Page 44 of The Captive's Curse
But I couldn’t settle back down again, and after a quick stop in the kitchen for a bit of warm bread and a pot of tea—and then, in all honesty, a few more slices of bread and butter and jam—I’d hunted Leander down.
Enzo’s continuing absence irritated me. But that didn’t mean I ought to starve.
The bread sat in my stomach like lead, through no fault of Beatrice’s. But I didn’t want to think about that.
“I’ll stop harassing you, as you so rudely call it, once you give me some real information,” I said. “Surely he’s sent you a messenger. I know you have scouts. I don’t understand how you can be known as the scourge of—”
“Cyril!” Leander spun on me so quickly I skidded to a halt and rocked back on my heels. With his dark eyes flashing like that and his jaw set, he possessed a shocking quantity of the same compelling presence that made his elder brother so impossible to ignore. “I swear to all the gods, if I knew where Enzo was, I’d tell you. In fact, when he comes back I’m going to lock the two of you in a room together and let him deal with you, and moreover, if you don’t stop pestering me I’m going to lock you in your room all by—”
He stopped abruptly, cocking his head. And then I heard it too: a distant commotion.
“They’re back,” he said, and ran past me, practically bowling me over.
I pelted down the hallway at his heels.
The din of shouting men and whinnying horses reached me well before we emerged into the courtyard.
But Enzo’s voice rose above it all, strong and clear and authoritative, and the tension I hadn’t realized had suffused every cell of my body bled away, leaving me almost limp.
Well, most of me almost limp.
One part of me sprang to attention instead, quickly and violently enough that I missed a step and had to right myself against the wall and push off again. Gods. My hot cheeks were probably bright red, and my trousers were tight enough to show my predicament.
But when I burst into the courtyard, only a couple of steps behind Leander, I realized no one would be paying me any attention. Enzo had returned along with a number of his men, all of them swarming about the yard like a kicked anthill, their horses stamping and snorting and steaming, a little bit of sun peeking through the clouds to gild their sweaty sides. And there were other men, too: several grim-faced soldiers, battered and exhausted-looking, surrounding one of the tallest men I’d ever seen bearing what at first appeared to be a crumpled cloak in his arms.
No, the cloak also had boots, and when I took a few steps nearer, a spill of dark hair and a smudge of white, his head resting against the tall soldier’s shoulder.
I stood and stared, my feet rooted to the ground, taking in more details: the bloody rips in their clothing, the bandages, their obvious grief. Was the prince dead? The man carrying him had grooves etched in his brow and bracketing his mouth, and his haunted eyes…he looked like he’d just witnessed the end of the world.
Gods, if a Surbini royal had died, here, in Rabbion, at the hands of Calatrians…war would be inevitable and immediate. We’d all be witnessing the end of the world within a few weeks.
“Lord Cyril!” That voice. My gaze snapped unerringly to Enzo, halfway between me and the group from Surbino. He was barely even more disheveled than usual, not even the lapels of his fur-lined and embroidered coat out of place and his hair as artfully rumpled as always. And he didn’t have a trace of any softer emotion on his face. Clearly, he hadn’t missed mein the slightest. “We need your assistance, if you please. Don’t go anywhere. Captain,” and he turned to the one carrying the prince, “follow him,” and he pointed at the serving lad who’d cleaned my boots the other day. “My men will see to yours, not to worry. There’s a mage here, he can help, I’ll bring him soon. And you’ll have someone to help get the prince cleaned up and settled into bed.”
The soldier said something I didn’t catch and strode away, knuckles white as he clutched his precious burden. He glanced down at the prince’s face, eyes dark with sorrow and longing and misery. I doubted he’d be allowing anyone else to touch him.
No one had ever looked at me like that. It might be worth it to be kidnapped—except that wait, I had been, and no one cared enough to rescue me. My belly twisted sourly. Envying someone who’d been injured to the point of unconsciousness had to be a new low.
“Lord Cyril, come with me,” Enzo said, close enough that I jumped. “Leander! You’ll see to things here?”
I glanced over at Leander and found him already in the midst of the crowd, giving orders and sorting things out. He spared Enzo a nod and went right back to it. Everyone here was so competent and purposeful. And—there’s a mage here, he can help. Fuck. No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t heal anyone, I couldn’t fight anyone, and in the context of wounded men and a potential war, I was entirely useless. I’d never even seen the aftermath of a skirmish before, let alone a war, and the half-dried crimson on these men’s bandages had me a bit lightheaded.
If Enzo had shown even the faintest sign that he cared for me for my own sake—but he hadn’t. He’d fucked me, sent me breakfast in bed, and then immediately demonstrated that those things had been flukes by leaving without saying goodbye. Andnow that he’d returned, he couldn’t even say hello. Or smile at me.
I’d never felt smaller. Both useless and unwanted.
“Enzo, I don’t think I can—” Enzo wrapped a hand around my upper arm and started to tow me inexorably after the prince and his entourage. “Enzo!”
“Not now,” he growled out of the side of his mouth, his hand tightening. “You!” he called out. “Make sure they’re sending up hot water from the kitchen, and more clean linens.” A shout of acknowledgment, and someone went running, another person with a useful task to accomplish that they were capable of completing. “The prince is a dawn mage and used too much of his power at once,” he said, his voice pitched lower again. “Someone with magic is needed to evaluate his condition.”
He hadn’t slackened his pace at all, hauling me out of the courtyard and down the corridor toward the stairs. My feet skidded on the flagstones. Voices echoed, and Enzo’s men brushed by us in a hurry, everything too loud and too frantic.
I needed a moment to gather my thoughts, but I could barely catch my breath.
“What about that woman, you told me, the one who saw to me when I—”
“Gerta’s not here. She’s also a midwife, and she was sent for down the mountain. You’re all we have, Lord Cyril.”
Fuck. Fuck, and double fuck. The last time I’d tried to do any kind of healing, I’d singed the poor fellow’s leg hair off and given him a burn scar larger than the original wound—which I had successfully cauterized, I supposed, for some definition of “successfully.”
