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Although why he was surprised, he had no idea. From the moment he’d brought her home, she’d wielded her tongue just as brutally as any blade time and time again; why wouldn’t she wield her body the same way?

She could’ve at least had the decency to be covered in welts or pus-filled sores—but no, of course her body was lovely. Better than lovely. Tall and lean and strong. Not a wiry, weak thing like most of the women down here, but with muscles that looked like she’d been carved from the war Gods themselves. Curves in all the right places. And muscular thighs that would be perfect wrapped around—

Ikarus bit into the back of his hand, groaning again. That fucking human. She was impossible. Maddening beyond compare.

Usually when he was this angry, he’d fly somewhere far, far away with Serone—an option that’d been conveniently ripped away when Ramapheal had ordered she patrol the Southern coastline to hunt and destroy any aquatic familiars that helped keep the humans fed. She hadn’t checked in yet so he had no idea how it was going.

She must’ve been okay, though. He’d have felt it if she weren’t.

Sinking deeper into the plush leather sofa in the hopes that it might swallow him whole, he looked around the room for a distraction. It was a lot larger than his, and much nicer, which wasn’t hard considering he’d had Golla all but file down the walls to ensure that there was absolutely nothing the human could use to impale or beat him with.

He calmed a little when his eyes caught on a familiar oil painting of a luscious flower bank hanging above the hearth, only for that anger to come crashing right back when a little voice in his head commented that the rolling waves of the Emerald Sea below those flowers were the same shade as the human’s eyes.

Ikarus’s head thunked back against the sofa’s headrest. Gods alive—could he have no fucking peace from her?!

He doubted it—and certainly not after the stunt she’d pulled tonight.

Important to Ramapheal or not, Morana was not going to let Mortis’s death go without at least cracking a few bones. Ikarus had to ensure they weren’t the human’s.

The glass vase on the wooden table beside him began to rattle.

Ikarus ground his teeth together, pulling the reins of his power back like a bear retreating into its burrow. It’d been a long time since the threads of his power had lashed out like this, slipping through his fingers like inky water. He tried to quell the burst of power in his chest, desperate to escape and break, break, break, but there were so many thoughts whirling around his head he thought it might explode.

He reached for the ash-stick tin hidden in his armor, needing something to calm his nerves, and almost smashed it against the wall when he flipped the lid open and realized it was empty. Marvelous. Just what he needed right now.

Breathe deep, he reminded himself.

He followed the words, breathing in, in, in, red vapor whirling up his nose. He let it fill his lungs. Let it settle him. Let it wipe away every horrible thought screaming through his head right now like a wave washing over a beach.

Breathe deep.

Breathe deep.

Breathe. Deep.

Only when the room had stilled, and the angry mob inside his head had settled into a slow-moving crowd quiet enough for him to hear himself think, did he stop.

He wanted nothing more than to go back to their room and wash this disaster of a day away, but after what’d just happened …

The air between him and the human was charged on a good day, a starving ember desperate for something to devour. It was tempting, he’d admit, to go back next door, throw a log on that fire, and see what would happen, what she’d do …

Then he remembered where they were. Then he remembered his father, covered in blood, the cracking of his chest. His mother. The Bane. All those lives it’d already taken, and those it was hungry to take if they remained trapped here.

It was that thought that made him close his eyes. Made him sink into his powers, slipping down, down, down through the cracks and scratches and walls in his head, and when he opened his eyes again, he was standing at the end of a narrow bricked hallway, his body still lounging on that sofa in Illieck.

He walked through the hallway, past the rows upon rows of small boarded-up windows, the torches in the walls sparking to life as he neared, and into a freshly bricked corridor.

It was all here, just like the human had said. Years of her life all neatly lined up beside one another that he could peruse and dissect as he wished. He almost snorted at the thought. As though he had nothing better to do.

The final brick in the newest window had just slipped into place when he stepped through.

The other version of himself, the one that’d stood here a mere hour ago when he’d collected this memory, paid him no attention, nor did the golden-haired human by his side, or the child now creeping across the checkpoint.

Ikarus couldn’t take his eyes off her face. He’d passed it off as a trick of the torchlight last time, but standing here now … There was no denying her horror stricken expression as she watched her mother slice the Dar’rak’s leg off, or how she’d flinched when her younger version had finally burned a hole through his chest.

He bent down to stare into her face, watching a tear glisten down her cheek like a star falling from the heavens.

She hadn’t wanted to kill this Dar’rak. Even now, over a decade later, she still harbored so much guilt that she hadn’t been able to even watch her doppelgänger pull the trigger until her enemy had been on top of her, until his nails had been digging into her thighs and his teeth were moments away from ripping her throat right out.