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CYRUS

Cyrus itches.

He can’t shake the feeling of the Hunter’s gaze on his skin, like a physical touch that lingers.

He’s never been afraid of the dark like other demons. Instead, he’s afraid of the light and what it can reveal. Right now, he wants nothing more than to hide away for a few days. He longs for his nest, his secret place where he doesn’t have to be anyone but himself. Not Cyrianus, lieutenant and spy. Not a failure of a demon. Just Cyrus. Where the darkness cradles him safely.

But the coup has thrown the Court into dangerous upheaval, and Cyrus’s ability to spy relies on a veil of normalcy. His quest for the world seeds took him away from his normal duties as the Quartermaster’s stock-taker, and he can’t risk further absence. He has no choice but to rejoin the Court as if everything is fine.

He foolishly thought he’d be out of reach of the Quartermaster’s claws by now. He stuffs down his imminent despair.

Weapons and armor have piled up at the training ground while he’s been away searching. His cart clatters over the stone, announcing his path to anyone within earshot. He fights down his natural fear of discovery. He needs to be seen. The demons of the Court are used to him flying up and down the levels with his carts, bringing food from storeroom to feast hall, weapons from the yard to the armory. Much as he hates to remind them he exists, he can’t stay hidden.

As he ascends, the Court seems to wake around him. Dawn seeps through Mount Hythe and soaks everyone in its path with frenetic energy. No one even gives Cyrus a second glance. Before he disappeared into the Court’s most obscure halls to search for the world seeds, two more generals turned up dead. Their ichor painted the courtyard and General Leuther had their heads mounted on pikes. There was no public challenge—these were executions in the night, with no warning.

Today there are no new heads on pikes. Soldiers pour into the yard around him as he gathers discarded weapons from the shed and piles them into his cart. Many are broken clean in two, the forge having stamped them in a hurry to meet Leuther’s quotas. His shoulders tense as the soldiers’ chatter rises. The yard is one of Quartermaster Magnus’s favorite haunts and he’s eager to avoid the yellow-eyed scourge of his second life.

He drops the last pikes into his cart and hurries it out of the shed. It rattles horribly, making heads turn. The soldiers aim scowls his way.

“This lot was crap! Bring us proper weapons next time,” someone jeers.

“I have no control over that,” he mutters under his breath.

Another group of soldiers arriving block his exit, and he hisses in annoyance as his cart stutters to a stop. It looks like just another company coming to train until shouting suddenly rises.

“Challenge him! Give us a fight!”

Cyrus squeezes against the wall as the chanting grows louder, searching for a way through. The last place he wants to be is in the middle of a challenge.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” The cry is taken up around the corridor.

He cringes as he’s buffeted by larger demons. “Let me through ,” he grunts, trying to push past.

The nearest demon shoves him into the wall with his shoulder, pinning Cyrus there. “Just wait—you’re about to get lucky and see some ichor spilled.”

“Not—interested!” He wriggles in vain. The crowd is too tight, the press of bodies making him dizzy.

“That’s enough!”

The bloodthirsty group fall silent. Major Justus . One of General Leuther’s faithfuls, and exactly the sort of demon Cyrus would like to avoid.

“What in all Hell is this spectacle about?” Major Justus barks. “None of you fools have station in this Court to challenge for, and if you keep behaving like boneheaded idiots I’ll make sure you never gain any. There will be no fights today. Disperse!”

Soldiers grumble, but the pressure on Cyrus suddenly lessens as they stand to attention. He waits stiffly to the side, hoping Major Justus doesn’t spy his blue lieutenant’s uniform in the mix. As the only lieutenant, he stands out.

“You’d better control your company, Major Justus,” comes a sneer, and Cyrus’s stomach drops.

He knows that hated voice.

The demons around him snarl and mutter, but when Major Justus gives the sharp command to move on they don’t dare disobey. To Cyrus’s dismay, he’s left rooted to the floor in full view as they file past him. Quartermaster Magnus’s piercing yellow eye snaps at him across the hall like a whip, and the scar on his chest suddenly aches. It’s the smallest consolation that a patch now covers the scar where Magnus’s other eye once was, cut out by Romanos’s little angel mate. It gives Cyrus a tiny thrill every time he sees it, a thrill that makes him sick.

“Lieutenant.” Magnus beckons. “Sneaking around the soldiers like a lowly worm—typical. You’ve been shirking your duties. Get me a full report of the stores today. And I expect to see you in the barracks tonight, or the next time I lay eyes on you, you’ll get a beating.”

Cyrus balls his fists. “Today?”

A mean look enters the Quartermaster’s eye. “Tomorrow you and your lot are being sent to work on the excavation. So you’d better get it done.”

Cyrus bites his tongue. Magnus delights in tormenting him, with the King deposed. Say the wrong word and he risks a beating now, in front of the entire yard. The smirk on Magnus’s face tells him he knows exactly where Cyrus’s thoughts have gone.

“Yes, sir,” he manages through gritted teeth.

“Get going!” The Quartermaster flings one clawed finger toward the end of the hall.

His cart clatters behind him as he escapes. He hates the barracks almost as much as he hates the Quartermaster. As a lieutenant he’s supposed to be exempt from that messy, stinking place. But Magnus insists he sleep there, refusing to give him his own room. Even a bare cell with nothing but a narrow sleeping plinth is too much of a luxury.

He glares down at his feet as they take him back to the lower levels. “Traitors,” he whispers. But his feet know the truth—he’s too much of a coward to defy the Quartermaster.

Crowded, dirty, and loud, the barracks are everything Cyrus despises about the Court. During his search for the artifacts he slept on stone in the Court’s hidden cracks, and even that was better. It’s misery to be stuffed back into the barracks with hundreds of other demons, all vying to climb to the next rung of the Court’s infernal, ever-shifting hierarchy. There’s no privacy here, no peace. The memory of his encounter with the Hunter makes him anxious to wipe the vergis pheromones clean from his skin, but he’ll have to wait.

He curls into himself as the barracks fill with minor demons and soldiers. He delivered the report to the Quartermaster’s office barely moments before the torches flickered to signify the end of the day. Magnus was absent—a minor miracle. It’s hard to feel grateful as the stench and noise of his peers rise around him.

“Oy!”

Cyrus bolts upright. A bigger demon looms over him. Damn it.

“That’s my bed, little rat. Get out.”

His fingers tighten in the ragged fur covering. “I claimed it first.”

The other demon puffs out his chest and his hand goes to the knife at his belt. “Oh yeah? How about I spill your ichor all over it and sleep in that instead?”

“That would be colossally stupid,” Cyrus mutters.

The demon draws his blade, rusty and pitted. Cyrus doesn’t carry a weapon. Magnus doesn’t allow it. “You want to find out how stupid? Maybe if I slice you up they’ll let me be a lieutenant, huh? Get me a cushy job counting bags of grain. Then again, maybe I’d go soft like you and old Magnus?—”

Cyrus gets to his feet with a groan. “Fine! Take the bed.”

The demon snickers as Cyrus turns away. His shoulder blades itch. Giving in is a sign of weakness. Some demons are more subtle than this one—they’ll watch and wait until it’s advantageous to strike. Cyrus could go to sleep and never wake up, his throat slit in the night, if someone decided it would be a cushy job to be the Quartermaster’s next lieutenant.

They’re welcome to it . The suffocating drudgery of the day settles over him as he trudges past the rows of cots and hammocks. A more tyrannical master they won’t find.

Except maybe the King.

Finally he wedges himself between the last cot in the row and the strip of wall next to the door. The Hunter’s arrow in his coat digs into his thigh, a mocking reminder of his naivete. The Hunter must have thought him a fool for antagonizing the King. He glares at his filthy hands, burning with futile anger and humiliation. It’s just his luck to end up under the thumb of two monsters—first the Quartermaster, then the King. And now, maybe a third.

Slowly, the din of the barracks dies down. He drifts into a restless half sleep, mind churning through what he must do. Keep his head down. Carry out his duty. Just one more task, then it’ll be over. He has to believe it.