Page 137 of The Prince's Mage

Chapter50

GAVRIL

Gavril wasn’t sure how long they sat on the ground with his head buried in Marcella’s stomach. His hands were clenched into her back, and he could feel Aimilia leaning against Marcella’s side, her head in Marcella’s shoulder. He could feel the edges of Nikias’ cloak shift when Aimilia did, pressing it against her other ear in an attempt to drown out the noise.

He could feel Marcella covering his ears. Not her own.

He did not know why she was not covering her own. He feared maybe it was because she wasn’t hearing anything around them at all. Was she just remembering her own agony?

Everything had happened so fast. It was like he’d blinked and he’d gone from holding Marcella the night before to seeing Hypatia rip his cloak off Marcella and demand Gavril’s blood. Then Aimilia offering herself, a horror second only to if Hypatia had demanded Marcella suffer a third time. Then Nikias.

And despite the number of times Gavril had cursed his brother, wallowed in his burning hatred and wished he could bleed himself of their shared biological connection, the thought of Nikias suffering—

Gavril could in some way understand Hypatia’s insistence—if it had come from any other mouth than the demon’s. His people had committed atrocities against a number of clan mages too vast to be counted. To ask for just one of their people to suffer it, to understand it in order to put an end to it for good, was a reasonable term, even if not ideal. They were not approaching each other as friends or really any sense of lowered hostility.

Which was why Gavril would have gladly gone.

The fact that it was Nikias… Nikias had willingly submitted himself to the nonexistent mercy of the demon who killed his wife…

Gavril heard his brother’s screams. And he was torn completely in two.

What he had done to Marcella was unforgivable.

But what he was going through now was unthinkable.

And it was all Gavril’s fault. He’d run off with Marcella right to the demon who had destroyed Nikias and set him up so this was the only option.

Maybe he needed to be forgiven.

Maybe they all did.

Those precious few seconds Marcella had Hypatia at her mercy…

At some point Gavril realized there was silence. He slowly shifted, lifting his head from Marcella’s stomach to see she was resolutely staring at the tent. Konstantin was hovering nearby, drinking from a waterskin the High Priest had offered him and spitting it back out.

Gavril assumed he had already lost the contents of his stomach and was trying to get rid of the taste of bile.

The crowd of soldiers and the remaining Inimicus commanders all looked equally sick.

Marcella though… was worryingly stone faced.

“Deliciae?” he whispered, shifting and pushing himself up to his own seated position as her hands fell from his head and to her lap.

But Marcella didn’t even seem to hear him.

Neither had Aimilia, who was still covering her ears with her eyes screwed shut, tear tracks staining her cheeks.

“Mea spes?” Gavril reached for her face, but even as his palm brushed her cheek, she did not tear her gaze away from the now silent tent. He spoke in her language, “Please, speak.”

“Why didn’t I kill her?”

He almost didn’t hear it, she spoke so softly. Her lips barely twitched. But she had spoken.

And if he thought he was being ripped in half from all of this before, it was nothing compared to the shreds he was left in after hearing that.

Gavril shifted closer, gently turning her face away from the tent and toward his. “You arenotresponsible for this. Do you hear me? This is Hypatia’s doing and her doing alone.”

But Marcella was looking right through him. She continued to murmur, “I’m a soldier. I’ve killed people before in battle. Why not her? Why is she right?”

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