Ithan cleared his throat. “I need a necromancer,” he said again. “Immediately.”
Jesiba sighed, and nodded her thanks to the bartender as she slid over another smokeshow. “Your brother’s been dead for too long.”
“Not for my brother,” Ithan said. “For someone else.”
Jesiba drank slowly this time. Smoke fluttered from her lips as she swallowed. “Whatever it is, pup, I’d suggest making peace with it.”
“There’s no making peace with it,” Ithan snarled. He could have sworn the glasses rattled, that the jazz quartet faltered, that the two vamps turned his way. A glance from Jesiba, and the room resumed its rhythms.
“Who did you kill?” Jesiba asked, voice so low it was barely audible.
Ithan’s throat constricted. He couldn’t breathe—
“Holstrom.” Her eyes glowed like the flames in the sconces behind the bar.
There was no fixing this, no undoing it. He was a traitor and a murderer and—
“Who do you need to raise?” Roga’s question was cold as ice.
Ithan made himself meet her gaze, made himself face what he’d done.
“A lost Fendyr heir.”
* * *
“I’m assuming the food last night was reheated leftovers, if that shitty little yogurt you left outside my door this morning counts as breakfast,” Bryce said to the Autumn King as she plopped into a red leather armchair and watched his orrery tick away.
Her father, sitting across the oversized desk, ignored her.
“How long are you going to keep me here?”
“Are we playing the question game again? I thought you’d tired of it last night.” He didn’t look up from what he was writing, his sheet of red hair slipping over a broad shoulder.
She clenched her teeth. “Just trying to calculate how much borrowed time I have left.”
His golden pen—a fountain pen, for fuck’s sake—slashed across the paper. “I shall procure more groceries, if my breakfast provisions are inadequate.”
Bryce crossed her legs, the leather chair creaking as she leaned back. “Look at you: cooking your own meals and grocery shopping. Why, you could almost pass as a functional adult and not some pampered brat.”
The fabric of his gray T-shirt pulled over his chest as his shoulders tensed.
Bryce pointed to the orrery. “The Astronomer said you had some Avallen craftsmen make that for you. Fancy.” The Autumn King’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the Astronomer, but he didn’t look up from his paper. Bryce plowed on, “He said the orrery is to contemplate fundamental questions about ourselves, like who we are and where we came from. I have a hard time believing you’re in here all day, thinking about anything that profound.”
His pen stalled on the paper. “The Fae bloodlines have been weakening for generations now. It is my life’s work to investigate why. This orrery was built in pursuit of answering that question.”
She blew on her nails. “Especially after little old me became a certified Starborn Princess, huh?”
His fingers tightened on his pen, hard enough that she was surprised the gold plating didn’t dent. “The question of our failing bloodlines plagued me long before you were born.”
“Why? Who cares?”
He lifted his head at last, his eyes cold and dead. “I care if our people are weakening. If we become lesser than the angels, the shifters, the witches.”
“So it’s about your ego, then.”
“It’s about our survival. The Fae stand in a favorable position with the Asteri. If our power wanes, they will lose interest in maintaining that. Others will creep in to take what we have, predators around a carcass. And the Asteri won’t lift a finger to stop them.”
“And this is why you and Morven schemed to throw me and Cormac together?”
“King Morven has noticed the fading as well. But he has the luxury of hiding behind Avallen’s mists.”
Bryce drummed her fingers on the smooth rolled arm of her chair. “Is it true that the Asteri can’t pierce the mists around Avallen?”
“Morven is almost certain they can’t. Though I don’t know if Rigelus has ever tried to breach the barriers.” He glanced toward the tall windows to his left, toward the dome of the glamour shimmering above the olive trees and lavender beds. As much of a barrier as he could ever hope to hide behind.
Bryce weighed her options, and ultimately dared to go for it as she asked, “Does the term thin place mean anything to you?”