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“Fuck you,” Ruhn snarled.
The hawk shifter weighed the knife in his hands. “His father has disowned him. Or whatever’s left of his body.” A wink at Ruhn. “Your father has done the same.”
Hunt didn’t miss the shock that rippled over Ruhn’s face. At his father’s betrayal? Or at his cousin’s demise? Did such things even matter down here?
Baxian rasped to the Hawk, “You’re a fucking liar. Always were … always will be.”
The Hawk smiled up at Baxian. “How about we start with your tongue today, traitor?”
To Baxian’s credit, he stuck out his tongue toward the Hawk in invitation.
Hunt smirked. Yeah—they were all in this together. To the bitter end.
The Hawk cut his stare toward Hunt. “You’ll be next, Athalar.”
“Come and get it,” Hunt gasped. Ruhn extended his tongue as well.
The Hawk simmered with rage at their defiance, white wings glowing with unearthly power. But slowly, a smile lit his face—horrific in its calculation, its gradual delight as Pollux turned, the poker white-hot and rippling with heat.
“Who’s first?” the Hammer crooned. The angel stood poised, silhouetted against the blazing fire behind him.
Hunt opened his mouth, his last bit of bravado before the shitshow began, but in the shadows behind Pollux, beyond the fireplace, something dark moved. Something darker than shadow.
Not Ruhn’s shadows. The prince didn’t seem to be able to access those when constrained by the gorsian shackles. Only the prince’s mind-speaking abilities remained.
This shadow was different—darker, older. Watching them.
Watching Hunt.
Hallucinations: Bad, because it meant he had some infection that even his immortal body couldn’t fight off. Good, because it meant he might quietly slip away into death’s embrace. Bad, because it meant the Asteri might turn their attention fully to Bryce. Good, because the pain would be gone. Bad, because he still held out some stupid, fool’s hope deep in his heart of seeing her again. Good, because Bryce wouldn’t come looking for him if he was dead.
Across the room, the thing in the shadows moved. Just slightly. Like it had crooked a finger at him.
Death. That was the thing in the shadows.
And now it beckoned.
* * *
Night.
Borne on a raft of oblivion, Ruhn drifted across a sea of pain.
The last thing he remembered was the sound and sight of his small intestine splattering on the ground, pain as sharp as—well, as sharp as the curved knife the Hawk had plunged into his gut.
He wondered when the shifter would disembowel them with his talons in his hawk form, as he was fond of doing. Ruhn could imagine it easily: the Hawk perching on his torso and clawing out his organs, pecking at them with that razor-sharp beak. He’d heal, and then the Hawk would begin again. Over and over—
Ruhn had been a fool to think nothing that happened down here could be worse than the years of torture at his father’s hands. The burns, the gorsian shackles his father had put him in to keep him from fighting back, keep him from healing—then, at least, he’d developed his own ways of surviving, of recovering. But now there was only pain, then oblivion, then pain again.
Had he died? Or been a whisper away from death, as Vanir could be if the blow wasn’t truly fatal? His Fae body would regenerate the organs, even slowed by the gorsian shackles.
Night.
The female voice echoed across the starlit sea. Like a lighthouse shining in the distance.
Night.
Here, there was no escape from her voice. If he roused himself, the pain would wash over the raft and he’d drown in it. So he had no choice but to listen, to drift toward that beacon.
