And now it beckoned.
* * *
Night.
Borne on a raft of oblivion, Ruhn drifted across a sea of pain.
The last thing he remembered was the sound and sight of his small intestine splattering on the ground, pain as sharp as—well, as sharp as the curved knife the Hawk had plunged into his gut.
He wondered when the shifter would disembowel them with his talons in his hawk form, as he was fond of doing. Ruhn could imagine it easily: the Hawk perching on his torso and clawing out his organs, pecking at them with that razor-sharp beak. He’d heal, and then the Hawk would begin again. Over and over—
Ruhn had been a fool to think nothing that happened down here could be worse than the years of torture at his father’s hands. The burns, the gorsian shackles his father had put him in to keep him from fighting back, keep him from healing—then, at least, he’d developed his own ways of surviving, of recovering. But now there was only pain, then oblivion, then pain again.
Had he died? Or been a whisper away from death, as Vanir could be if the blow wasn’t truly fatal? His Fae body would regenerate the organs, even slowed by the gorsian shackles.
Night.
The female voice echoed across the starlit sea. Like a lighthouse shining in the distance.
Night.
Here, there was no escape from her voice. If he roused himself, the pain would wash over the raft and he’d drown in it. So he had no choice but to listen, to drift toward that beacon.
Gods, what did he do to you?
Anger and grief filled the question as it came from all around him, from inside him.
Ruhn managed to say, Nothing you haven’t done a thousand times yourself.
Then she stood there with him, on his raft. Lidia. Fire streamed off her body, but he could see her perfect face. The most beautiful female he’d ever seen. A flawless mask over a rotted heart.
His enemy. His lover. The soul he’d thought was—
She knelt and extended a hand toward him. I’m so sorry.
Ruhn shifted beyond her reach. As much movement as he could manage, even here. Something like agony flashed in her eyes, but she didn’t try to touch him again.
He must have been killed today. Or come close to it, if she was here. If he had no defenses left and she’d broken through that mental wall for the first time since he’d learned who she was.
What had they done to Cormac to render him irrevocably dead?
He couldn’t stop the memory from flooding him, of sitting beside Cormac in that bar before they went to the Eternal City, of that one moment he thought he’d glimpsed the person his cousin might have been. The friend Cormac might have become, if he hadn’t been systematically stripped of kindness by King Morven.
It shouldn’t have been a shock to Ruhn, that the two kings had disowned their sons. Though one king had fire in his veins and the other shadows, Einar and Morven were more alike than anyone realized.
Ruhn had always held some scrap of hope that his father saw the Asteri for what they truly were, and that if it ever came down to it, his father would make the right choice. That the orrery in his study, the years spent looking for patterns in light and space … that it had meant something larger. That it wasn’t simply the idle studying of a bored royal who needed to feel more important in the grand scheme of things than he actually was.
That hope was dead. His father was a spineless fucking coward.
Ruhn, Lidia said, and he hated the sound of his name on her lips. He hated her. He turned on his side, putting his back to her.
I understand why you’re angry, why you must hate me, she began hoarsely. Ruhn, the … the things I’ve done … I need you to understand why I did them. Why I’ll keep doing them.
Save your sob story for someone who gives a shit.
Ruhn, please.
The raft groaned, and he knew she was reaching for him again. But he couldn’t bear that touch, the pleading in her voice, the emotion that no one else in the world but him had ever heard from the Hind.
So Ruhn said, Fuck your excuses. And rolled off that mental raft to let the sea of pain drown him.
5
Ithan’s heart stalled as Sabine smiled savagely, advancing toward the warehouse’s side door. The alley behind her was empty—no witnesses. Exactly what Ithan and all those who served under Sabine had been trained to ensure.
Sigrid backed up a step, right into Declan. The sprites clung to her neck, yellow flames trembling.
“I knew my brother let me find him and your sister too easily,” Sabine snarled, eyes fixed wholly on Sigrid, as if the two Fae warriors with guns pointed at her head were nothing. “I knew he lied about how many pups he had.”