Pippa or the River Queen. Above or Beneath. Emile Renast’s options were limited.
Once the kid was down here, he wouldn’t get back Above unless the River Queen wished it. Or the Asteri dispatched one of their elite aquatic units to drag him out. But that would mean they’d learned of the River Queen’s betrayal.
But Tharion only nodded. As he had always done. As he would always do. “We’ll apprehend Emile soon.”
“Before Ophion.”
“Yes.” He didn’t dare ask why she was bothering with any of it. From the moment she’d heard the rumors about the boy who could bring down those Omegas with his power-draining magic, she’d wanted Emile. She didn’t share her reasons. She never did.
“And before any other of the River Courts.”
Tharion lifted his head at that. “You think they know about Emile, too?”
“The currents whispered to me about it. I don’t see why my sisters wouldn’t hear similar murmurings from the water.”
The queens of Valbara’s four great rivers, the Istros, the Melanthos, the Niveus, and the Rubellus—the Blue, the Black, the White, and the Red, respectively—had long been rivals: all mighty and gifted with magic. All vain and ancient and bored.
While Tharion might not be privy to his queen’s most intimate plans, he could only assume she wanted the boy for the same reason Pippa Spetsos did: to use him as a weapon. One that could be used to get the queens of the Black, White, and Red Courts to yield. With the boy in her thrall, she could potentially use him to siphon their powers, to turn all that elemental energy against them and expand her influence.
But if they knew of Emile as well, then did they already scheme, thinking to take the Blue Court? And if the Queen of the Red Court wished to overthrow his queen, to use Emile’s gifts to drain her of power … would he fight it?
Years ago, he would have said Hel yes.
But now …
Tharion lifted his face toward the surface. That distant, beckoning ribbon of light.
He found her studying him again. As if she could hear every thought in his mind. The sobek at her left cracked open an eye, revealing a slitted pupil amid green-marbled citrine.
His queen asked, “Are things so wonderful Above that you resent your time Beneath?”
Tharion kept his face neutral, kept swishing his fins with an idle grace. “Can’t both realms be wonderful?”
The second sobek opened an eye as well. Would they be opening their jaws next?
They ate anything and everything. Fresh meat, trash, and, perhaps most important, the bodies of the shameful dead. Having one’s black boat overturned on its way to the Bone Quarter was the deepest sort of humiliation and judgment: a soul deemed unworthy of entering the holy resting place, its corpse given over to the river beasts to devour.
But Tharion kept his hands clasped behind him, kept his chest exposed, ready to be shredded apart. Let her see his utter subservience to her power.
His queen only said, “Keep searching for the boy. Report as soon as you hear anything new.”
He bowed his head. “Of course.” He swished his fin, readying to swim off the moment she gave the dismissal.
But the River Queen said, “And Tharion?”
He couldn’t stop his swallow at the smooth, casual tone. “Yes, my queen?”
Her full lips curved into a smile. So much like the beasts at her feet. “Before you invite my daughter on a date Above again, I think you should witness firsthand the disrespect those Above show the citizens of the Beneath.”
The River Queen picked her punishments well. Tharion would give her that.
Swimming along the Old Square’s section of the quay an hour later, he kept his head down as he speared trash.
He was her Captain of Intelligence. How many of his people had already noticed him here or heard about this? He stabbed a discarded, half-decayed pizza box. It fell into three pieces before he could tuck it into the giant bag drifting behind him on the current.
The River Queen wanted Emile badly, Pippa Spetsos was leaving a trail of bodies in her hunt for the kid, and yet this was his queen’s priority for him?
Water splashed twenty feet above, and Tharion lifted his head to find an empty beer bottle filling—and then drifting down. Through the surface, he could just make out a blond female laughing at him.
She’d tried to fucking hit him with that bottle. Tharion rallied his magic, smiling to himself as a plume of water showered the female, earning a host of shrieks and growls from those around her.
Ten more bottles came flying down at him.