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Hunter shook his head and his grip tightened.
“Huntsman.”
“I made it clear before,” he said, “that I wouldn’t put myself in another one-sided crush.”
“This is more than a crush.”
“Is it?” He feigned uncertainty.
“Careful,” Odin wrapped his other arm around his chest and held him closer, “You’re playing with fire.”
Pointedly, he slapped at some of the bubbles, splashing at the surface of the bath. “I think I’ll be all right. You still haven’t filled me in. What happened while I was out?”
For a moment, it looked like Odin wasn’t going to allow the change in conversation, but then he sighed and released Hunter’s face, leaning back against the wall. The water shifted around them as he resituated, bending his knees to block Hunter in at either side, arm slipping lower to settle around his waist.
“Isa is still on the run,” he began.
“And Meg?”
“We don’t know. Since we can’t find her, it’s safe to assume they’re together. Did she say anything to you that could be useful?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t really speak to me. I left with her because she claimed to have a safehouse nearby, so I assumed she’d been in hiding like I was before you found me. Considering how easily she gave me up, though, now I’m guessing she’s been with Frost if not all of this time, for most of it.”
“He must have gotten to her somehow.” Odin thought it over. “The Meg Thorn I recall would have done anything for her brother.”
“I need answers.” He’d thought he could just let it go and roll with the punches but he’d been fooling himself. At the time, there’d been so much going on it’d been hard for his brain to bother with Meg, too busy worrying about survival at the hands of Isa. But now that he was safe and more in control, it was eating away at him slowly but surely. “Even if it’s just finding out that she’s been under his thumb these past years.”
It would be horrible and he’d feel bad for her, but there’d be a reason, and Hunter desperately needed there to be one.
“We’ll get them,” Odin promised and Hunter hummed in agreement.
“I heard you burned him pretty good,” he said.
“He was distracted.”
“By me.”
“Let’s not discuss that.”
“Why?” He shrugged. “I’m fine.”
“But I’m not.” Odin dropped his chin on the curve of Hunter’s shoulder and hugged him close with both arms. “If there was a way to burn the memory from my mind, I would do so without a moment’s hesitation.”
“It’s okay, Snow. I’m here. With you. Don’t get sappy on me now. What happened to all that earlier talk? About wanting to fuck me in the mansion?”
“We can’t anymore,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no more mansion to do it in. I burned it to the ground.”
Hunter pulled away from him, turning in the tub so they were face to face. “You what?”
Odin didn’t seem too bent up about it, but Hunter knew him better than that. He rested against the back of the tub once more and watched him from beneath hooded eyes, clearly melancholy but not wanting to admit it.
“We had to strike while Isa was on the run,” he explained. “The remaining Frost Brumal stationed there fought hard, but they were no match once I arrived. It was either leave the place standing and worry about having to safeguard it, or destroy it and put the ghosts of the past to bed. I chose the latter.”
“Why?” They’d joked about wrecking it before, but Hunter hadn’t ever thought Odin was serious. The Faraway Mansion was the place he’d grown up, a place that had been in his family for generations.
