A Fendyr was a Reaper. A half-life, a walking corpse—

  It was sacrilege. A disgrace.

  And it was all his fault.

  “Which is the more attractive choice?” the Under-King mused as Sigrid took his hand. “To have been raised by you, Hypaxia, to be under your command and thrall … or to be free?”

  “To be your servant,” Hypaxia corrected with impressive steel.

  “Better mine than yours,” the Under-King countered. He then inclined his head to Ithan. “Young Holstrom. You have my gratitude. Her soul might have drifted forever. She’s in capable hands now.”

  “What—what are you going to do?” Ithan dared ask.

  The Under-King peered down at Sigrid and smiled, revealing too-large, brown teeth. “Come, my pet. You have much to learn.”

  But Sigrid turned to Ithan, and he’d never known such self-loathing as he did when she said in that rasping Reaper’s voice, “You killed me.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words didn’t even cover it. Would never cover it.

  “I won’t forget this.”

  Neither would he. As long as he lived. He held her stare, hating those acid-green eyes, the deadness in them—

  “We will speak soon,” the Under-King said to Jesiba, more warning than invitation. Before Jesiba could reply, the Under-King and Sigrid vanished on a dark wind.

  Only when its scraps of shadow had faded from the morgue did Jesiba say, “What a disaster.”

  Hypaxia was staring at her hands, as if trying to walk herself through her mistake.

  Ithan couldn’t stop the shaking that overtook him from head to toe, right down to his very bones. “Fix this.”

  Hypaxia didn’t look up.

  Ithan growled, his heart racing swiftly, “Fix this.”

  Jesiba clicked her tongue. “What’s done is done, pup.”

  “I don’t accept that.” Ithan bared his teeth at her, then pointed at Hypaxia. “Undo what you just did.”

  Slowly, Hypaxia lifted her eyes to his. Bleak, pleading, tired. “Ithan—”

  “FIX IT!” Ithan roared, the witch’s necromantic instruments rattling in the wake of the sound. He didn’t care. Nothing fucking mattered but this. “FIX HER!” He whirled on Jesiba. “Did you know this would happen?” His voice broke.

  Jesiba gave him a flat look. “No. And if you take that tone with me again—”

  “There might be a way,” Hypaxia said quietly.

  Even Jesiba blinked, turning with Ithan to survey the former witch-queen. “Once the dead have crossed that threshold into Reaperdom—”

  Hypaxia’s gaze met Ithan’s and held, the pain bleeding away to pure determination. “Necromancy can lead her to that threshold; it can haul her back again, too.”

  “How?” Jesiba asked. Ithan could barely breathe.

  “We need a thunderbird.”

  Jesiba threw up her hands. “There are none left.”

  “Sofie Renast was a thunderbird,” Ithan said, more to himself than to the others. “We thought her brother might be one, too, but—”

  “Sofie Renast is dead,” Jesiba said.

  Hypaxia only asked, “Where’s her body?” The question rang like a death knell through the morgue.

  Jesiba got it before Ithan did. “After that debacle,” she said, pointing to the examination table where Sigrid had laid moments before, the sheet now discarded on the floor beside it, “you really want to try raising the dead again?”

  “Sofie’s been dead for too long to raise,” Ithan said, nausea churning in his gut. And, he didn’t add, he couldn’t help but agree with Roga about Hypaxia’s track record.

  “If she hasn’t been given a Sailing, then it should work—though the decayed state of her body will be … gruesome.” Hypaxia paced the room. “She should still have enough lightning lingering in her veins to bridge the gap between life and death. The thunderbirds were once able to aid necromancers, to use their lightning to hold the souls of the dead. They could even imbue their power into ordinary objects, like weapons, and give them magical properties—”

  “And you think it can somehow undo Sigrid becoming a Reaper?” Ithan said.

  “I think the lightning might be able to pull her soul back toward life,” Hypaxia said. “And give her the chance to make the choice again. A few days as a Reaper might change her mind.”

  Silence fell. Ithan looked to Jesiba, but the sorceress was silent, as if weighing Hypaxia’s every word.

  Ithan swallowed hard. “Will it work?”

  Jesiba didn’t take her eyes from Hypaxia as she said quietly, “It might.”

  “But where’s her body?” Ithan pushed. “The last I heard from my friends, the Ocean Queen had it on her ship. She could have sent it out the air lock for all we know—”

  “Give me thirty minutes,” Jesiba said, and didn’t wait for a reply before stalking out of the room.

  * * *

  There was nothing to do but wait. Ithan didn’t feel like doing anything except sitting at the desk and looking at his hands.

  His inept, bloodstained hands.

  He’d tried to save Sigrid from the Astronomer, and had only succeeded in killing her. And then turning her corpse into a Reaper. Every choice he’d made had led them from bad to worse to catastrophic.

  Jesiba breezed through the metal doors of the morgue exactly thirty minutes later. “Well, it took more bribes than I’d have liked, but I have good news and bad news,” she declared.

  “Good first,” Ithan said, looking up from his hands at last. Hypaxia had sat in the other desk chair the entire time, silent and thoughtful.

  “I know where Sofie’s body is,” Jesiba said.

  “And the bad news?” Hypaxia asked quietly.

  Jesiba glanced between them, gray eyes blazing. “It’s on Avallen. With the Stag King.”

  50

  Ruhn had no idea how Bryce managed to not kill Morven. He honestly had no idea how he didn’t, either.

  But they wasted no time getting to work. Though Bryce was apparently on Team Caves, she insisted on checking out the archives first.

  The Avallen Archives were as imposing and massive as Ruhn remembered from his last and only visit to Avallen. Granted, he’d never been allowed inside, but from its looming gray exterior, the building rivaled the Depth Charger in sheer size. A city of learning, locked behind the lead doors.

  Only for the royal bloodlines—the royal males—to access.

  “We really have to work?” Flynn groused, rubbing his head. “Can’t we relax for a bit? This place gives me the creeps—I need to decompress.”

  Athalar gave Flynn a look. “It gives all of us the creeps.”

  “No,” Flynn said gravely, shaking his head. “I told you—my magic hates this place.”

  “What do you mean?” Bryce asked, peering at him over a shoulder.

  Flynn shrugged. “The earth feels … rotted. Like there’s nothing for my magic to grab on to, or identify with. It’s weird. It bothered me the first time we were here, too.”

  “He whined about it the entire time,” Declan agreed, earning an elbow in the ribs from Flynn.

  But Flynn jerked his chin at Sathia, standing by herself a few feet away. “You sense it, too, right?”

  His sister twisted her rosebud mouth to the side, then admitted, “My magic is also uneasy on Avallen. My brother’s claims are not totally without merit.”

  “Well,” Bryce said, “buck up, Flynn. I think a big, tough Fae male like you can power through. We’ll decompress tonight. Tomorrow we split into Team Archives and Team Caves and work as fast as we can.”

  She lifted a hand to one of the lead doors, but didn’t touch it yet. “Trust me, though, I don’t want to stay on this miserable island for a moment more than necessary.”

  “Agreed,” Athalar muttered, stepping up beside Bryce. “Let’s find what we need and get the fuck out.”

  “What are we looking for, exactly?” Sathia asked. “Everything you told me about the other Fae world and all you’ve learned … I’m sorry, but I need a bit more direction to go on when we get in there.”

  Since we’re all known enemies of the Asteri, what’s another person who knows our shit? Bryce had asked when Flynn had demanded that Sathia stay behind.

  And Sathia had refused to be left alone, even with the safety of her married status now granting her the right to move freely. I’m not going to be locked up in some room to rot, she’d said, and stomped after Bryce, who had begun explaining everything she’d learned about Theia and her daughters and the Fae history in and outside of Midgard. She hadn’t spoken a word to Tharion since they’d exchanged their vows—and the mer had seemed just fine about that, too.

  It was all fucking nuts. But Ruhn had heard what Lidia had said to Bryce—about never having had anyone to fight for her. It hadn’t sat well.

  Ruhn dared a look over at where Lidia stood, peering up at the towering entrance to the archives. He hadn’t failed to note Morven’s shock upon realizing she stood in his throne room. And as they’d departed, the Stag King had seemed poised to speak to Lidia, but the Hind had breezed past him before he could.

  Her golden eyes slid to Ruhn’s, and he could have sworn pure fire pulsed through him—

  He quickly looked away.

  Sathia asked Bryce, “What if you don’t find the answers you seek?”

  “Then we’re fucked,” Bryce said plainly, and finally laid her palm flat against the doors to the archives. A shudder seemed to go through the metal.

  On a groan, the doors swung inward, revealing nothing but sunlight-dappled gloom beyond. Ruhn swapped glances with Dec, whose brows were high at the display of submission from the building. But Bryce breezed through, Athalar and Baxian on her heels.

  “So you really intend to go into the Cave of Princes?” Sathia asked Bryce as they entered the dim space.

  “I know my female presence will probably cause the caves to collapse from sheer outrage,” Bryce said, voice echoing off the massive dome above them, “but yes.”

  Ruhn snickered and peered up at the dome. It was a mosaic of onyx stones, interrupted by bits of opal and diamond—stars. A crescent moon of pure nacre occupied the apex of it, gleaming in the dimness. Eerily similar to the Ocean Queen’s sharp nails.

  Sathia trailed Bryce and asked softly, “And—that’s really it? The knife?”

  “Shocking, I know,” Bryce said. “Party girl bearing the prophesied—”

  “No,” Sathia said. “I wasn’t thinking that.”

  Bryce paused, turning, and Ruhn knew Athalar was monitoring every word, every move from Sathia as Flynn’s sister clarified, “I was thinking about what it means. Not just in regard to the Asteri and your conflict with them. But what it means for the Fae.”

  “Whole lot of nothing,” Flynn snorted.

  “We were told our people would be united with the return of that knife,” Sathia countered sharply. Her tone gentled as she asked Bryce, “Is that part of … whatever plan you have? To unite the Fae?”

  Bryce surveyed the rows and rows of shelves and said coldly, “The Fae don’t deserve to be united.”

  Even Ruhn froze. He’d never thought about what Bryce might do as leader, but …

  “Come on, Quinlan,” Athalar said, slinging his arm around her shoulders and decisively changing the subject, “let’s get to exploring.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Bryce muttered. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for a digital catalog here, so … I guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.” She pointed ahead, to the entire wall taken up by a card catalog. “Look for any mention of the sword and knife, anything about the mists guarding this place, Pelias and Helena … Maybe even stuff about the earliest days of Avallen, either during the First Wars or right after.”

  “That is … a lot to look for,” Flynn said.

  “Bet you’re wishing you’d learned to read,” Sathia trilled, striding for the catalog.

  “I can read!” Flynn sulked. Then mumbled, “It’s just boring.”

  Ruhn snorted, and the sound was echoed nearby—Lidia.

  Again, that look between them. Ruhn said a shade awkwardly to her, “We should get cracking.”

  A catalog that massive could take days to comb through. Especially since there was no librarian or scholar in sight. Come to think of it, the entire place had an air of neglect. Emptiness. The castle did, too, as well as the small city and surrounding lands.

  It had all seemed so mysterious, so strange when he’d come here decades ago: the famed misty isle of Avallen. Now he could only think of Cormac, growing up in the gloom and quiet. All that fire, dampened by this place.

  And yet he’d loved his people—wanted to do right by them. By everyone on Midgard, too.

  There had to be something good here, if Cormac had come out of it. Ruhn just couldn’t for the life of him figure out what.

  The Fae don’t deserve to be united.

  Bryce’s words hung in the air, as if they still echoed off the dome above. And Ruhn didn’t know why, but as the words settled into the darkness … they made him sad.

  After a few tense minutes, Declan declared, “Well, this is interesting.”

  He stood at the nearest table, what looked like a stack of maps unrolled before him. A large one—of Midgard—was spread across the top.

  Ruhn strode for his friend, grateful for the break. “What is?” The others followed suit, gathering around the table.

  Dec pointed at Avallen on the map, the paper yellow with age despite the preserving spells upon it. “I thought looking at old maps might give us some hints about the mists—you know, see how old cartographers represented them and stuff. And then I found this.”

  Athalar rubbed his neck and said, “At the risk of being ridiculed … what am I looking at?”

  “There are islands here,” Declan said. “Dozens.”

  It clicked. “There shouldn’t be any islands around Avallen,” Ruhn said.

  Bryce leaned closer, running her fingers across the archipelago. “When’s this map from?”

  “The First Wars,” Dec said, and pulled another map from the bottom of the pile. “This is Midgard now. No islands in this area except the one we’re on.”

  “So …,” Baxian said.

  “So,” Dec said, annoyed, “isn’t it weird that there were islands fifteen thousand years ago, and now they’re gone?”

  Tharion cleared his throat. “I mean, sea levels do rise—”

  Dec gave them all a withering look, and pulled out a third map. “This map’s from a hundred years after the First Wars.” Ruhn scanned it. No islands at all.

  Across the table, Lidia was silently assessing the different maps. She lifted her eyes to Ruhn’s, and he couldn’t stop his heartbeat from jacking up, his blood from thrumming at her nearness—

  “All those islands,” Bryce murmured, “disappeared within a hundred years.”

  “Right after the Asteri arrived,” Athalar added, and Ruhn looked away from Lidia long enough to consider what was before them.

  He said, “Well, despite its mists, Avallen clearly has had no problem revealing its shape and coastline to the Asteri for the empire’s official maps. Why hide the islands?”

  “There are no islands,” Sathia said quietly. “The ones on that first map …” She pointed along the northwestern coast. “We sailed in from that direction. We didn’t see a single island. The mists could have obscured some of them, but we should have seen at least a few.”

  “I’ve never seen or heard any mention of additional islands here,” Flynn agreed.

  Silence fell, and they all glanced between the three maps as if they’d reveal some big secret.

  Dec finally shook his head. Something happened here a long time ago—something big. But what?”

  “And,” Lidia murmured, the cadence of her voice sending shivers of pleasure down Ruhn’s spine, “is this knowledge at all useful to us?”

  Bryce tapped a hand on the oldest map, and Ruhn could practically see the wheels turning in her head.

  “Silene said something in her memories about the island that had once been her court.” Bryce’s face took on a faraway look, as if she were trying to remember the exact words. “She said that the land … shriveled. That when she started to house those monsters to hide the Harp’s presence, the island of the Prison became barren. And the Ocean Queen said islands literally withered into the sea in despair when the Asteri arrived.”

  “So?” Flynn asked.

  Bryce’s gaze sharpened again. “It seems weird that two Fae strongholds, both islands, were once archipelagos, and then both lost all but the central island in the wake of the arrival of … unpleasant forces.”

  Ruhn raised his eyebrows. “I can’t believe you actually told us what you were thinking, for once.”

  Bryce flipped him off as Athalar snickered. She nodded decisively. “Team Archives: keep looking into this.”

  The others dispersed again to resume their researching, but Bryce grabbed Ruhn by the elbow before he could move. “What?” he asked, glancing down at her grip.

  Bryce’s look was resolute. “We don’t have the luxury of time.”

  “I know,” Ruhn said. “We’ll search as quickly as we can.”

  “A few days,” Bryce said, letting go of his arm. She glanced toward the sealed front doors of the archives, the island beyond. “I don’t think we have more than that before Morven decides it’s in his best interest to tell the Asteri we’re here, risks to his people be damned. Or before the Asteri’s mystics pinpoint our location.”

  “Maybe the mists can keep out mystic eyes as well,” Ruhn suggested.

  “Maybe, but I’d rather we not find out the hard way. A few days, Ruhn—then we’re out of here.”

  “The caves could take longer than that to navigate,” Ruhn warned. “You sure there’s anything in there worth finding? As far as I could tell, it was some decorative crap on the walls and a lot of misty tunnels. We’d get through the archives way faster if we all tackled the catalog together.”

  “I have to look at the caves,” Bryce said quietly. “Just in case.”