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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
NEREUS
Bringing Fiona to Borealis was a mistake.
I can tell as soon as we enter the corridors underneath the Consulate, filled with the bones of slaves. Her fists clench at her sides, her heartbeat getting faster and her hands shaking. I slide my arm around her elbow, but she stays stiff, her head thrown back.
“Remember that this is temporary,” I murmur. “We don’t need to make them any promises.”
“Xanthos didn’t seem to believe that,” she mutters.
“All we need to do here is establish a temporary stalemate until we can get control of Homeworld–then we can deal with whatever you choose to do when you’re in charge.”
“These people can’t wait,” she snaps. “They’re dying hereright now.”
“So areourpeople,” I snap back.
Her lips close in a thin line. I didn’t intend on getting short with her, but things are dire, and I can already feel them spinning out of control. When I brought her to Triton for the first time, I hoped she would behave herself…and she ended up disrespecting Cressida and thrusting us into a diplomatic disaster.
And she didn’t tell me how things went with Xanthos, but given the way Orion made her scream last night, I think things got violent. She always takes him to bed when she’s feeling feisty.
It makes my gut twist.
Stairs twist around at the base of a tower up ahead, and we climb them in single file with Ryker insisting on leading the way. It’s so narrow that his antlers scrape the icy walls with a horrible screech, and I resist the urge to cover my ears as I watch Fiona go up next, the glow light in her hand. The rest of us can see better in the dark, her blindness a human weakness.
If she provokes the Boreans here, I don’t know if we’ll be able to get her out. This is a mistake.
This is amistake.
My mind is practically screaming as I watch her transfer the light to her left hand, lowering her right to hold the hilt of her blade. She’s got violence on the mind—a new trait that I wasn’t expecting when I enlisted our guards to teach her self-defense. I feel like I can’t control her impulses, especially since Orion came into her life and Ryker went into this strange haze.
“Are you getting a bad feeling about this?” Aramis murmurs from behind me, their voice quiet.
“We’re surrounded by corpses—of course I have a bad feeling,” I reply.
“Guards waiting up ahead,” Orion says from the back. “Hush now.”
I lose sight of Fiona for a moment, and when I see her again we’ve emerged from the stairwell into a cavernous room. Icicles hang from the ceiling, the frost no less noticeable here than it was in the corridor. This doesn’t feel like a place where people are supposed to live, a far cry from the balmy throne room of Triton.
I’ve never been here, and I’m trained in courtly manners, but even I’m unnerved.
“Princess Fiona,” a voice says from the darkness. “We meet again.”
A figure hovers out of the darkness, long white robes brushing the floor. He squints in the light of the glow lamp, black eyes glittering like an insect’s, his lips brushed in silver. This must be Xanthos: Cressida’s contact with the Empire, and the man that Fiona met with on Vehyris.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Fiona says. “Decided to come back for more?”
I squeeze her elbow, but all she does is jerk her arm away.
“As your liaison with my associates, I presumed my presence would be necessary,” he says. “This way.”
He turns and hovers back into the darkness, flanked by two Skoll guards dressed in head to toe furs. They move like they’re entranced—and if I know anything about the Hyperboreans, it’s more than likely that they’ve been completely brainwashed. The icicles overhead hang down like fangs as we walk into the shadows, and I start to get the feeling we’re walking straight into the jaws of an enormous beast.
Run, my mind screams.Get out of here!
“I see you brought your honor guard,” Xanthos says, putting an ugly emphasis on the last two words. “A hormonal Skoll, the disgraced Mlok hunter, and a Merati masquerading as a warrior…”
“These are some of the finest warriors in the galaxy,” Fiona says, her voice cutting. “I would suggest you don’t insult them.”
