“At the expense of the wolves’ future,” Sabine snapped.

  Ithan reached over his shoulder and drew the weapon he’d brought from Bryce’s bedroom.

  The Fendyr sword whined as it came free of its sheath. Sabine’s eyes flared with fury and longing—

  But Ithan knelt before the ancient Prime and bowed his head, lifting the blade in offering.

  “I have no intention of usurping the Fendyrs,” Ithan said, keeping his gaze on the ground. “I only want what’s best for our people. I thought Sigrid might be … different, but I was wrong. I was so wrong, and I am so sorry.”

  Sabine seethed, “Father, don’t listen to this trash—”

  “Silence,” the Prime ordered, in a voice Ithan had not heard in years. He dared to look up at the old male. “I heard what you said,” the Prime told Ithan. “Over the cameras.” His milky eyes seemed to clear for a heartbeat, revealing a glimpse of the powerful, righteous wolf he’d been. “Danika did indeed guess at what you have told everyone. She suspected it, and asked me about it, and though I had long thought the same, I shied away from the truth. It was … easier to continue than to face a painful reality. To keep stability, rather than risk an uncertain future.”

  The Prime took the sword Ithan offered, his withered hand shaking with the effort of holding the heavy blade. “I allowed our people to be forced to serve in the Aux,” he continued, looking now to Perry, “even when their artist’s souls abhor it.” Perry’s eyes shone with pain. “What Ithan has said to you is true. It has always been true, going back to the First Wars and the unspeakable atrocities our people committed on behalf of the Asteri. My daughter”—a glance at Sabine, who was snarling softly—“did not care to listen when I mentioned that the wolves might be more—better—than we have been. But my granddaughter did.”

  The old wolf let out a heavy sigh. “Danika might have led us back to what we were before we allowed ourselves to be collared by the Asteri. I have long believed that she was killed for this goal—by the powers who wish the status quo to remain in place.” The Prime looked down at the wolf kneeling at his feet. “But it must be broken.” He extended the sword to Ithan. “Ithan Holstrom is my heir.”

  Stunned silence rippled through the crowd, the world. Ithan couldn’t get a breath down.

  “And no one else,” the Prime finished.

  Sabine had gone white as death. “Father—”

  The Prime leveled a cold look at his daughter. “For too long I’ve left you unchecked.”

  “I’ve kept our people, this city safe—”

  “You are hereby stripped of your title, your rank, and your authority.”

  Sabine just stared. At her side, Sigrid’s blazing green eyes darted between the two wolves.

  The Astronomer was now glancing at the distant eastern gates, as if starting to wonder if he’d backed the wrong horse.

  “Take it,” the Prime said to Ithan. He extended the sword again.

  Ithan shook his head. “I didn’t come here to—”

  “I offered to make you Alpha once, Ithan Holstrom. I now offer to make you Prime. Don’t walk away from it.”

  Ithan didn’t reach for the sword. “I—”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish his refusal.

  One moment, he was staring at the sword. The next, Sabine had snatched it from her father’s hands.

  She plunged it through the Prime’s ancient face.

  The crowd exploded into screams and shouts. From the corner of his eye, Ithan saw Amelie dragging a struggling Perry away, out of range.

  The Prime crumpled to the ground before Ithan, eyes unseeing, coated with blood. If a medwitch got here soon enough, maybe—

  Sigrid moved.

  Ithan couldn’t contain his cry of dismay as she leapt onto her grandfather’s body and pressed her mouth to his withered lips. She inhaled deeply.

  Light flared up through the Prime’s mouth, illumining his hollowed cheeks, and then Sigrid was breathing it in, drinking it.

  His soul, his firstlight—

  She cocked her head back and swallowed that light, his essence. Her skin gleamed as the light passed down the column of her throat, inch by inch.

  There was no coming back for the Prime.

  Sabine cut off his head anyway. The Astronomer, slack-jawed and sprayed with blood, had stumbled back a step, gaping at Sigrid as she leveled her green stare on him, ravenous—

  Ithan had only a heartbeat to pivot, to leap off the stairs before Sabine swung the bloodied sword at him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Prime, though. Off Sigrid, the Reaper he’d created who had eaten the old wolf’s soul, as hungry as a vampyr—

  “Ithan!” Perry shouted, and he snapped to attention as Sabine launched for him again, sword arcing.

  He leapt back, narrowly missing being gutted.

  “This sword,” Sabine panted, brandishing it, “is mine. The title is mine.”

  Ithan shifted, so fast even Sabine blinked.

  Make your brother proud.

  Sabine swung the sword as Ithan charged, a powerful blow that would cleave even his wolf’s skull in two.

  Ithan leapt straight at the blade. His jaws closed around it.

  Sabine’s eyes flared with shock as Ithan bit down, tasting metal.

  And shattered the Fendyr sword between his teeth.

  74

  Most of the crowd had fled as soon as Sigrid had started feeding on the Prime’s soul. But Perry and Amelie, Gideon with them, remained near the trees, watching Sabine and Ithan.

  Sabine stared down at the seven shards the Fendyr sword had broken into, then lifted her furious gaze to Ithan.

  Ithan shifted back into his humanoid body with a near-instant flash. “It’s just a piece of steel,” he said, panting, the metallic tang of the blade lingering in his mouth. “All those years you obsessed over it, resented Danika for having it … It’s just a piece of metal.”

  Sabine’s claws glinted. Her lips curled back from her fangs as she snarled.

  But behind her, Sigrid was closing in on the Astronomer, who had fallen to the ground and was now crawling backward, hands up. The male pleaded, “Did I not treat you well, deliver you from the Under-King’s grasp—”

  The Astronomer didn’t get the chance to plead his case. Sigrid, either from spite or lost to her hunger, left the old man no time to scream as she leapt upon him and fitted her mouth against his.

  Even Sabine paused to watch as Sigrid plunged her clawed hand into his chest, ripping out his still-beating heart in the same moment that she inhaled deeply, and that glimmering light—the secondlight—of his soul rose up through his body, into their fused mouths—

  Not Ithan’s problem. Not right now. He whipped his head back to Sabine, and let out a long, deep snarl of his own.

  Sabine’s nose crinkled. “You are no Alpha, pup,” she growled, and lunged.

  Ithan charged. A straight sprint into death’s awaiting claws.

  Sabine leapt for him, and Ithan ducked low, sliding, grabbing the longest of the sword’s shards and lifting it high—

  Blood rained down, and Sabine screamed as she hit the grass with a thud. Ithan sprang to his feet and whirled. Sabine crouched on the ground, a hand pressed to her gut. As if it’d keep the organs now spilling on the grass from tumbling out.

  He had a dim awareness of Sigrid, behind him, swallowing down the Astronomer’s dying soul and dropping his limp corpse to the stones of the stairs.

  But Ithan slowly approached Sabine, and there was no one else in the world, no task but this. Sabine lifted raging, pain-filled eyes to him.

  “Everything I have done,” Sabine panted up at him, “has been for the wolves.”

  “It’s been for yourself,” Ithan spat, stopping before her.

  She sneered, revealing blood-coated teeth. “You will lead them to ruin.”

  “We’ll see” was all Ithan said before shifting once more into his wolf’s body with that preternatural speed.

  Sabine looked his wolf in the eyes—and beheld her death there. She opened her mouth to speak, but Ithan didn’t give her the chance. Enough of her vitriol had poisoned the world.

  A leap, a crunch of his impossibly strong jaws, and it was done.

  With that extra strength he’d gained, he’d broken through the steel of the sword. Breaking through flesh and bone was nothing by comparison.

  But once her blood hit his tongue, red washed over his vision, blazing, burning. He was rage and snarls and fangs. He was blood and entrails and primal fury—

  “Ithan.”

  Perry’s quavering voice shook him from the daze. From what he’d done to Sabine’s body. Her blood coated his mouth, her flesh was stuck between his teeth—

  “They’re watching,” Perry breathed, stepping up to him.

  Still in his wolf form, Ithan started to turn toward the witnesses of his savagery, but Perry said, “Don’t look,” and dropped to her knees before him. Tilted back her head and exposed her neck. “I yield.” She added a heartbeat later, “I yield to the Prime.”

  The words struck a chord in him, one of despair and suffocation. But he couldn’t stop it—the instinct to reach forward and lightly clamp his teeth around Perry’s slender throat. To take that cinnamon-and-strawberry taste into his mouth.

  To accept her submission to him. Her recognition.

  Footsteps thudded nearby. Then Amelie stood there, shock paling her face—

  But she, too, dropped to her knees. Exposed her neck.

  It was either submit to him, or die. As a potential rival, he’d have had no choice but to kill her. A glance behind him revealed the corpse of the Astronomer sprawled across the stairs, leaking blood that trickled down the steps. But Sigrid had vanished. As if she knew he would be coming for her.

  Something relaxed in him as he gently closed his jaws around Amelie’s throat, too, accepting her surrender. A bitterer, staler taste than Perry’s sweetness. But he accepted it all the same.

  “Hail Ithan,” Amelie said, loud enough for all to hear, “Prime of the Valbaran Wolves.”

  In answer, a chorus of howls went up from around the Den. Then the city. Then the wilderness beyond the city walls. As if all of Midgard hailed him.

  When it ceased, Ithan tipped his wolf’s head to the sky and loosed a howl of his own. Triumph and pain and mourning.

  Make your brother proud.

  And as his howl finished echoing, he could have sworn he heard a male wolf’s cry float up from the Bone Quarter itself.

  75

  Ruhn didn’t recognize his city.

  Imperial battleships filled the Istros. Dreadwolves prowled the streets. The 33rd had been joined by the Asterian Guard.

  And the Meadows still smoldered in the north, lines of smoke rising to the jarringly blue sky.

  But it was the quiet that unnerved him the most as he and Lidia crept through the sewers, making their way toward the Comitium. Flynn and Dec had peeled off a few blocks back to go scope out the Aux headquarters for any whisper of where Isaiah and Naomi might be. If they could intercept Isaiah and Naomi at the Comitium, they’d save themselves hours of searching.

  Then came the hard part: finding a secure place to meet with them, long enough to explain everything. But for right now, his focus was on finding the two members of Celestina’s triarii. And trying not to get caught in the process.

  “This should open up into a tunnel that will lead right under the Comitium,” Ruhn told Lidia, keeping his voice low. The sewers appeared empty, but in Crescent City there was always someone watching. Listening.

  “Once we’re in the building,” she said, “I can get us to their barracks.”

  “You’re sure you know where the cameras—”

  She gave him a look. “It was my job when Ephraim visited to know where they were. Both as the Hind and as Agent Daybright. I could navigate this place blindfolded.”

  Ruhn blew out a breath. “All right. But when we get to the barracks—”

  “Then those shadows of yours come into play, and we hide until Isaiah and Naomi appear. Unless they’re already there and we can get them alone.”

  “Right. Got it.” He rolled his neck.

  She eyed him. “You seem … nervous.”

  He snorted. “It’s my first mission with my girlfriend. I want to impress her.”

  Her lips quirked up, and Ruhn led the way down another tunnel. “Am I your girlfriend, then?” she asked.

  “Is that … okay with you?”

  She gave him a true smile. It made her seem younger, lighter—the person she might have been if Urd hadn’t taken her down her particular fucked-up life path. It knocked the breath from him. “Yeah, Ruhn. It’s okay with me.”

  He smiled back, remembering how she’d chastised him when they’d first met for saying “Yeah,” for being so casual.

  Ahead, Ruhn saw that they were approaching a dented metal door marked Do Not Enter. “Now, that’s practically an invitation,” he said, earning a laugh from Lidia as he kicked in the door.

  * * *

  The sight of the imperial battleships in the Istros robbed Tharion of any joy at the river’s familiar, beckoning scent. So did the presence of the Omega-boats docked with them. And right by the Black Dock … the SPQM Faustus. The very Omega-boat they’d barely outrun that day on Ydra.

  He hadn’t dared venture into the northernmost part of the city to see the damage to Asphodel Meadows. They weren’t here for that, and he knew he’d see nothing that would make him feel any better. The city was eerily quiet. As if in mourning.

  Face and hair hidden under a sunball cap, Tharion glowered at the armada for long enough as he stood on the quay that Sathia warned, “You’ll draw attention to us with all that glaring.”

  “I should slip into the water and blast holes in all their hulls,” Tharion snarled.

  “Focus,” she said. “You do that, and we won’t accomplish what we came here to do.” She frowned at the ships. “Which is clearly still necessary.”

  “They’re holding the city hostage.”

  “All the more reason to plead with the River Queen to take people in.”

  Tharion found only cool determination on Sathia’s heart-shaped face. “You’re right,” he said. He let out a low whistle, and waited.

  An otter in a bright yellow vest leapt onto the quay, dripping everywhere. It rose onto its hind legs in front of Tharion, whiskers twitching, spraying droplets of water.

  Sathia grinned.

  “Stop it,” Tharion muttered. “It only encourages them to be cuter.”

  She bit her lip, and though it was thoroughly distracting, Tharion got his act together enough to say to the otter, “Tell the River Queen that Tharion Ketos wants a meeting.”

  The whiskers twitched again.

  Sathia added, “Please.”

  Tharion avoided the urge to roll his eyes, but also added, “Please.” He fished out a gold coin. “And make it speedy, friend.”

  The otter took the coin in his little black fingers and turned it over, eyes brightening at the outrageous sum. With a flick of his long tail, he leapt back into the clear turquoise water with barely a ripple and was gone.

  Tharion watched him gracefully swim out into the depths, then vanish over the drop into the dark, to the Blue Court Beneath. Only tiny, glimmering lights showed any signs of life there.

  “What now?” Sathia asked, again eyeing the warships docked in the river. If just one of the soldiers on them recognized Tharion …

  He tugged his sunball hat over his hair. “Now we lurk in the shadows and wait.”

  * * *

  “This doesn’t seem safe,” Ember said for the fifth time as Bryce stood before the Northern Rift’s archway. Hunt waited ten paces behind her, freezing his feathers off. “This seems like the opposite of safe. You’re opening the Northern Rift to Hel. And we’re supposed to believe these demons—the princes, for Urd’s sake—are good?”

  “I’m not sure they’re good,” Bryce said. “But they’re on our side. Just trust me, Mom.”

  “Trust her, Ember,” Randall said, but from the tightness in his voice, Hunt knew the man wasn’t too happy, either.

  “When you’re ready, Athalar,” Bryce called to him.

  “I thought you didn’t need me to fuel you up anymore,” Hunt said. “Especially with all that extra power you’ve got now.”

  “I don’t want to try it on my own for this,” Bryce said. “Seems like a high-stakes situation to test out my new abilities.”

  “I bet you could do it,” Hunt called over the wind, “but all right. On three.” Bryce stilled, squaring her shoulders.

  Hunt rallied his lightning. Prayed to every god, even if they’d mostly fucked him over until this point. The power of his lightning was familiar, yet suddenly foreign. Helfire, Apollion had called it.

  Answers—at long last, answers about why he was what he was, about why he and no one else had the lightning. Even the thunderbirds, made by Hel, had been hunted to extinction by the Asteri. With Sofie’s death, they were truly gone.

  Though the Harpy’s resurrection—another thing that was his fucking fault—suggested that the Asteri now had other methods of raising the dead.

  Only if they could get their hands on more of his lightning. He’d sooner die.

  “One …,” Hunt breathed, and lifted a hand wreathed in lightning.

  Lord of Lightning, the Oracle had called him.

  “Two …”

  Had the Oracle seen what he was, where his power came from, that day?

  You remind me of that which was lost long ago. The thunderbirds, hunted to extinction.

  Was that the wind ruffling her parka, or was Bryce shaking as she waited for the blow? Hunt didn’t give himself a moment to reconsider. To halt.

  “Three.”

  He launched a spear of lightning at his mate.

  76

  As it had that day at the Asteri’s palace, when she had leapt from her own world to another, Hunt’s lightning lanced through Bryce’s back, through the Horn, into the star on her chest—and out into the Gate.