He should have seen it coming—part of him had seen it coming a few weeks ago, when he’d tried to convince Bryce not to go down this road. He should have fought harder. Should have told her this outcome was inevitable, especially if he was involved.

  He’d known not to trust Celestina with her whole new Governor, new rules bullshit. He’d let her win him over, and the Archangel had fucking betrayed them. All that talk about being a friend of Shahar’s—he’d eaten it up. Let the memory of his long-dead lover cloud his instincts, as Celestina had surely gambled it would.

  What was this but another Fallen rebellion? On a smaller scale, yes, but the stakes had been so much higher this time. Then, he’d lost an army, lost his lover—had known she was dying as time had stretched and slowed around him. Had known she was dead when time had resumed its normal speed once more, and the whole world had changed.

  Yet the ties that now bound him to others—not only Bryce, but to the two males in this dungeon with him—had become unbearable. Their pain was his pain. Perhaps worse than what he endured before.

  Shahar had been given the easy end. To die at Sandriel’s hand, to die on the battlefield, swift and final … It had been easier.

  A few feet away, Baxian groaned softly.

  Hunt’s arms had gone numb, shoulders popping out of their sockets from trying to support the weight of their bodies. He mustered his energy, his focus, enough to say to Baxian, “How … how you doing?”

  Baxian let out a wet cough. “Great.”

  Next to Hunt, Ruhn grunted. It might have been a laugh. Their only options were screaming and sobbing, or laughing at this giant fucking disaster.

  Indeed, Ruhn said, “Wanna … hear a … joke?” The prince didn’t wait for a reply before he continued, “Two angels … and a Fae Prince … walk into … a dungeon …”

  Ruhn didn’t finish, and didn’t need to. A broken, rasping laugh came out of Hunt. Then Baxian. Then Ruhn.

  Though every heave shrieked through his arms, his back, his broken body, Hunt couldn’t stop laughing. The sound bordered on hysteria. Soon tears were leaking down his cheeks, and he knew from the scent that the others were laughing and crying as well, like it was the funniest fucking thing in the world.

  The door to the chamber banged open, echoing off the stones like a thunderclap.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Pollux barked, stalking down the stairs, wings blazing in the dimness.

  Hunt laughed louder. Footsteps trailed behind the Hammer—a dark-haired, brown-skinned male followed him in: the Hawk. The final member of Sandriel’s triarii. “What the Hel is wrong with them?” he sneered at Pollux.

  “They’re stupid shits, that’s what,” Pollux said, strutting to the rack of torture devices and grabbing an iron poker. He thrust it into the embers of the fire, the light gilding his white wings into a mockery of a heavenly aura.

  The Hawk prowled closer, peering at the three of them with a close scrutiny that echoed his namesake. Like Baxian, the Hawk hailed from two peoples: angels, who had granted him his white wings, and hawk shifters, who’d granted him his ability to transform into a bird of prey.

  Those were about all the similarities between the two males. For starters, Baxian had a soul. The Hawk …

  The Hawk’s gaze lingered on Hunt. Nothing of life, of joy, lay in those eyes.

  “Athalar.”

  Hunt nodded to the male in greeting. “Asshole.”

  Ruhn snickered. The Hawk pivoted to the rack, where he pulled out a long, curving knife. The kind that was designed to yank out organs on the withdraw. Hunt remembered that one—from last time.

  Ruhn laughed again, as if almost drunk. “Creative.”

  “We’ll see how you laugh in a moment, princeling,” the Hawk said, earning a grin from Pollux as the Hammer waited for the poker to heat. “I heard your cousin Cormac pleaded for mercy before the end.”

  “Fuck you,” Ruhn snarled.

  The hawk shifter weighed the knife in his hands. “His father has disowned him. Or whatever’s left of his body.” A wink at Ruhn. “Your father has done the same.”

  Hunt didn’t miss the shock that rippled over Ruhn’s face. At his father’s betrayal? Or at his cousin’s demise? Did such things even matter down here?

  Baxian rasped to the Hawk, “You’re a fucking liar. Always were … always will be.”

  The Hawk smiled up at Baxian. “How about we start with your tongue today, traitor?”

  To Baxian’s credit, he stuck out his tongue toward the Hawk in invitation.

  Hunt smirked. Yeah—they were all in this together. To the bitter end.

  The Hawk cut his stare toward Hunt. “You’ll be next, Athalar.”

  “Come and get it,” Hunt gasped. Ruhn extended his tongue as well.

  The Hawk simmered with rage at their defiance, white wings glowing with unearthly power. But slowly, a smile lit his face—horrific in its calculation, its gradual delight as Pollux turned, the poker white-hot and rippling with heat.

  “Who’s first?” the Hammer crooned. The angel stood poised, silhouetted against the blazing fire behind him.

  Hunt opened his mouth, his last bit of bravado before the shitshow began, but in the shadows behind Pollux, beyond the fireplace, something dark moved. Something darker than shadow.

  Not Ruhn’s shadows. The prince didn’t seem to be able to access those when constrained by the gorsian shackles. Only the prince’s mind-speaking abilities remained.

  This shadow was different—darker, older. Watching them.

  Watching Hunt.

  Hallucinations: Bad, because it meant he had some infection that even his immortal body couldn’t fight off. Good, because it meant he might quietly slip away into death’s embrace. Bad, because it meant the Asteri might turn their attention fully to Bryce. Good, because the pain would be gone. Bad, because he still held out some stupid, fool’s hope deep in his heart of seeing her again. Good, because Bryce wouldn’t come looking for him if he was dead.

  Across the room, the thing in the shadows moved. Just slightly. Like it had crooked a finger at him.

  Death. That was the thing in the shadows.

  And now it beckoned.

  * * *

  Night.

  Borne on a raft of oblivion, Ruhn drifted across a sea of pain.

  The last thing he remembered was the sound and sight of his small intestine splattering on the ground, pain as sharp as—well, as sharp as the curved knife the Hawk had plunged into his gut.

  He wondered when the shifter would disembowel them with his talons in his hawk form, as he was fond of doing. Ruhn could imagine it easily: the Hawk perching on his torso and clawing out his organs, pecking at them with that razor-sharp beak. He’d heal, and then the Hawk would begin again. Over and over—

  Ruhn had been a fool to think nothing that happened down here could be worse than the years of torture at his father’s hands. The burns, the gorsian shackles his father had put him in to keep him from fighting back, keep him from healing—then, at least, he’d developed his own ways of surviving, of recovering. But now there was only pain, then oblivion, then pain again.

  Had he died? Or been a whisper away from death, as Vanir could be if the blow wasn’t truly fatal? His Fae body would regenerate the organs, even slowed by the gorsian shackles.

  Night.

  The female voice echoed across the starlit sea. Like a lighthouse shining in the distance.

  Night.

  Here, there was no escape from her voice. If he roused himself, the pain would wash over the raft and he’d drown in it. So he had no choice but to listen, to drift toward that beacon.

  Gods, what did he do to you?

  Anger and grief filled the question as it came from all around him, from inside him.

  Ruhn managed to say, Nothing you haven’t done a thousand times yourself.

  Then she stood there with him, on his raft. Lidia. Fire streamed off her body, but he could see her perfect face. The most beautiful female he’d ever seen. A flawless mask over a rotted heart.

  His enemy. His lover. The soul he’d thought was—

  She knelt and extended a hand toward him. I’m so sorry.

  Ruhn shifted beyond her reach. As much movement as he could manage, even here. Something like agony flashed in her eyes, but she didn’t try to touch him again.

  He must have been killed today. Or come close to it, if she was here. If he had no defenses left and she’d broken through that mental wall for the first time since he’d learned who she was.

  What had they done to Cormac to render him irrevocably dead?

  He couldn’t stop the memory from flooding him, of sitting beside Cormac in that bar before they went to the Eternal City, of that one moment he thought he’d glimpsed the person his cousin might have been. The friend Cormac might have become, if he hadn’t been systematically stripped of kindness by King Morven.

  It shouldn’t have been a shock to Ruhn, that the two kings had disowned their sons. Though one king had fire in his veins and the other shadows, Einar and Morven were more alike than anyone realized.

  Ruhn had always held some scrap of hope that his father saw the Asteri for what they truly were, and that if it ever came down to it, his father would make the right choice. That the orrery in his study, the years spent looking for patterns in light and space … that it had meant something larger. That it wasn’t simply the idle studying of a bored royal who needed to feel more important in the grand scheme of things than he actually was.

  That hope was dead. His father was a spineless fucking coward.

  Ruhn, Lidia said, and he hated the sound of his name on her lips. He hated her. He turned on his side, putting his back to her.

  I understand why you’re angry, why you must hate me, she began hoarsely. Ruhn, the … the things I’ve done … I need you to understand why I did them. Why I’ll keep doing them.

  Save your sob story for someone who gives a shit.

  Ruhn, please.

  The raft groaned, and he knew she was reaching for him again. But he couldn’t bear that touch, the pleading in her voice, the emotion that no one else in the world but him had ever heard from the Hind.

  So Ruhn said, Fuck your excuses. And rolled off that mental raft to let the sea of pain drown him.

  5

  Ithan’s heart stalled as Sabine smiled savagely, advancing toward the warehouse’s side door. The alley behind her was empty—no witnesses. Exactly what Ithan and all those who served under Sabine had been trained to ensure.

  Sigrid backed up a step, right into Declan. The sprites clung to her neck, yellow flames trembling.

  “I knew my brother let me find him and your sister too easily,” Sabine snarled, eyes fixed wholly on Sigrid, as if the two Fae warriors with guns pointed at her head were nothing. “I knew he lied about how many pups he had.”

  Sigrid halted her retreat. Ithan didn’t dare take his eyes off Sabine to read her face.

  “All that effort—for you?” Sabine surveyed her curving claws. “I promise to make this quick, at least. It’s more than I can say for your sister. Poor pup.”

  “Leave her alone,” Ithan snarled, balancing on the balls of his feet, readying to leap for Sabine. To make this final, disastrous stand.

  Sabine laughed humorlessly, acknowledging his existence at last. “Some guard, Holstrom.”

  “You have two fucking seconds, Sabine, to get lost,” Declan said.

  Sabine’s smile crinkled her nose—sheer lupine fury. “You’ll need more than bullets to down me, Faeling.” Ithan had told Flynn that Sabine wasn’t dumb enough to start shit on the Viper Queen’s turf, but at the sight of the Prime Apparent’s hateful expression, he wondered if her rage and fear had overridden any scrap of common sense.

  He unsheathed his claws. “How about these?” He snarled again. “You’re dead fucking meat when we tell the authorities about this.”

  Sabine’s smile became icy cold. “Who will you tell? Celestina won’t care. And the Autumn King wants a clean slate for the Valbaran Fae. He’ll have nothing to do with this.”

  A low, thunderous growl rattled from behind Ithan.

  The hair on his arms rose. It was a growl of pure challenge. One he’d heard from Danika. From Connor. The challenge of a wolf who wouldn’t back down.

  Sabine glanced to Sigrid in surprise.

  “I went into the tank for my sister,” Sigrid rasped, agony and rage contorting her face. “To keep her fed. To keep her safe. And you killed her.” Her voice rose, full of command that had the wolf in him sitting up, readying to strike at her signal. “I’ll rip out your throat, you soulless thief. I’m going to piss on your rotting corpse—”

  Sabine leapt.

  Declan fired his gun at the same time Flynn unleashed a second, blasting shot.

  Sigrid dropped to her knees, claws scratching at her face as she shielded her ears against the noise. Flynn advanced, gun at the ready, firing again at the downed wolf leaking blood onto the grimy alley pavement.

  Dec’s shot had been for Sabine’s knee—to incapacitate her. But Flynn had blasted Sabine’s face clean off.

  “Hurry,” Flynn said, grabbing Sigrid’s arm. The trembling sprites leapt onto his shoulders. “We have to get to the river—we’ll grab one of the boats.”

  Yet Ithan could only stare at Sabine’s body, the blood and gore splattered around the alley. She would no doubt heal from this wound, but not soon enough to stop them from leaving.

  Every muscle in his body locked up. As if screaming, Help her! Protect and save your Alpha! Even if something in his gut whispered, Rip her to pieces.

  The others began running for the alley, but Ithan didn’t move.

  “Stop,” he said. They didn’t hear him. “Stop!” His shout echoed over stone and corpse and blood—and they halted within steps of the alley exit.

  “What?” Marc said, his cat’s eyes gleaming in the dimness.

  “The other wolves … they went quiet.” The howls that had been closing in behind them had stopped entirely.

  “Glad someone finally noticed,” drawled a female voice from the end of the alley.

  The Viper Queen lounged against a filthy wall, cigarette smoldering between her fingers, her white jumpsuit glowing like the moon in the flickering firstlight from the lampposts. Her eyes dropped to Sabine’s body. Her purple-painted lips curved upward as her gaze lifted to Ithan’s.

  “Bad dog,” she purred.

  * * *

  “This is a most unorthodox request, Lidia.”

  Lidia kept her chin high, hands tucked behind her back as she walked with clipped precision along the crystal hallway. The perfect imperial soldier. “Yes, but I believe Irithys might be … motivating for Athalar.”

  Rigelus kept pace beside her, graceful despite his long, gangly legs. The teenage Fae body masked the immortal monster beneath.

  As they began to descend a winding staircase, lit only by firstlights guttering in tiny alcoves, Rigelus sniffed, “She is mostly cooperative, but she might balk at the order.”

  Now a step behind him, Lidia fixed her gaze on his scrawny neck. It would be so easy, were he any other being, to wrap her hands around it and twist. She could almost feel the echo of his crunching bones reverberating against her palms.

  “Irithys will do what she’s told,” Lidia said as they descended into the gloom.

  Rigelus said nothing more as they wound around and around, into the earth beneath the Eternal Palace. Even deeper than the dungeons where Ruhn and the others were kept. Most believed this place little more than myth.

  Rigelus at last halted before a metal door. Lead—six inches thick.

  Lidia had been here only once over her time with the Asteri. Accompanied by Rigelus then as well, along with her father.

  A private tour of the palace, given by the Bright Hand himself to one of his most loyal subjects—and one of his wealthiest. And Lidia, young and still brimming with hate and disdain for the world, had been all too willing to join them.

  She became that person again as Rigelus laid a hand on the door. The lead glowed, and then the door swung open.

  The oppressive heat and humidity of this place hadn’t changed since that first visit. As Lidia stepped inside after Rigelus, it once again pushed with damp fingers on her face, her neck.

  The hall stretched ahead, the one thousand sunken tubs in the stone floor shining with pale light that illuminated the bodies floating within. Masks and tubes and machines hummed and hissed; salt crusted the stones between the tanks, some sections piled thick with it. And before the machines, already bowing at the waist to Rigelus …

  A withered humanoid form, veiled and dressed in gray robes, the material gauzy enough to reveal the bony body beneath, stood at the massive desk at the entrance of the room. The Mistress of the Mystics. If she had a name, Lidia had never heard it uttered.

  Above her veiled head, a hologram of images spun, stars and planets whizzing by. Every constellation and galaxy the mystics now searched for Bryce Quinlan. How many corners of the universe remained?

  That wasn’t Lidia’s concern—not today. Not as Rigelus said, “I have need of Irithys.”

  The mistress lifted her head, but her body remained stooped with age, so thin the knobs of her spine jutted from beneath her gauzy robe. “The queen has been sullen, Your Brilliance. I fear she will not be amenable to your requests.”

  Rigelus only gestured to the hall, bored. “We shall try, nonetheless.”

  The mistress bowed again and hobbled past the sunken tubs and machinery, the trail of her robes white with salt.

  Rigelus strode past the mystics without so much as a downward glance. They were mere cogs in a machine to help facilitate his needs. But Lidia couldn’t help assessing the watery faces as she passed. All slumbering, whether they wanted to or not.

  Where had they come from, the dreamers locked down here? What Hel had they or their families endured to make it worth it? And what skills did they possess to warrant this alleged honor of honors, to serve the Asteri themselves?