Caution flooded her eyes, but she nodded.
It occurred to him then that she was likely sitting on the cold floor because her thin legs had atrophied from being in the tank for so long. That old piece of shit had left her here like this.
Ithan scanned the space for anything resembling a blanket and found nothing. He only had his T-shirt, and as he reached for the hem, she said, “Don’t. He’ll know you were here.”
“Good.”
She shook her head. “He’s possessive. If he even thinks I’ve had contact with someone other than him, he’ll send me down to Hel with an unimportant question.” She trembled slightly. He’d done it before.
“Why?”
“Demons like to play,” she whispered.
Ithan’s throat closed up. “You sure you don’t want to leave? I can carry you right now, and we’ll figure out the other shit. The Prime will protect you.”
“You know the Prime?” Her voice filled with whispered awe. “I only heard my parents speak of him, when I was young.”
So they hadn’t been entirely shut off from the world, then. “He’ll help you. I’ll help you.”
Her face again became aloof. “You must go.”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” she echoed back, with a hint of that temper again. A bit of dominance that had the wolf in him perking up.
He met her stare. Not just a bit of dominance … that was a glimmer of an Alpha’s dominance. His knees buckled slightly, his wolf instinct weighing whether to challenge or bow.
An Alpha. Here, in a tank. She would likely have been her family’s heir, then. Had they known what she was, even at age four? He suppressed a growl. Had her parents sent her here because she’d be a threat to their rule over the family?
But Ithan shoved the questions aside. Backed toward the doors again. “You should have a name.”
“Well, I don’t,” she shot back.
Definitely Alpha, with that tone, that glimmer of unbending backbone.
Someone the wolf in him would have liked to tangle with.
And to leave her here … It didn’t sit right. With him, with the wolf in his heart, broken and lonely as it might have been. He had to do something. Anything. But since she clearly wasn’t going to leave this place … Maybe there was someone else he could help.
Ithan eyed the small box on the worktable, and didn’t question himself as he snatched it up. She tried and failed to rise, her weakened legs betraying her. “He will kill you for taking them—”
Ithan strode to the doors, the box of fire sprites trapped inside their rings in hand. “If he’s got a problem with it, he can take it up with the Prime.” And explain why he was holding a wolf captive in here.
Her throat bobbed, but she said nothing more.
So Ithan stalked outside, onto the jarringly normal street beyond, and shut the heavy door behind him. But despite the distance he quickly put between himself and the mystics, his thoughts circled back to her, again and again.
The wolf with no name, trapped in the dark.
“I’m requesting an aquatic team of twenty-five for tomorrow,” Tharion said to his queen, hands clenched behind his back, tail fanning idly in the river current. The River Queen sat in her humanoid form among a bed of rocky coral beside her throne, weaving sea nettle, her dark blue gown drifting around her.
“No,” she said simply.
Tharion blinked. “We have solid intel that this shipment is coming from Pangera, and that Pippa Spetsos is likely already there. You want me to capture her, to interrogate her about Emile’s whereabouts, I’m going to need backup.”
“And have so many witnesses mark the Blue Court’s involvement?”
What is our involvement? Tharion didn’t dare ask. What’s your stake in this beyond wanting the kid’s power?
His queen went on, “You will go, and go alone. I take it your current cadre of … people will be with you.”
“Yes.”
“That should be enough to question her, given your companions’ powers.”
“Even five mer agents—”
“Just you, Tharion.”
He couldn’t stop himself as he said, “Some people might think you were trying to kill me off, you know.”
Slowly, so slowly, the River Queen turned from her weaving. He could have sworn a tremor went through the riverbed. But her voice was dangerously smooth as she said, “Then defend my honor against such slander and return alive.”
He clenched his jaw, but bowed his head. “Shall I say goodbye to your daughter, then? In case it is my last chance to do so?”