Page 12 of Lady of Starfire (Lady of Darkness #5)

Cyrus

“Y ou look sad.”

Cyrus looked up to find a beauty with dark red hair smiling down at him.

He hadn’t heard her come in, too lost in thoughts of a town that sat at the edge of the sea.

He reached for her, wrapping an arm around her waist and tugging her into his lap.

She laughed softly, nestling against his chest where she fit perfectly against him.

“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 feel something .

“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.

Cyrus took a deep breath, the smell of the sea filling his senses as the sun shone in through the window.

Merrik would be back soon, and they’d be going out to pick pockets and steal some breakfast. At the thought, his stomach grumbled.

They’d been too busy plotting a big job last night and had forgotten to nick dinner.

He heard footfalls on the stone steps a few moments before the wood slab they had crafted into a door creaked open, and Merrick came through it.

A dimple appeared when he smiled, a mischievous thing that matched the glint in his green eyes.

A hand dipped into his pocket, and he pulled out a handful of coins, tossing them onto the table.

“Good haul,” Cyrus said, swiping up a coin and rolling it between his knuckles.

“It’s all right,” Merrik replied, pulling his tunic over his head and tossing it to the side before collapsing onto the blankets.

“Get up,” Cyrus said, nudging him with his foot. “We got food to steal.”

Merrik waved him off. “Bring me back some bread.”

“You need more than bread,” Cyrus deadpanned, nudging him harder. “Get up, Merrik.”

“You don’t need me to steal bread, Cy,” Merrik grumbled, pulling the one flat pillow they had over his face.

“True. Maybe I just want you.”

Merrik huffed a laugh into the pillow.

“To come with me, you perv,” Cyrus said, nudging him again. “Get up. I’m hungry.”

“I knew saving you that day was a mistake,” Merrik muttered.

Cyrus rolled his eyes. “Stop bitching, and get moving.”

Merrik moved the pillow off his face to look up at Cyrus. “You think I’m joking? You’re a pain in my ass.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“My life was better without you in it.”

“Stop being a dick.”

“You’re always around. Always here. Always in my space.”

“You wanted me to stay.”

Merrik scoffed at him. “No one wants you, Cyrus. Your own mother didn’t even want you.”

Cyrus flinched. “Then why did you help me that day?”

“Good question. I ask myself that every time I drag myself back here, knowing you’re waiting here. Momentary lapse in judgment that I’m paying for daily.”

“Merrik—”

“Go get your fucking food, Cyrus,” Merrik sighed, rolling away from him. “In fact, stay gone all day. I can at least pretend I found a way to go back in time and let those market guards have you.”

A string of curse words left his mouth when the Sorceress let him out of his mind this time.

That wasn’t how that memory had happened.

They’d spent the entire day together. They’d stolen so much food they hadn’t needed to leave their flat for three days.

They’d ate and slept and fucked and somehow still managed to finalize plans for that job.

The job that would get Merrik killed just two weeks later.

“I thought we were becoming friends, Gehenna,” Cyrus rasped, reaching for a waterskin.

They brought him one when they brought them food, but it was sporadic.

He didn’t know if it was day or night. He didn’t know if he’d been down here for one day or three.

He lost track of all time while the Sorceress had her fun.

“Do not call me that,” she chided. “You know not to do that.”

“You’re already torturing me, Gehenna. Not sure what else you’re going to do from in there,” he replied after taking a drink in an effort to clear his mind.

“Funny, funny Fire Fae,” the Sorceress sang, moving up to the bars. Her fingers curled around them, and she pressed her face to the shirastone, a slight wince pinching her features.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Cyrus asked, tipping his head back against the wall. Sometimes he could get her to talk for quite some time. It gave him a much needed reprieve.

“Not as much as nightstone,” she answered.

“What’s the difference?”

“The Legacy created shirastone to contain Fae. Nightstone was created to contain those more powerful. It drains one’s power instead of simply subduing it.”

“Interesting.”

“Quite.”

“Is there anything worse than nightstone?”

“That is a matter of perspective.”

“That seems to be a favorite phrase of yours.”

The Sorceress smiled at him. “But it is true, yes?”

“Is there anything that you find worse than nightstone?” Cyrus amended.

“There is not much worse than nightstone,” she answered, a finger beginning to trace one of the bars. “But deathstone does more than drain one’s power. After it takes your magic, it drains your life-force. It is a specialty of the Firsts.”

“Sounds like a painful way to die.”