Tharion shoved the last gun into a rucksack and turned to where Hypaxia was nesting vials of the antidote into a satchel. “How many do you have?” he asked.
Water whispered in his ears, his heart, his veins. A steady flow of magic, as if a raging river coursed through him. Half a thought and it’d be unleashed.
“Two dozen, give or take a few,” she said quietly. “Not enough.”
“You’re going to need entire factories dedicated to getting it out there,” Tharion said.
She handed him the bag. “Here. Don’t jostle it too much on the trip. Athalar’s lightning holds them together—a little agitation can destabilize the doses to the point where they won’t work.”
He angled his head. “You’re not coming?” He planned to make his way to the Asteri’s palace itself—the most likely place for a confrontation between Bryce and the Asteri. Gods, the very notion of it was insane. Suicidal. But for his friends, for Midgard, he’d go, antidote in tow.
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.”
“Hey.” Ruhn grabbed her hand, squeezing tight. She dragged her gaze over to him. “None of this is your fault.”
She shook her head, and Ruhn gently touched her face. “You are allowed to feel whatever you need to right now. But come dawn, when we walk out of here, you’ll have to bury it and become the Hind again. One last time. Without the Hind, we’re not going to get into that palace.”
She scanned his gaze, and leaned forward, her brow pressing against his.
Ruhn breathed in her scent, taking it deep into his body—but he found it already marking him. It had been there, hidden in him, since that first time.
“Can I …” She swallowed hard. “Can we …”
“Tell me what you want,” he said, kissing her cheek.
She pulled back, and slid a hand against his jaw. “You. I want you.”
“You sure?” She had so much burdening her. With her sons in the Asteri’s hands, he didn’t blame her if—
“I need to not think for a while,” she said, then added, “and … I need to touch you.” She traced her fingers over his lips. “Your real body.”
He closed his eyes against her touch. “Tell me what you want, Lidia.”
Her lips grazed his, and he shuddered. “I want you—all of you. In me.”
A grin spread across Ruhn’s face. “Happy to oblige.”
He followed her lead, letting her set the pace. Each kiss, he answered with his own. Let her show him where she wanted him to touch, to lick, to savor.
Thankfully, the parts where she wanted him to really focus were the ones Ruhn had been especially interested in. The taste of her sweetness on his tongue had him nearly coming in his pants—and that was before her breathy moans filled his ears like the most beautiful music he’d ever heard.
“Ruhn,” she said, but didn’t give him the order to halt, so he kept working her in long strokes of his tongue, wishing to the gods he still had his lip piercing, knowing he could have driven her to distraction with it—but there would be time later.
She arched off the bed, and her orgasm sent him writhing, desperate for any sensation against his cock.
She put him out of his misery a moment later, her eyes nearly pure flame as she unzipped him, and her slender hand wrapped around him—
He bucked against her first stroke, and was about to start begging when she pushed him back onto the bed. When she climbed over him, straddling him, and that hand around his cock guided him to her entrance.
Ruhn slid his hands into Lidia’s golden hair, the silken strands spilling through his fingers, and held her gaze as she sank down onto him.
He gritted his teeth at the warmth and tightness of her, panting through the rush of pleasure, the sense of perfection, the flawless fit—
She settled against him, seated fully, and her chest rose and fell so rapidly that Ruhn grabbed her hands, pressing kisses to her fingertips. Her eyes fluttered shut, and then her hips moved—and there was nothing more to say, to do, as she rode him.
He lifted his hips, and her moans heightened. He wished he could devour the sound. He made do by rising up, kissing her thoroughly, her legs wrapping around his middle. It plunged him impossibly deeper, and he lost it. Went positively feral at being so far inside her, at the smell and taste of her—
Lidia met him stroke for stroke, met his savagery with her own, teeth grazing his neck, his chest. Every thrust had him rubbing an inner wall, and fuck, he was going to die from this pleasure—
Then her head tipped back, and her delicate muscles tightened around him as she came, sending him spiraling after her. He pounded into her through it, that feral part of him relishing spilling into her, and she was his and he was hers, and there was a word for it, but it eluded him.
She stilled, and Ruhn took her weight as she leaned against him, their bodies now a tangle of arms and legs, his cock still buried to the hilt. Her every breath pushed against him, and he stroked his fingers down the column of her spine, over and over.
She was here. He was here.
For as long as Urd would allow them to be.
Lidia lay in Ruhn’s arms as the hours passed, sleep eluding her.
It had been everything she’d wanted, needed, this joining with him. She’d never felt so safe, so cherished. And yet her sons remained in the Asteri’s hands. In Pollux’s hands.
The hours dripped by. Lidia shut down the part of her that cataloged every possible torment that might be inflicted on Brann and Actaeon. The torments that she herself had inflicted on so many others.
Maybe this was her punishment for that. Her punishment for so many things.
Ruhn stirred, and Lidia nestled closer to him, breathing in his scent, savoring the strength of his body around hers.
And tried not to think about tomorrow.
87
Hiding out in the unmarked van parked in a dusty alley of the Eternal City the next morning, Ruhn peered over at where Lidia sat stone-faced against the metal siding, and slid closer.
She’d barely slept, and Ruhn didn’t blame her. A glimpse at her haggard face this morning as they’d crept out of the safe house and back into the van had kept him close to her, offering what comfort he could. Now he laid a hand on her knee and said, “Another hour or so. Then we’ll head into the palace.”
Another hour until Declan could confirm that the Asteri were well and truly distracted by the video they’d unleashed into the world. From Dec’s initial reports this morning, it was a giant clusterfuck. The footage had been blasted on every news channel and social media site. Dec had also confirmed that he’d hacked into the imperial network and learned that this morning, the Asteri and their advisors would all be meeting to discuss the fallout. The news about the parasite had really resonated. All media outlets were abuzz with chatter about it. And the footage of Bryce killing Micah, her claims about how Danika and the pack had died …
It didn’t matter that the imperial network had pulled the footage almost immediately. It was already out there, circulating on private servers, being downloaded onto phones. Being watched and analyzed over and over again. Imperial trolls tried to insist it was fake, planting comments that it was a manipulated video, but Dec made sure that footage of Bryce running through the streets of Lunathion this spring, saving the whole city, made it out, too.
And there were people out there who remembered that, who had seen her running to save them. They vouched for her, confirming not only that she had saved the city from Hel, but also from the brimstone missiles the Asteri had launched.
The Asteri had a lot on their hands that morning. Exactly as planned. And once their emergency meeting had begun, it would be time to make a move.
“A single misstep and my sons …,” Lidia began, swallowing hard.
“Set the fear aside,” Ruhn said, offering her the honesty she’d so often given him. “Focus on the task, not the what-ifs.”
“He’s right,” Bryce added from where she and Athalar sat nearby, leaning against each other. Flynn and Dec sat in the front, the former monitoring the streets, the latter with a laptop on his knees, hacking his way into the imperial military controls for the mech-suits. Another few hours, and they’d be in. “Leave the baggage behind today.”
Lidia straightened. “My sons are not baggage—”
“No,” Bryce amended, “they’re not. But you know that palace better than anyone. Any distractions are going to cost us.”
“I know Pollux better than anyone,” Lidia said, staring ahead at nothing. “And that’s why it’s unbearable to sit here.”
“Rest up while you can, Lidia,” Athalar advised. “All Hel is going to break loose pretty damn soon.”
“Literally,” Bryce said with unnerving cheer.