Tharion ground his teeth. This wasn’t the first time in the past few days that one of his people had recognized him and told him precisely how they felt. Everyone knew Tharion had defected from the Blue Court. Everyone knew he’d defected and come here to serve the Meat Market’s depraved ruler. The River Queen and her daughter had made sure of it.
Captain Whatever, Ithan Holstrom had once called him. It seemed he truly embodied it now.
You gave that up,he reminded himself. He could never again so much as set foot in the Istros. The moment he did, his former queen would kill him. Or order her sobeks to rip him to shreds. Something twisted in his gut.
He was aware that his parents lived only because he’d gotten messages from them expressing their outrage and disappointment. We already lost one child, his mother had written. Now we lose another. Defecting, Tharion? What in Ogenas’s depths were you thinking?
He didn’t write back. Didn’t apologize for being so reckless and selfish that he hadn’t thought of their safety before committing this act of insanity. He’d not only sworn himself to the Viper Queen, he’d bound himself to her, too. After all the shit that had gone down in Pangera … no place else was safe for him, anyway. Only here, where the Viper Queen was allowed to rule.
He watched Ari pace in the ring. You gave that up, he told himself again firmly. For this.
“You’re a disgrace,” the other mer male went on.
Something liquid and foamy splashed on Tharion’s head, his bare shoulders. The fucker had thrown his beer.
Tharion snarled up at them, and the males had the good sense to back up a step, like they might have finally remembered what Tharion was capable of when provoked. But before he could beat the living shit out of them, one of the Viper Queen’s personal guards—one of those glassy-eyed Fae defectors—said, “Fishboy. Boss wants you. Now.”
Tharion stiffened, but he had no choice. The tugging sensation in his gut would only worsen the longer he resisted. Best to get this over with now.
So he left the assholes behind. Left Ari with the lions, who’d be deep-fried in about twenty minutes, or whenever the dragon had put on enough of a show to please the audience and did what she could have accomplished without so much as stepping into the ring.
He had no doubt there’d be some vendor waiting in the wings to scoop up the cooked carcasses and sell them in a food stall nearby. It wasn’t called the Meat Market for nothing.
The walk upstairs, to the room behind that one-way window, was long and quiet. He willed his mind to be that way, too. To stop caring.
It was easier said than done, when everything kept circling: the failed attack on the lab, Cormac’s death … They’d all been so fucking dumb, thinking they could take on the Asteri. And now here he was.
Honestly, he’d been headed this way for a while before that. Starting with the debacle with the River Queen’s daughter. Then Lesia’s death a year ago. This last month had been a culmination of that shit. Of what a pathetic, weak failure he’d always been beneath the surface.
Tharion knocked once on the wooden door, then entered.
The Viper Queen stood at the window overlooking the pit, where Ari had switched to taunting the lions. They were now frantic to escape. Everywhere the cats lunged to flee the ring, a wall of flame blocked their exit.
“She’s a natural performer,” the Viper Queen observed without turning. The ruler of the Meat Market wore a white silk romper cut to her slim figure, feet bare. A cigarette dangled from her manicured hand. “You could learn from her.”
Tharion leaned against the wooden doorframe. “Is that an order or a suggestion?”
The Viper Queen pivoted, shiny dark hair swaying with her. Her lips were painted their usual dark purple, offsetting the snake shifter’s pale skin. “Do you know the lengths I went to in procuring that minotaur for you tonight?”
Tharion kept his mouth shut. How many times had he stood like this in front of the River Queen, silent while she ripped into him? He’d lost count long ago.
The Viper Queen’s teeth flashed, delicate fangs stark against the purple of her lips. “Five minutes, Tharion?” Her voice dropped to a deadly purr. “A great deal of effort on my part, and all I get out of it, all my crowd gets, is a five-minute fight?”
Tharion gestured to his shoulder. “I’d think goring me and then hurling me across the ring was spectacle enough.”
“I’d have liked to see that several more times. Not witness you flying into a rage and snapping the bull’s neck.”
She crooked a finger. That tugging in his gut increased. As if they possessed a mind of their own, his feet and legs moved. They carried him to the window, to her side.
He hated it—not the summoning, but the fact that he’d stopped any attempt at defying it.
“To make up for you blowing your load,” the Viper Queen drawled, “I told Ari to drag out her fight.” She inclined her head to the ring. Ari’s face had gone empty and cold as she made the lions scream under her flames.
Tharion’s gut churned. No wonder Ari hadn’t stayed long to talk to him. But she’d helped him anyway. He had no idea how to unpack that.
“Try a little harder next time,” the Viper Queen hissed in his ear, lips brushing his skin. She sniffed. “The mer punks really drenched you.”
Tharion stepped away. “Is there a reason you called me up here?” He wanted a shower, and the relief that only sleep could offer him.
Her lips curled upward. She tugged back the pristine sleeve of her romper, exposing her moon-pale wrist. “Considering how little heart you put into your performance, I thought you might need a pick-me-up.”
Tharion clenched his teeth. He wasn’t a slave—though he’d been stupid and desperate enough to offer himself as such to her. But instead she’d offered him something nearly as bad: the venom only she could produce.
And now, after that initial taste of it … His mouth filled with saliva. The scent of her skin, the blood and venom beneath it—he was helpless before her, a hungry fucking animal.
“Maybe if I offered you some before your fights,” she mused, forearm extended to him like a personal feast, “you would find a bit more … stamina.”
With every scrap of will left in him, Tharion lifted his eyes to hers. Let her see how much he hated this, hated her, hated himself.
She smiled. She knew. Had known when he’d defected to her, to this life. He’d told himself that this was a place of refuge, but it was getting harder to hide from what it really was.
A long-overdue punishment.
The Viper Queen slid one of her gold-painted nails down her wrist. Opened a vein churning with that milky, opalescent venom that made him see the gods themselves.
“Go ahead,” she urged, and Tharion wanted to scream, to weep, to run, as he grabbed her arm to his mouth and sucked in a mouthful of the venom.
It was beautiful. It was horrific. And it punched through him. Stars flickered in the air. Time slowed to a syrupy, languid scroll. Exhaustion and pain faded to nothing.
He’d heard the whispers long before he’d come here: her venom was the best high an immortal could ever attain. Having tasted it, he didn’t disagree. Didn’t blame those Fae defectors who served as her bodyguards in exchange for hits of this.
He’d once pitied them, scorned them.
Now he was one of them.
The Viper Queen’s hand trailed up his chest to his neck, tracing over the spot where his gills usually appeared. She scraped her painted nails over it—a mark of pure ownership. Not only of his body, but of who he was, who he’d once been.
Her fingers tightened on his throat. An invitation, this time.
The Viper Queen’s lips brushed against his ear again as she whispered, “Let’s see what kind of stamina you have now, Tharion.”
“We can’t just leave Tharion in here.”
“Trust me, Holstrom, Captain Whatever can look after himself.”
Ithan frowned deeply at Tristan Flynn from across the rickety table. Declan Emmet and his boyfriend, Marc, were chatting up a vendor at one of the Meat Market’s many stalls. The owl-headed Vanir was the third person they’d spoken to tonight, hoping to get news of their imprisoned friends—the twelfth lowlife they’d contacted in the past two days.
And Ithan was getting sick enough of their fruitless talking that he taunted Flynn, “Is this what Fae do? Leave their friends to suffer?”
“Fuck you, wolf,” Flynn said, but didn’t take his eyes off where Declan and Marc worked their charm. Even the usually unflappable Flynn now had bags beneath his eyes. He’d rarely smiled in the past few days. Seemed to be sleeping as little as Ithan was.
Yet despite all that, Ithan went for the throat. “So Ruhn’s life means more—”
“Ruhn is in a fucking dungeon being tortured by the Asteri,” Flynn snarled. “Tharion is here because he defected. He made that choice.”
“Technically, Ruhn also made a choice to go to the Eternal City—”
Flynn dragged his hands through his brown hair. “If you’re going to complain, then get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that we’ve got a friend in a bad situation literally right there and we’re not even trying to help him.” Ithan pointed to the second level of the cavernous warehouse, the nondescript door that led into the Viper Queen’s private quarters.
“Again, Ketos defected. Not much we can do.”
“He was desperate—”
“We’re all fucking desperate,” Flynn murmured, eyeing a passing draki male carrying a sack of what smelled like elk meat. He sighed. “Seriously, Holstrom—go back to the house. Get some rest.” Again, Ithan noted the Fae lord’s exhausted face. “And,” Flynn added, “take that one with you.” Flynn nodded to the female sitting ramrod straight at a nearby table, alert and tense. The three fire sprites lay draped around her shoulders, dozing.
Right. The other source of Ithan’s frustration these days: playing babysitter for Sigrid Fendyr.
It would have been smarter to leave her back at the Fae males’ house—his house now, he supposed—but she’d refused. Had insisted on accompanying them.
Sigrid insisted on seeing and knowing everything. If he’d thought she’d crawl out of her mystic’s tank and cower, he’d thought wrong. She’d been a pain in his ass for two days now, wanting the complete history of the Fendyrs, their enemies, Ithan’s enemies … anything and everything that had happened while she’d been the Astronomer’s captive.
She hadn’t offered up much of her own past—not even a crumb about her father, whose history she hadn’t known until Ithan had filled her in, how the male had long ago been Prime Apparent until his sister, Sabine, had challenged him and won. Ithan had thought she’d killed him, but she’d apparently sent Sigrid’s father off into exile instead, where Sigrid had been born. Anything other than that was a complete mystery. Part of Ithan didn’t want to know what circumstances had been so dire as to make a Fendyr sell his heir—sell an Alpha—to the Astronomer.
That heir was only sitting quietly right now because she’d taken two steps into the Meat Market and sneered, Who’d want to shop at a disgusting place like this? Promptly making Declan and Marc’s work infinitely harder by earning the ire of any vendor within earshot.
The whisper network here put them all within earshot.
So Flynn had ordered her to sit alone. Well, alone apart from her fiery little cabal. Wherever Sigrid went, the sprites went with her.
Ithan had no idea if that bond was from the years in the tank, or from a shared trauma, or just because they were females living in a very male house, but the four of them together were a headache.
“It’s too dangerous for her to be out in the open,” Flynn went on. “Anyone can report a sighting.”
“No one knows who she is. To them, she’s a random wolf.”
“Yeah, and all it takes is one mention to Amelie or Sabine that a female wolf is in your company, and they’ll know. I’m shocked they haven’t run right over here already.”
“Sabine’s ruthless, but she’s not dumb. She wouldn’t start shit on the Viper Queen’s turf.”
“No, she’ll wait until we cross into the CBD and then ambush us.” The angels had long ignored anything that went on at street level in their district, too preoccupied with the comings and goings in their lofty towers.
Ithan glared at the male. Normally, he got along fine with Flynn. Liked him, even. But since Ruhn and Hunt and Bryce had disappeared …
Disappearedwasn’t the right word, at least for Ruhn and Hunt. They’d been taken prisoner, but Bryce … no one knew what had happened to her. Hence their presence here, seeking any intel they could get their hands on after Declan’s computer searches had been fruitless.
Any information on Bryce, on Ruhn, on Athalar … they were desperate for it. For a direction. A spark to light the way. Something that was better than sitting on their asses, not knowing.
Ithan glanced at the chair beneath him. He was currently sitting on his ass. Not knowing anything.
Before he could let self-loathing sink its teeth into him, he rose and stalked over to where Sigrid sat monitoring the patrons of the Meat Market. She lifted brown eyes full of irritation and disdain to him. “This is a bad place.”
No shit,he refrained from saying. “It has it uses,” he hedged.
He’d gone straight to the Fae males’ house when he’d hauled Sigrid out of the Astronomer’s tank. They’d stayed there while Flynn and Declan pretended that all was normal in their world. While they continued working for the Aux, Prince Ruhn’s absence dismissed as a much-needed vacation.
Ithan had been waiting for soldiers to show up. Or assassins, sent by the Asteri or Sabine or the Astronomer.
Yet there had been no questions. No interrogations. No arrests. The Autumn King hadn’t even grilled Flynn and Dec, though he no doubt knew something had happened to his son. And that where Ruhn went, his two best friends went with him.
The public had no idea what had happened in the Eternal City. Granted, Ithan and the Fae warriors didn’t know much either, but they knew that their friends had gone into the Asteri stronghold and hadn’t come out again. The Asteri, the other powers at play … they knew that Ithan and the others had also been involved, even if they hadn’t been present. And yet they hadn’t made a move to punish them.
It wasn’t a comforting thought.
Sigrid angled her head with lupine curiosity. “Do you come here often?”