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“Probably, but Truett stopped her.” Nyssa looks at my best friend, then back at me. “I’m asking you not to kill her for his sake, not hers.”
I’m so stunned, you could knock me over with a feather. She’s requesting I show Sorcha mercy? My gaze moves to Truett, and I see the torture on his face. He loves his sister. He loves me. He’s loyal to me and my throne, and he knows there are no exceptions to my rules.
He’d never ask me to spare her life.
“Fuck,” I mutter, throwing Sorcha away from me. She flies across the room, the only thing stopping her trajectory a wall that shudders upon impact.
Sorcha falls to the ground but immediately gets to her feet, hissing at me in anger.
“Return to Calashte, Sorcha, and do not leave it. You are permanently banished to live the rest of your immortal life there and are not welcome in any other part of the Underworld.”
She glares hatefully and bends distance, blinking out of sight. Truett shoots me a wary look of gratitude and follows his sister.
I release a heavy sigh as Nyssa’s hands fall away from me. She’s pale and shaking, and I want to take her in my arms and comfort her.
But I don’t, because that’s not something the king of the Underworld should even care about. This, despite the fact I almost killed a Dark Fae brethren because she bruised my little human.
“Return to my suite,” I say to Nyssa. “Stay there until I join you.”
Nyssa nods, eyes downcast. She pivots to leave, but it’s Thalia who scurries past me to take Nyssa by the arm. “If you need anything while you’re here, you have Calix send word to me, and I’ll come.”
My chest squeezes that Thalia would offer such a kindness. She doesn’t know Nyssa and shouldn’t care about a degenerate soul who’s stuck in Hell for eternity. But she’s doing it because it’s more than obvious I’ve got a soft spot for this woman.
She’s offering her a bit of normalcy… one human woman to another.
“Thank you,” Nyssa says softly and pulls away, walking out the door.
I sigh, shoulders slumping slightly. This has been a shit show of a morning.
“Bastien,” Thalia says, turning toward her husband. “I want you and Heph to return to Vyronas.”
I blink in surprise at the request. Bastien erupts, and I expect no less. “No way I’m leaving you here alone.”
“She’s not alone,” I say with a smirk. “She has me.”
Bastien doesn’t even look my way as he knows I’m just poking fun. Thalia moves to him, puts a hand to his face, and says, “I’d like to talk to my father alone, and I won’t be long behind you. I promise.”
I avert my eyes the minute my son-in-law’s face softens. He knows Thalia wants to talk to me about Nyssa, and that implies I’m soft and not the hardcore asshole he wants to make me out to be all the time.
Heph moves to me and we clasp arms. “Sorry we didn’t get to share a pint,” he says. “Maybe next time.”
“You’re welcome here whenever,” I assure him. I grew fond of the old blood magic practitioner when I was in Vyronas.
Bastien offers me a chin lift, and I tear an opening in the veil between my receiving room and the throne room in Thalia’s own castle in the capital city of Clairmont. Bastien and Heph step through, and I close the seam.
Thalia moves back to the chair she’d been sitting in and picks up her wine. She gives the adjacent couch a pointed look, her silent order for me to sit my ass down and spill everything.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for me to say.” I do take a seat, ignoring my own wine.
“Well, obviously, you have feelings for her. And obviously, you wanted to talk to me about it or else you wouldn’t have brought her into this room to begin with.”
No sense arguing the truth. “Fuck, I wanted to rip off Sorcha’s head. And then that frail human who swears she has no heart or redeemable soul begs me to spare her. She’s confounding, to say the least.”
Thalia’s laugh is musical, and I roll my eyes that my daughter finds humor in the king of the Underworld being confused by a dead human.
“Start from the beginning,” she says as she settles into her chair, as if she knows this is going to be a good story.
“She caught my interest when she called me a big old, winged bat just as I was about to throw her into the river,” I say.
