Tharion bowed again. “I apologize for the impertinence. Your will is mine,” he said, the familiar words falling from his lips. “I’ll update you when I’ve apprehended the boy.”
He made to leave, risking doing so without dismissal, and had nearly made it to the archway before the River Queen said, “Did you enjoy your punishment last night?”
He closed his eyes for a moment before he turned to face her.
She’d lowered herself into the stream again, no more than a dark, beautiful head among the lily pads. Like one of her sobeks, waiting to make a meal of the unworthy dead.
Tharion said, “It was a wise and fitting punishment for my ignorance and transgression.”
Her lips curled upward, revealing slightly pointed white teeth. “It is diverting to see you tug at the leash, Tharion.”
He swallowed his retort, his rage, his grief, and inclined his head.
More lightning. He had to go. Knew better than to reveal his impatience, though. “I have only your daughter’s best interests in my heart.”
Again, that ancient, cruel smile that informed him she’d seen too many males—some far smarter than he—come and go. “I suppose we shall see.” With that, she dipped beneath the water, vanishing under the lily pads and among the reeds.
Hunt could barely stand.
The firstlight had flayed him, leaving a smoking ruin inside his body, his mind. But it had worked. He’d taken the power and converted it into his own. Whatever the fuck that meant. Apollion had known—or guessed enough to be right. And Bryce … the sword …
She’d been a conduit to his power. Fucking Hel.
They staggered through the mists, the obelisks. Screeching and hissing rose around them. Reapers. Would anyplace in Midgard be safe now, even after death? He sure as fuck didn’t want his soul in the Bone Quarter.
The bone gates appeared overhead, carved from the ribs of some ancient leviathan, and beyond them, the steps to the river. Hunt’s knees nearly buckled as he spied a familiar wave skimmer and the mer male atop it, beckoning frantically as he pivoted the wave skimmer toward Lunathion proper.
“I thought that was you, with all the lightning,” Tharion panted as they rushed toward him and leapt down the steps. He slipped off the wave skimmer to make room for them, shifting as he went. The mer looked like Hel: haunted and tired and bleak.
Bryce climbed on first, and Hunt joined her, clasping her from behind. She gunned the engine and sped off into the mist, Tharion shooting under the surface beside them. Hunt nearly collapsed against her back, but Bryce veered to the left, so sharply he had to clutch her hips to keep from falling into the water. “Fuck!” she shouted as scaly, muscled backs broke the surface.
Sobeks.
Only the nutritious souls went to the Under-King. The ones given over to the beasts were snacks. Junk food. A broad snout full of thick, daggerlike fangs shot from the water.
Blood sprayed before the creature could rip into Hunt’s leg. Bryce zigged to the right, and Hunt twisted to see Tharion on their tail, a deadly plume of water aimed above him. Pressurized, like a water cannon. So intense and brutal that it had carved a hole right through a sobek’s head.
Another beast lunged for them, and again, Tharion struck, water breaking flesh as surely as it could eat away at stone.
A third, and Tharion attacked with brutal efficiency. The other beasts halted, tails lashing the water.
“Hang on!” Bryce shouted toward Tharion, who gripped the side of the wave skimmer as she hurtled them toward the Black Dock. The mist fell away behind them, and a wall of sunshine blinded Hunt.
They didn’t stop, though. Not when they hit the dock. Not when Tharion leapt from the water and shifted, grabbing a spare Blue Court aquatic uniform from the seat-hatch in the wave skimmer. The three of them hurried down the streets to Bryce’s apartment.
In the safety of her home, Bryce knelt on the floor, wet and bloody and panting. The slice along her spine was long but mercifully shallow, already clotting. It had missed the Horn tattoo by millimeters. Hunt had enough sanity remaining to avoid the white couch as Tharion said, “What happened? Any sign of Emile or Sofie?”
“No—we were stupid to even look for them in the Bone Quarter,” Hunt said, sitting at the dining table, trying to reel his mind back in. Bryce filled the mer in on the rest.
When she finished, Tharion dropped onto one of the counter stools, face white. “I know I should be disappointed that Emile and Sofie weren’t hiding in the Bone Quarter, but … that’s what awaits us in the end?”