Hypaxia’s eyes gleamed with that greenish light. “No—I’m staying here.”
Tharion weighed the heaviness in that one word and took a seat on the edge of Roga’s desk. The sorceress was off handling some squabble between vampyrs and city medwitches over the vampyrs’ raid of a blood bank, apparently. “Why?”
“Someone has to deal with all the broken pipes in this House,” Hypaxia teased.
Tharion blushed slightly. His eruption after ingesting the antidote would take a long while to live down. But there had been so much power—all of a sudden, he’d been overflowing with water, and it was music and rage and destruction and life. But he said, “Come on, Pax. Tell me why.”
Her gaze lowered to her hands. “Because if all goes poorly over there, someone needs to remain here. To help Lunathion.”
“If it goes poorly over there, everyone is fucked anyway,” he said. “You being here, I’m sorry to say, won’t make much of a difference.”
“I want to keep making the antidote,” she added. “We need a better way to stabilize it. I want to start on it now.”
He looked at his friend—really looked at her. “You okay?”
Her eyes, so changed since taking Flame and Shadow’s throne for herself, dipped to the floor. “No.”
“Pax—”
“But I have no choice,” she said, and squared her shoulders. She nodded to the doors. “You should get your wife and go.”
“Is that a note of disapproval I detect?”
Hypaxia smiled gently. “No. Well, I disapprove of much of what led you to marry her, but not … the marriage itself.”
“Yeah, yeah, get in line to lecture me.”
“I think Sathia might be good for you, Tharion.”
“Oh?”
Her smile turned secretive. “Yes.”
Tharion gave her a smile of his own. “Knock ’em dead, Pax.”
“Hopefully not literally,” Hypaxia said with a wink.
Grinning despite himself, Tharion exited Roga’s office. He’d left Sathia in a small guest room to wash up and rest, though they both knew that no amount of rest would prepare her for the insanity they were about to face.
He’d offered to send her down to the Blue Court, but she’d refused. And dropping her off in Avallen would have taken them too far out of their way. So she’d be coming with him.
Tharion knocked on the door to the guest room and didn’t wait for her to reply before he opened it.
The room was empty. There was only a note on the bed, laced with her lingering scent. Tharion read it once. Then a second time, before it really set in.
I can’t leave Colin in her hands. I hope you understand.
Good luck. And thank you for all you’ve done for me.
Sathia had left him. That’s what the thank you at the end was. It was fitting—he’d done worse to the River Queen’s daughter, and yet …
Tharion carefully laid the note back on the bed. He didn’t blame her. It was her choice to go save her ex-boyfriend from being a drugged-out assassin—and a noble choice, at that. No, he didn’t blame her at all.
It was better she didn’t come with him to the Eternal City, in any case. She’d be safer that way.
Still, Tharion looked at the note on the bed for a long, long moment.
And though he knew he was heading off to challenge the Asteri, likely to die in the attempt … as Tharion left the House of Flame and Shadow, then Lunathion itself, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
* * *
The video Hunt and Bryce had recorded was due to go out at any moment. Ruhn was so fucking proud of his sister. She knew how to make the most of a bad hand.
That moment came soon after midnight, with a stroke of a key from Declan.
And now, sitting on the floor of the windowless bedroom in the safe house Lidia had procured for them, Ruhn peered over at where she sat beside him and said, “Just a few hours until dawn, then we’ll make our move.”
Lidia stared at nothing, knee bobbing nervously. She’d spoken little since they’d gotten the news of her sons’ abduction. And though Ruhn had been aching to touch her in the quiet moments, he’d kept his hands to himself. She had other things on her mind.
“I never should have gone back onto the Depth Charger,” Lidia said at last.
“If Pollux was able to learn about your kids,” Ruhn objected, “he would have found out whether you were on the ship or off it.”
“You should have let me die in the Haldren Sea,” she said. “Then he’d have had no reason to go after them.”