried for her to come back.
” The girl lifted her red-rimmed eyes to him.
“Even after what she did, I still didn’t want her to leave me.
” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “How shameful is that?”
Cyrus still couldn’t speak. He knew that shame.
“Do you have any other family?” he asked finally.
She shook her head. “No. Do you have family?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I have a brother.” He wasn’t sure why he told her that.
“Are you close with him?”
“I’m going to kill him when I see him again.”
“Oh,” she whispered. “So, no.”
Cyrus didn’t want to talk about this anymore. “Why did you get expelled from the Union?”
“My father wouldn’t tell me.” She bit her bottom lip. “But I know why. It’s because of me.”
His brow stitched. “Because of you?”
“After what happened with my mother, my father reduced the staff to only those he trusted—those most loyal,” she said.
“They’re who remain now. I fortified their numbers with illusion to try to keep us all safe, but it didn’t quite go as I’d planned.
People thought I’d raised an army of demons.
” She nervously rolled the edges of her golden sash between her fingers.
“But I can’t take the illusion away now, and it’s only a matter of time before the trick is discovered.
Then they’ll come for me. If not the Etrean Union, then my own people. ”
“I won’t let that happen.” The words spilled from his mouth before he could even consider what they meant.
She gaped at him as she jumped up from the chair. “You’ll wed me, then?”
Cyrus shook his head. “Oh, gods no.”
Her face fell, and she swallowed, a deep crimson of embarrassment flooding her cheeks.
He hadn’t meant to insult her. “I would be a terrible husband,” he added quickly. “The absolute worst. And I’m almost twice your age.”
“That’s not uncommon.”
He grimaced. “It should be.”
She just stared at him with her doe eyes.
“Anyway,” he said, taking a step back and putting more space between them, “I’d be gone. All the time.”
“Where?”
He paused. Where?
…
“Places. And Rael is terrible too. It’s fucking hot. And people are still trying to kill one another.”
Mariel’s face fell. “Oh.”
“But we don’t have to be wed to be friends,” he told her.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Well, how will this work?”
Cyrus pursed his own lips. “I don’t know yet. But I’ll figure something out.”
“You’ll stay for a while, then?”
He sighed. “A little while, I suppose.” Until he could figure out what exactly he was promising.
A grin spread across her face. “Then come back to the palace. You’ll love it, I know you will!”
Cyrus certainly didn’t think he’d love it, but he also didn’t expect to hate it. And her face was filled with genuine excitement. He sighed again and opened the door. “Get Everan,” he called.
Everan was in the room within moments.
“We’re going back to the palace with Princess Miriam,” Cyrus told him.
“Miriel,” she said.
He was really going to have to remember her name. “Princess Miriel,” he corrected himself.
Everan gave a quiet sigh of complete unsurprise, then left to gather everyone to head back to the palace.
Cyrus led his men off the ship, following the girl. This girl who needed him.