AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I did mean it.”
His friend swallowed. “I didn’t realize things between you guys had become so … intense.”
“She did all this to save me anyway,” he said, ignoring Flynn’s unspoken request to fill him in.
The guilt of it would eat him alive. She’d done horrible things as the Hind, both before and after becoming Daybright, things he couldn’t forget, yet … his head was spinning with it. The rage and guilt and that other thing.
Flynn squeezed his shoulder. “Go sleep, Ruhn. I’ve got your girl.”
She wasn’t his girl. She wasn’t anything to him.
Yet he still ignored Flynn. Didn’t move from the chair, though he closed his eyes. Focused on his breathing until sleep loomed.
“Stubborn asshole,” Flynn muttered, but threw a blanket over Ruhn anyway.
Day, Ruhn said into the void between them, as he had nearly every hour now. Day—can you hear me?
No answer.
Lidia.
He’d never addressed her by her name before. Even in here.
He tried again, sending it out into the void like a plea. Lidia.
But the darkness only howled in answer.
* * *
“So,” Hunt said to Tharion as they sat in the empty mess hall of the Depth Charger, “the Viper Queen, huh?”
Tharion picked at his poached fish and fine strands of seaweed salad. “Let’s not get into it, Athalar.” They’d missed lunch, but had been able to scrounge up plates of leftovers from the cooks.
“Fair enough.” Hunt flexed his wings, now fully back to their usual strength, thanks to that firstlight Lidia had manipulated her way into giving him. “Thanks for coming to pick us up.”
Tharion lifted his stare—bleak, empty.
Hunt knew the feeling. Was trying not to feel that way every second of every minute. Was drowning under it, now that he and his friends were here, safe, without the physical torture to distract him.
“Holstrom said we’re a pack,” Tharion said. “I don’t necessarily appreciate the canine comparison, but I like the sentiment. As soon as Lidia told us you guys were days away from being executed … we had to do what was necessary.” Sort of. It hadn’t been as easy as that, of course, but once he’d been out of the Meat Market, he’d been all in.
Hunt had gotten the rundown yesterday of all that had happened. Or at least some of it. Considering that Lidia remained unconscious, he still had no idea what she’d done on her end to organize everything.
It was all so unlikely, so impossible.
He’d awoken last night, drenched in sweat, convinced he was back in those dungeons. It had taken him switching the lights on to accept the reality of his surroundings. Those initial seconds in the pitch black, when he couldn’t tell where he was, were unbearable.
He wished Bryce were with him. Not just to sleep beside him, and to remind him that he’d made it out, but … he needed his best friend.
Bryce was gone, though. And that fact, too, woke him from slumber. Dreams of her tumbling through space, alone and lost forever.
Tharion seemed to sense the shift in his thoughts, because he asked quietly, “How you holding up, Athalar?”
“Wings are back to normal,” Hunt said, folding them tightly behind him. “Emotionally …?” He shrugged. He’d sat in the shower for an hour last night, the water near-scalding as it rinsed away the filth and blood of the dungeon. As he had in those days before Bryce, he’d let the water scourge the dirt and the darkness from him. But there was one marking that couldn’t be washed away.
Tharion’s eyes now drifted to Hunt’s brow. “They’re monsters to do that to you again.” Hot anger sharpened the mer’s face.
“They’re monsters with or without putting the halo back on me.” Hunt lifted his wrist, exposing the brand. The C that had been stamped there, negating it, was gone. “You think a slave can still be a prince?”
