Bryce flashed her teeth, searing white rage creeping over her vision. But her voice was cold as ice as she said, “To be honest, I’d really like to kill you right now. For my mom, but also for Ruhn. And for me, too, I guess.” She nodded to the doorway. “But we do have a bargain, don’t we? And I’ve got a hot date today.”

  Pure death loomed in his eyes. “The Asteri will kill you.”

  “Maybe. But you’re not going to help them by telling them about this.” She extended the Starsword toward his face. He didn’t dare move as she bopped him on the nose with its tip. “It’s a real shame that you unplugged all your electronics and shut off your interweb. There’ll be no way to call for help from the basement closet.”

  He choked on his outrage. “The—”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she drawled. “I put a bucket and some water in there for you. Probably enough to last until one of your meathead guards wonders what’s going on in here and comes to check.” She pretended to think. “They might have a bitch of a time getting through your wards, though.”

  “As will you.”

  “Unfortunately for you, no, I won’t. You didn’t ward against teleporting. Such a rare gift here—you didn’t even think to spell against it, did you? Lucky me.”

  “I would consider your next moves very carefully if—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She pointed with the sword to the door. “Let’s go. Your subterranean abode awaits.”

  He didn’t try anything as she escorted him down, clearly wary of the power of the weapons she held.

  Ever since Vesperus had writhed under the two blades, there had been a thought niggling at the back of Bryce’s mind. Remembering all Ruhn had told her about the Autumn King’s obsession with the Starsword, she’d gambled that he might know about the dagger, too.

  It had been the hardest decision she’d ever made: to come here, to play this game, rather than to will the portal to take her right to Hunt. But Hunt, as she had feared, had still been in the dungeons, and to appear there would have been too risky. And this knowledge was too important.

  But now she knew a little more. The Starsword and Truth-Teller could open a portal to nowhere, whatever that was. Now she just needed to learn how to make them do it.

  Good thing he’d also told her where on Midgard to find more information about the blades.

  The Autumn King balked as Bryce pointed with the sword to the open closet in the basement. Like so much of the house, it was fireproof. The heavy steel door would likely take him a while to break out of, if he even managed to free himself from the gorsian shackle.

  The Autumn King growled as he backed into the closet, “I will kill you and your bitch mother for this.”

  She motioned him further inside. “I’ll pencil you in for tomorrow.”

  With that, she slammed the door shut in his face and locked it. He barreled into it a second later, the door shuddering, but it held.

  Whistling to herself, propping the Starsword on a shoulder, Bryce strode out of the basement.

  There was so much more to do. Places to be. People to see.

  And more to learn.

  Five minutes later, Bryce pulled her phone out of the desk drawer in the Autumn King’s study. It was dead, and a quick search of his office showed no hint of charging cords to get it working again. She slipped it into the band of her leggings, then picked up the Starsword and Truth-Teller from where she’d placed them on the desk.

  The Autumn King’s prism device sat where he’d left it. An idle beam of sunlight shone through the windows, catching in the prism and refracting a rainbow onto one of the golden planets of the orrery—on Midgard. Light pulled apart. Light stripped bare.

  In the chaos of those final moments with Vesperus and these days with the Autumn King, she hadn’t yet had a chance to explore the magic she’d taken from Silene’s store.

  She’d claimed the magic, she supposed, as Silene had surely left it there for future heirs to take. But why hadn’t they? Why hadn’t her son, who’d heard the truth directly from her mouth? Bryce knew she might never know the answer now. But she could try to learn something about the power she now held within her.

  With a sharp inhale, Bryce rallied her magic. On the exhale, she sent a stream of her starlight into the prism, her power faster than ever before.

  Starlight hit the prism, passed through it, and—

  “Huh.”

  It wasn’t a rainbow that emerged from the other side. Not even close.

  It took her a moment to process what she was seeing: a gradient beam of starlight. Where the rainbow would have been full of color, this one began in shimmering white light and descended into shadow.

  An anti-rainbow, as it were. Light falling into darkness, droplets of starlight raining from the highest beam into the shadowy band at the bottom, devoured by the darkness below.

  Like the fading light of day—of dusk.

  What did it mean? She was pretty sure her light had been pure before, but now, with Silene’s power mixed in … there was darkness there, too. Hidden beneath.

  Et in Avallen ego.

  Did it make a difference to her power? To her? To now have that layer of darkness?

  Bryce buried the questions. She could think about it later. Right now …

  She took the notebook on the desk and slid it into the inside pocket of her athletic jacket.

  Then she nudged the prism on the desk a few inches to the side, angling it toward the device across the room. The one the Autumn King said might be able to recapture the light, possibly with more power added to it. But what if light blasted from either prism, meeting in the middle? What would happen in the collision of all that magic?

  All that smashing light, those little bits of magic bashing into each other, would produce energy. And fuel her up like a battery.

  She hoped.

  “Only one way to find out,” she muttered to herself.

  With a prayer to Cthona, she sent twin beams of light arcing around the prisms, shooting straight into them.

  Twin bursts of that light flared from either prism, gunning for each other. Bands of light falling into darkness, her power stripped to its most elemental, basic form. They shot for each other, and where they met, light and darkness and darkness and light slamming into each other—

  Bryce stepped into the explosion in the heart of it.

  Stepped into her power.

  It lit her up from the inside, lit up her very blood. Her hair drifted above her head, pens and papers and other office detritus flowing upward with it.

  Such light and darkness—the power lay in the meeting of the two of them. She understood it now, how the darkness shaped the light.

  But all that colliding power … it was the boost she needed.

  With a parting middle finger to the floor at her feet and the Autumn King sulking beneath it, she teleported out of the villa to the place she wanted to be the most.

  Home. Wherever that was in Midgard.

  Because her home was no longer just a physical place, but a person, too.

  Silene had claimed as much when she spoke of Theia and Aidas—their souls had found each other across worlds, because they were mates. They were each other’s homes.

  And for Bryce, home was—and always would be—Hunt.

  * * *

  Exhaustion weighed so heavily on Ruhn that despite his aching neck, he couldn’t be bothered to shift into a more comfortable position in the chair. Machines beeped endlessly, like metal crickets marking the passing of the night.

  He had a vague sense of Declan replacing Flynn. Then Dec left and it was Flynn again.

  He didn’t know what woke him. Whether it was some hitch in the machine or some shift in the cadence of her breathing, but … a stillness went through him. He cracked his eyes open, sore and gritty, and looked to the bed.

  Lidia still lay unconscious. Ghastly pale.

  Lidia.

  No answer. Ruhn leaned over his knees and rubbed his face. Maybe he could crash on the tiled floor. It’d be better than contorting himself in the chair.

  “Morning,” Flynn said. “Want some coffee?”

  Ruhn grunted his assent. Flynn clapped him on the back and slipped out, the door hissing open and shut.

  Gods, his whole body hurt. His hand … He examined the thin, strangely pale fingers, the lack of tattoos or scars. Still weak. Like it was still rebuilding the strength stored in his immortal blood on the day of his Drop.

  He flexed his fingers, wincing, then slowly sat up and rolled his neck. He was on his third rotation when he looked at the bed and noticed Lidia staring at him.

  He went wholly still.

  Her golden eyes were hazy with pain and exhaustion, but they were open, and she was … she was …

  Ruhn blinked, making sure he wasn’t dreaming.

  Lidia rasped, “Am I dead or alive?”

  His chest caved in. “Alive,” he whispered, hands beginning to shake.

  Lidia’s lips curled faintly, like it took all her effort to do so. The weight of it hit him—of what she was and who she was and what she had done.

  The Hind lay before him—the fucking Hind. How could he feel such relief about someone he hated so much? How could he hate someone whose life mattered more to him than his own?

  Her glazed eyes shifted from his. Glanced around the windowless room, taking in the machines and her IV. Her nostrils flared, scenting the room beneath the antiseptics and various potions. Something sharpened in her stare. Something like recognition.

  Then Lidia asked very quietly, “Where are we?”

  The question surprised him. She’d planned this escape. Had her injury affected her mind? Gods, he hadn’t even thought about the potential damage from going without oxygen for so long. Ruhn said softly, “On the Depth Charger—”

  She moved.

  Tubing and monitors came flying off her, ripped from her arm so fast blood sprayed. Machines blared, and Ruhn couldn’t act quickly enough to stop her as she leapt out of the bed, feet slipping on the floor as she hurtled to the door.

  The glass hissed open, revealing Flynn with two cups of coffee in hand. He dodged to the side with a “What the fuck!”

  Lidia barreled out, hardly able to stand, and it was all Ruhn could do to race after her.

  The few medwitches in the hall at this hour let out surprised cries at the deer shifter stumbling past in her pale blue medical gown, careening into the walls with the grace of a newborn colt. Her legs had been rebuilt—she’d never used these ones before.

  “What the Hel,” Flynn said, a step behind Ruhn, smelling of the coffee that had spilled on him when he’d dived out of Lidia’s way.

  Lidia hit the stairwell, and just before the door shut behind her, Ruhn saw her trip, falling to her knees on the steps, then surge up again.

  “Lidia,” he panted, each step singeing his lungs. Fuck his still-healing body—

  He slammed into the stairwell door, but she was already halfway up, long legs pale and thin against the gray tiles.

  She charged up and up, around and around, either unaware or uncaring that Ruhn ran close behind. She threw open an unmarked door, then bolted down the hall. People in civilian clothes pressed back against the walls at the sight of her—then him. The walls here were covered with bright art and flyers.

  Sharp inhales came from Lidia. She was sobbing, craning her neck to see through the windows of the rooms she passed. Ruhn read the words on each wooden door: Year Three. Year Seven. Year Five.

  She skidded to a halt, gripping a doorjamb. Ruhn reached her side as she shoved her face up to the glass.

  Year Nine.

  A group of teenagers—most of them mer, with striped skin and various coloring—sat in rows of desks in the classroom. Lidia pressed a hand against the door. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  And then a boy, golden-haired and blue-eyed, looked away from his teacher and toward the window. The kid wasn’t mer.

  The ground slid out from under Ruhn. The boy had Lidia’s face. Her coloring.

  Another boy to his left, also not mer, had dark hair and golden eyes. Lidia’s eyes.

  Behind them, Flynn grunted with surprise. “You’ve got brothers on this ship?”

  “They’re not my brothers,” Lidia whispered. Her fingers curled on the glass. “They’re my sons.”

  40

  Hunt leaned against the wall of the massive tactical room on the Depth Charger, arms crossed. Tharion and Baxian flanked him, the former feigning nonchalance, the latter the portrait of menace.

  Only a conference table occupied the room, and though they’d been told to take a seat upon walking in five minutes ago, they all remained standing.

  Hunt ran through all the things he needed to say. The Ocean Queen had told Sendes that she wanted Tharion presented to her, but Hunt knew he wouldn’t get a better opportunity to ask her his questions. Assuming Tharion wasn’t turned into a bloody pulp before Hunt could start talking. That would throw a wrench in his plans.

  If Tharion was nervous, the mer didn’t show it. He just removed invisible flecks of lint from his aquatic suit and glanced at the digital clock on the far wall every now and then. But Hunt had noted his dead-eyed stare. A male prepared to face his end. Who might think he deserved it.

  Power shuddered through the ship, like an undersea earthquake. As menacing and deadly as a tsunami. Ancient and cold as the bottom of an oceanic trench.

  “She’s here,” Tharion murmured.

  Baxian’s dark wings tucked in tighter, and he glanced sidelong at Hunt. “You ever meet the Ocean Queen?”

  “Nope,” Hunt said, folding in his own wings. He wished he had a weapon—any weapon. Even with his lightning and brute strength, there was something comforting in the weight of a gun or sword at his side. Though neither would be helpful against the being who’d arrived on the ship. “Never even seen her. You?”

  Baxian ran a hand over his tightly curled black hair. “No. Ketos?”

  “No,” was the mer’s only reply, his eyes again fixed on the clock.

  It was no surprise that even Tharion hadn’t met the Ocean Queen. She was more of an enigma than the River Queen, rumored to have been born of Ogenas herself. The daughter of a goddess, who could likely bring the force of this entire ocean crashing down upon this ship and—

  The door clicked open. Sendes appeared on the threshold and announced, “Her Depthless Majesty, the Ocean Queen.” The commander stepped aside, bowing at the waist as a tiny female entered behind her.

  Hunt blinked. Even Tharion seemed to be restraining his shock, his breath shallow.

  Her luscious body measured barely more than four feet. Her skin was as pale as the belly of a fish; her angular eyes as dark as a shark’s. Her heart-shaped face was neither pretty nor plain, and the rosebud-shaped lips were the reddish pink of a snapper. She walked with a strange sort of lightness—like she was unused to being on solid ground—and the gown of kelp and sea fans she wore trailed behind her, the shells and coral in the train tinkling as she moved.

  Pushing off the wall, the three of them followed Sendes’s lead and bowed.

  Hunt watched the Ocean Queen as he did so, though, and noted the slow sweep of her eyes over them. She only moved her eyes—nothing else. An apex predator assessing her prey.

  When she’d decided they had suitably worshipped her, she stalked to the head of the table. Each step left behind a wet footprint on the tiles, though she appeared entirely dry. Barnacles adorned some strands of her hair like beads.

  “Sit,” she ordered, voice deep and rolling and utterly chilling.

  Wings rustled and chairs groaned as they obeyed. Hunt could only wonder if he’d pissed off Urd today as he realized he had claimed the chair nearest to the head of the table—to the monarch standing there. Baxian sat on his other side, and Tharion, the worm, had wriggled his way to the seat farthest away—within leaping distance of the door.

  Adjusting his wings around the chair back, Hunt caught Baxian’s eye. The Helhound gave him a look that pretty much said: Well, I’m shitting my pants.

  Hunt glanced pointedly at his own chair, as if to say, You’re not the one sitting closest to her.

  The queen surveyed them with ageless, pitiless eyes.

  Hunt couldn’t help his swallow. He’d never felt so small, so insignificant. Even in front of the Asteri, he’d remembered that he was a warrior, and a damned good one, and might at least make a last stand against them. But before this female … He saw it in her eyes, sensed it in his blood: one thought from her, and she’d wipe him from existence with a tidal wave of power.

  Sendes cleared her throat and said, voice shaking, “May I present Hunt Athalar, Baxian Argos, and Tharion Ketos.”

  “Our guests from Valbara,” the Ocean Queen acknowledged. Squalls howled in her words, even as her tone remained mild. Hunt’s entire body tensed.

  As fast as a storm sweeping in over the sea, she seemed to grow—no, she was growing, taller and taller, until she towered over Sendes, nearly Hunt’s own height.

  Her power surged, filling the room, dragging their meager souls down into its airless heart like a maelstrom. The Ocean Queen slid her attention to Tharion and said with knee-trembling menace, “You have brought a heap of trouble to my doorstep.”

  * * *

  Ruhn tried and failed to process what he’d heard. Lidia had … children?

  A female voice behind them said, “Miss Cervos.”

  Lidia didn’t turn. Just stared at the boys in the classroom.

  But Ruhn looked, and found a full-bodied, dark-skinned mer female with a kind face standing there. She said to Ruhn, “I’m Director Kagani, the head of this school.”

  Lidia’s fingers contracted on the glass of the door’s window. “Can I meet them?” The question was very, very quiet. Broken.

  Kagani sighed softly. “I think it would be disruptive, and too public, for them to be pulled out of class right now.”

  Lidia finally turned at that, teeth flashing. “I want to meet my children.”

  Ruhn’s mind spun at her expression. Rage and pain and a mother’s unbreaking ferocity.