House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)

Ithan left Tharion recovering from the dose of the antidote the mer had taken. His reaction had been strong enough that the pipes in the House of Flame and Shadow had burst from the surge in his water magic. Hypaxia had her hands full, keeping her House in order.

So Ithan had come to the Den. Which was now … his.

Well, it would never be his, since it belonged to all the wolves who called it home, but it was his responsibility.

He found Perry in the guard booth again, doodling in a notebook. He rapped on the glass, drawing her attention, and at her wide eyes, he gave her a half smile.

“Hard at work or hardly working?” he teased.

But she jumped to her feet, flinging open the door. “Sorry, I was just—”

“Per, it’s me,” he said, alarmed.

She straightened, standing at attention, as Sabine had liked. For fuck’s sake. He’d deal with that later. For now … He sniffed, trying to read the subtle change in her scent. It remained that strawberries-and-cinnamon blend he’d known his whole life, but with the antidote … He couldn’t put a finger on it. It had been so strong, right in those moments after she’d taken the antidote, yet now it had dimmed.

There wasn’t time to ponder it, to wonder why an Omega once again stood before him. Ithan peered through the open gates of the Den. “Where is everyone?”

Perry shifted on her feet. “They, uh … they left.”

Ithan slowly blinked. “What do you mean they left?” Had the River Queen started her evacuation already? He’d come here to inform everyone that it might be best to lie low in the Blue Court for a few weeks, but maybe she had already gotten a message to them.

“What happened shook them,” Perry said. “They’re loyal to you, Ithan, but they’re worried. They all headed out of town. Said they wanted to wait until after the new year to see how things, um … turned out.” In a few months.

Ithan weighed the fear in her eyes. Not for him, but … “And where’s your sister?” he asked quietly. The wolf in him began bristling, snarling for the opponent he knew was coming.

“Amelie led them out,” Perry said, throat bobbing. “I think she wanted to make sure everyone got to where they’re going.” But her eyes dropped to the pavement.

“Sure,” Ithan said. Perry shifted on her feet. “Why didn’t you go?”

“Someone had to stay to tell you,” she mumbled, a blush creeping over her cheeks.

“I have a hard time believing your sister made you stay.”

“She wanted me to go, but … I couldn’t abandon the Den. They moved the Prime into the lobby—I think some wanted to stay for the Sailing, but the spooked ones wanted to leave. It didn’t feel right to abandon his body there. Alone.” Tears gleamed in her emerald eyes, genuine grief for the old wolf.

Any aggression rising in Ithan stalled out at the pain, the loyalty in her face. He squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks for staying, Per.”

She followed him into the Den, hitting an interior button to shut the gates behind them. Ithan paused in the grassy meadow, watching the trees of the park bend in the cool breeze. The blood had been cleaned away from the building’s entrance. The bodies of Sabine and the Astronomer—

“I dumped them in the sewer,” Perry said with quiet rage, reading Ithan’s glance toward where the corpses had been. “They don’t deserve a Sailing. Especially Sabine.”

Surprise sparked in him at the normally peaceful wolf’s act of defiance, but he nodded. “Rotting in the shit of the city seems like a good place for Sabine to wind up,” he said, and Perry huffed a laugh. It wasn’t real amusement. They were both far beyond that.

“Where did you go?” Perry asked, tentatively enough that he knew she was still feeling him out. As a friend, and as her Alpha and Prime. Learning how much she could push.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “But I came back here to get everyone to safety.” He explained about the River Queen and the Blue Court.

“But now,” he finished, “I have to head to the Eternal City.”

Perry studied him, clearly understanding more than he’d said. “So we’re going up against the Asteri?”

“We aren’t doing anything,” he said. “I’m going up against them.”

“But you’re Prime,” she insisted. “You speak for all Valbaran wolves. Your choices are our choices. If you stand against the Asteri, we stand against the Asteri.”

“Then disavow me,” he said. “But I’m going.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “I don’t disagree with you—things have to change, and change for the better. But the wolves are scattered at the moment. At vacation homes, on trips … too far to reach the Blue Court before you go off to the Eternal City.”

“So?”

“So get the word out to them before you go. Give them a few hours to find shelter, either by getting to the Blue Court, or by finding somewhere in the wilds to lie low. The second the Asteri see you, the Prime, standing against them in any capacity, they’ll go after the wolves to punish you. And after what happened at the Meadows …” Her eyes flooded with pain. “I don’t think there’s any atrocity they wouldn’t commit.”

Ithan opened his mouth to object. He had to get that bullet and antidote to Bryce now. It might even be too late already.

But he couldn’t live with one more wolf death on his conscience. And if a single pup were harmed because he hadn’t given them time to hide …

“Three hours,” Ithan agreed. “You know how to send encrypted messages?”

Perry nodded.

“Then start getting the word out.” He looked to the building lobby beyond the pillars and the stairs up to it. “And I’ll start digging a grave.”

“A grave?” Perry protested. “But the Sailing—”

“There are no more Sailings,” Ithan said quietly. “The Under-King is dead.”

He was met with stunned silence. Then Perry said, “But—the Bone Quarter.”

“Is a lie. All of it.” Ithan gestured to the phone already in her hand. “Get the word out, then we’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Perry held his stare, her own full of worry and shock and determination. Then she began typing into her phone. “I’m glad, Ithan,” she said quietly, “that you’re Prime.”

That makes one of us, he almost said, but just nodded his thanks.

Tharion shoved the last gun into a rucksack and turned to where Hypaxia was nesting vials of the antidote into a satchel. “How many do you have?” he asked.

Water whispered in his ears, his heart, his veins. A steady flow of magic, as if a raging river coursed through him. Half a thought and it’d be unleashed.

“Two dozen, give or take a few,” she said quietly. “Not enough.”

“You’re going to need entire factories dedicated to getting it out there,” Tharion said.

She handed him the bag. “Here. Don’t jostle it too much on the trip. Athalar’s lightning holds them together—a little agitation can destabilize the doses to the point where they won’t work.”

He angled his head. “You’re not coming?” He planned to make his way to the Asteri’s palace itself—the most likely place for a confrontation between Bryce and the Asteri. Gods, the very notion of it was insane. Suicidal. But for his friends, for Midgard, he’d go, antidote in tow.

Hypaxia’s eyes gleamed with that greenish light. “No—I’m staying here.”

Tharion weighed the heaviness in that one word and took a seat on the edge of Roga’s desk. The sorceress was off handling some squabble between vampyrs and city medwitches over the vampyrs’ raid of a blood bank, apparently. “Why?”

“Someone has to deal with all the broken pipes in this House,” Hypaxia teased.

Tharion blushed slightly. His eruption after ingesting the antidote would take a long while to live down. But there had been so much power—all of a sudden, he’d been overflowing with water, and it was music and rage and destruction and life. But he said, “Come on, Pax. Tell me why.”

Her gaze lowered to her hands. “Because if all goes poorly over there, someone needs to remain here. To help Lunathion.”

“If it goes poorly over there, everyone is fucked anyway,” he said. “You being here, I’m sorry to say, won’t make much of a difference.”

“I want to keep making the antidote,” she added. “We need a better way to stabilize it. I want to start on it now.”

He looked at his friend—really looked at her. “You okay?”

Her eyes, so changed since taking Flame and Shadow’s throne for herself, dipped to the floor. “No.”

“Pax—”

“But I have no choice,” she said, and squared her shoulders. She nodded to the doors. “You should get your wife and go.”

“Is that a note of disapproval I detect?”

Hypaxia smiled gently. “No. Well, I disapprove of much of what led you to marry her, but not … the marriage itself.”

“Yeah, yeah, get in line to lecture me.”

“I think Sathia might be good for you, Tharion.”

“Oh?”

Her smile turned secretive. “Yes.”

Tharion gave her a smile of his own. “Knock ’em dead, Pax.”

“Hopefully not literally,” Hypaxia said with a wink.

Grinning despite himself, Tharion exited Roga’s office. He’d left Sathia in a small guest room to wash up and rest, though they both knew that no amount of rest would prepare her for the insanity they were about to face.

He’d offered to send her down to the Blue Court, but she’d refused. And dropping her off in Avallen would have taken them too far out of their way. So she’d be coming with him.

Tharion knocked on the door to the guest room and didn’t wait for her to reply before he opened it.

The room was empty. There was only a note on the bed, laced with her lingering scent. Tharion read it once. Then a second time, before it really set in.

I can’t leave Colin in her hands. I hope you understand.

Good luck. And thank you for all you’ve done for me.

Sathia had left him. That’s what the thank you at the end was. It was fitting—he’d done worse to the River Queen’s daughter, and yet …

Tharion carefully laid the note back on the bed. He didn’t blame her. It was her choice to go save her ex-boyfriend from being a drugged-out assassin—and a noble choice, at that. No, he didn’t blame her at all.

It was better she didn’t come with him to the Eternal City, in any case. She’d be safer that way.

Still, Tharion looked at the note on the bed for a long, long moment.

And though he knew he was heading off to challenge the Asteri, likely to die in the attempt … as Tharion left the House of Flame and Shadow, then Lunathion itself, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

The video Hunt and Bryce had recorded was due to go out at any moment. Ruhn was so fucking proud of his sister. She knew how to make the most of a bad hand.

That moment came soon after midnight, with a stroke of a key from Declan.

And now, sitting on the floor of the windowless bedroom in the safe house Lidia had procured for them, Ruhn peered over at where she sat beside him and said, “Just a few hours until dawn, then we’ll make our move.”

Lidia stared at nothing, knee bobbing nervously. She’d spoken little since they’d gotten the news of her sons’ abduction. And though Ruhn had been aching to touch her in the quiet moments, he’d kept his hands to himself. She had other things on her mind.

“I never should have gone back onto the Depth Charger,” Lidia said at last.

“If Pollux was able to learn about your kids,” Ruhn objected, “he would have found out whether you were on the ship or off it.”

“You should have let me die in the Haldren Sea,” she said. “Then he’d have had no reason to go after them.”

“Hey.” Ruhn grabbed her hand, squeezing tight. She dragged her gaze over to him. “None of this is your fault.”

She shook her head, and Ruhn gently touched her face. “You are allowed to feel whatever you need to right now. But come dawn, when we walk out of here, you’ll have to bury it and become the Hind again. One last time. Without the Hind, we’re not going to get into that palace.”

She scanned his gaze, and leaned forward, her brow pressing against his.

Ruhn breathed in her scent, taking it deep into his body—but he found it already marking him. It had been there, hidden in him, since that first time.

“Can I …” She swallowed hard. “Can we …”

“Tell me what you want,” he said, kissing her cheek.

She pulled back, and slid a hand against his jaw. “You. I want you.”

“You sure?” She had so much burdening her. With her sons in the Asteri’s hands, he didn’t blame her if—

“I need to not think for a while,” she said, then added, “and … I need to touch you.” She traced her fingers over his lips. “Your real body.”

He closed his eyes against her touch. “Tell me what you want, Lidia.”

Her lips grazed his, and he shuddered. “I want you—all of you. In me.”

A grin spread across Ruhn’s face. “Happy to oblige.”

He followed her lead, letting her set the pace. Each kiss, he answered with his own. Let her show him where she wanted him to touch, to lick, to savor.

Thankfully, the parts where she wanted him to really focus were the ones Ruhn had been especially interested in. The taste of her sweetness on his tongue had him nearly coming in his pants—and that was before her breathy moans filled his ears like the most beautiful music he’d ever heard.

“Ruhn,” she said, but didn’t give him the order to halt, so he kept working her in long strokes of his tongue, wishing to the gods he still had his lip piercing, knowing he could have driven her to distraction with it—but there would be time later.

She arched off the bed, and her orgasm sent him writhing, desperate for any sensation against his cock.

She put him out of his misery a moment later, her eyes nearly pure flame as she unzipped him, and her slender hand wrapped around him—

He bucked against her first stroke, and was about to start begging when she pushed him back onto the bed. When she climbed over him, straddling him, and that hand around his cock guided him to her entrance.

Ruhn slid his hands into Lidia’s golden hair, the silken strands spilling through his fingers, and held her gaze as she sank down onto him.

He gritted his teeth at the warmth and tightness of her, panting through the rush of pleasure, the sense of perfection, the flawless fit—

She settled against him, seated fully, and her chest rose and fell so rapidly that Ruhn grabbed her hands, pressing kisses to her fingertips. Her eyes fluttered shut, and then her hips moved—and there was nothing more to say, to do, as she rode him.

He lifted his hips, and her moans heightened. He wished he could devour the sound. He made do by rising up, kissing her thoroughly, her legs wrapping around his middle. It plunged him impossibly deeper, and he lost it. Went positively feral at being so far inside her, at the smell and taste of her—

Lidia met him stroke for stroke, met his savagery with her own, teeth grazing his neck, his chest. Every thrust had him rubbing an inner wall, and fuck, he was going to die from this pleasure—

Then her head tipped back, and her delicate muscles tightened around him as she came, sending him spiraling after her. He pounded into her through it, that feral part of him relishing spilling into her, and she was his and he was hers, and there was a word for it, but it eluded him.

She stilled, and Ruhn took her weight as she leaned against him, their bodies now a tangle of arms and legs, his cock still buried to the hilt. Her every breath pushed against him, and he stroked his fingers down the column of her spine, over and over.

She was here. He was here.

For as long as Urd would allow them to be.

Lidia lay in Ruhn’s arms as the hours passed, sleep eluding her.

It had been everything she’d wanted, needed, this joining with him. She’d never felt so safe, so cherished. And yet her sons remained in the Asteri’s hands. In Pollux’s hands.

The hours dripped by. Lidia shut down the part of her that cataloged every possible torment that might be inflicted on Brann and Actaeon. The torments that she herself had inflicted on so many others.

Maybe this was her punishment for that. Her punishment for so many things.

Ruhn stirred, and Lidia nestled closer to him, breathing in his scent, savoring the strength of his body around hers.

And tried not to think about tomorrow.